I went to my local bookstore today and there was not a single book with the word "lesbian" in it of all the books in the "LGBTQ+" Section.
It's depressing to be a 20-something lesbian who yearns for community and can't even find accurate gay history on mainstream sites because it's "hateful."
Take heart that this is what bookstores were like in the lifetime of millions of lesbians alive today. Public lesbianism was nice, but not a requirement for a happy lesbian life. Time to take back control of our media, publishing, entertainment.
My two local bookshops - ones a chain, ones independent - both have “LGBT” sections that are all books by gay men, TIMS and usually one book by a TIF. It’s so depressing. On the plus side if you ever wanna chat books with a fellow 20s lesbian, I’m here! 😎
Thanks I might have to take you up on that! I'm in an intensive grad school program right now, so I have little time to read outside of assigned texts, but I was hoping to pick up something for winter break.
WDI (Womens Declaration International) has webinars on Sunday mornings - 10AM in the UK but 5AM US ET - called Radical Feminist Perspectives. They discuss a different rad fem book each week. These are the classic works of radical feminism - some well known, some most women haven't heard of. The webinars are recorded and on the WDI YT. Lesbian topics are covered. Once in a while, classic articles from the 2nd wave are discussed.
You can get titles of books to look for from the webinars. Some of the books are available as pdfs online. Most of the rest can be found - as used copies, except for the occasional few still in print - on the big sellers like Amazon. But you can also hunt them down on used book sellers like Alibris, Thriftbooks, etc.
Spinefex Press is also a specifically womens publishing company that has books currently written by women rad fem authors.
Lillian Faderman has written many books on lesbian history. To Believe in women: What Lesbians Have Done for America--A History, in particular, made an indelible impression on me and I can't recommend it enough. Most of her books can be borrowed from archive.org if you can't find them offline.
Reminds me of a bookshop in the heart of what used to be a gay and lesbian area in a capital city here. Still there, same name, but now it’s “queer and intersectional”. 🤮
If you like lesbian fiction there’s Sarah Waters, especially “The Fingersmith.” All of her books are about lesbians, and she is a great writer. If you like crime/mystery, there’s Val McDermid. She’s a lesbian and one of her police officers in the books that are a series is a lesbian. She, too, writes excellent books.
Almost 20 years ago when I was a pre-teen (dating myself I know) there were limited books about lesbian coming of age stories but I was glad that there were some that were about lesbians and not gay men only.
Now that we are almost at 2023, it’s the same only with TIPs taking up all the LGBT literature.
IIRC, one book I read with a bi main character had a lesbian who called herself “q*eer”.
I have to order online :/ I purchased Elana Dykewoman’s book They Will Know Me By My Teeth when she died a few months ago. Its hard to find. Now I’m done reading it. It sits on a shelf. I wish there was a way we could safely send literature to each other.
Not even Stone Butch Blues?
Nope!
You can get that for free as a PDF from Leslie Feinberg's site. I have a paperback. There are aspects of it I did not care for but will refrain from spoiling it. But I wouldn't categorize it as a Lesbian book as such, it's more of a trans narrative.
I’m sorry but this has been true for 20 years. The beloved Bookshop Santa Cruz has always been at the forefront of promoting lesbian culture, until its institutional capture by the Genderists. I saw it happening, but I didn’t do anything about it, I didn’t know I could, and I didn’t know I wasn’t the only lesbian noticing it.
I have regret that I just lived my life, and didn’t do more, intergenerationally, to connect with younger lesbians and show them there is an alternative to capitulation to “be kind” and “inclusion” of men.