As Lillian Faderman writes, there are "no constants with regard to lesbianism," except that lesbians prefer women. In this groundbreaking book, she reclaims the history of lesbian life in twentieth-century America, tracing the evolution of lesbian identity and subcultures from early networks to more recent diverse lifestyles. She draws from journals, unpublished manuscripts, songs, media accounts, novels, medical literature, pop culture artifacts, and oral histories by lesbians of all ages and backgrounds, uncovering a narrative of uncommon depth and originality.
Price: $24.95
Pages: 373
Publisher: Columbia University Press
Imprint: Columbia University Press
Publication Date:
21 February 2012
ISBN: 9780231074896
Format: Paperback
BISACs:
LITERARY CRITICISM / LGBTQ+, HISTORY / United States / 20th Century
Odd Girls reverberates with the powerful voices of people speaking for themselves.... Faderman empowers her subject; instead of allowing lesbian lifestyles to be defined from the outside, her voice and those of other women transcend destructive stereotypes and misconceptions. Odd Girls offers a lucidly written and moving narrative of lesbian culture and community during its formative years.
Lillian Faderman is professor emerita of English at California State University, Fresno, and author of the award-winning Surpassing the Love of Men: Romantic Friendship and Love Between Women from the Renaissance to the Present and Scotch Verdict: Miss Pirie and Miss Woods v. Dame Cumming Gordon. She is also the author of Naked in the Promised Land: A Memoir and To Believe in Women: What Lesbians Have Done for America—a History, and coauthor of Gay L. A.: A History of Sexual Outlaws, Power Politics, And Lipstick Lesbians.
Contents
Introduction
1. "The Loves of Women for Each Other": "Romantic Friends" in the Twentieth Century
2. A Worm in the Bud: The Early Sexologists and Love Between Women
3. Lesbian Chic: Experimentation and Repression in the 1920s
4. Wastelands and Oases: The 1930s
5. "Naked Amazons and Queer Damozels": World War II and Its Aftermath
6. The Love that Dares Not Speak Its Name: McCarthyism and Its Legacy
7. Butches, Femmes, and Kikis: Creating Lesbian Subcultures in the 1950s and '60s
8. "Not a Public Relations Movement": Lesbian Revolutions in the 1960s Through '70s
9. Lesbian Nation: Creating a Women-Identified-Women Community in the 1970s
10. Lesbian Sex Wars in the 1980s
11. From Tower of Babel to Community: Lesbian Life in the 1980s
Epilogue: Social Constructions and the Metamorphoses of Love Between Women
Notes
Index
