Joan Nestle

A Femme-Butch Reader A groundbreaking anthology about femme and butch identities in the lesbian community.

A Femme-butch Reader

The Persistent Desire

Clare Howell

Riki Anne Wilchins

Gender identity, an issue that has galvanised the queer community in recent years, goes beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity.

Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

GenderQueer

A Femme-Butch Reader

The author traces the lesbian, feminist and civil rights movements throughout the last century in this collection of personal essays about one of the greatest social revolutions in human history.

A Restricted Country

Joan Nestle est une icône lesbienne. Née en 1940 dans le Bronx au sein d’une famille juive de la classe ouvrière, elle a vécu son lesbianisme au grand jour bien avant l’émergence du mouvement pour l’égalité des droits. Féministe et antiraciste, elle s’est engagée dans toutes les luttes de libération qui ont transformé les États-Unis depuis les années 1960. En 1973, elle a cofondé les Lesbian Herstory Archives, qui constituent aujourd’hui le plus grand fonds d’archives lesbiennes au monde. Porte-parole des désirs butch-fem, Joan Nestle s’est revendiquée fem et sexuelle à une époque où cela l’exposait à de virulentes controverses. Dans ce recueil, elle défend la mémoire lesbienne-féministe et explore les dynamiques et les attirances butch-fem.

For over fifty years, Joan Nestle has been chronicling lesbian and queer life boldly with guts, heart, and moral suasion. A Sturdy Yes of a People gathers Nestles most influential writing into a single volume presenting her persistent involvement in liberation movements, LGBTQ histories, erotic writing, and archives that document gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer lives. Embedded in tales of lesbian desire are Nestle's concerns with the power of class and race in America to exile bodies.From Nestle's earliest popular essays such as "Lesbians and Prostitutes: An Historical Sisterhood" to more recent powerfully evocative pieces like "I Lift My Eyes to the Hill" in which Nestle, a white lesbian, traces the life of her friend, African-American lesbian Mabel Hampton, A Sturdy Yes of a People gathers both her most enduring insights and new provocations for readers and fans to treasure or discover. Scholar Carolyn D'Cruz of La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia situates Nestle's work and its power while an afterword by Susie Bright reminds readers of how transgressive and potent Nestle's sex writing was-and remains.A bold and original thinker, deeply connected with her communities, with an abiding willingness to reexamine and reimagine queer lives by integrating new ideas, challenges, and experiences, Nestle dazzles as a powerful thinker, writer, and theorist.

Selected Writing by Joan Nestle

A Sturdy Yes of a People

John Preston

Here are heartfelt writings from some renowned names in lesbian and gay literature, as well as some debut appearances. These essays explore a kind of love uncomplicated by romance, but surprisingly sensual. As the writers pursue their relationships with the oposite sex, they ultimately lay bare the nature of friendship itself.

Lesbians and Gay Men Write about Their Lives Together

Sister and Brother

A collection of essays and narratives by a lesbian-feminist activist

New & Selected Writings

A Fragile Union

Naomi Holoch

Short stories describe the lives and relationships of lesbians in modern society

Women on Women Three

From the most celebrated anthologizers of gay and lesbian writing, here are 30 profiles in camaraderie that reveal the loving, sometimes troubled, but always remarkable relationships between lesbians and gay men. Includes brilliant writings from Paul Monette, Katherine Forrest, Jewelle Gomez, Bernard Cooper, and others.

Lesbians & Gay Men Write about Their Lives Together

Sister & Brother

The 29 stories in the volume range from the daring and erotic "Eat" by Sapphire to Dorothy Allison's energetic Southern tale "A Lesbian Appetite" to Valerie Miner's suspenseful "Trespassing". Whether its the joy or loss of love, the difficulty of family relations, or the pain of death, these stories bring to life the unique lesbian experience.

An Anthology of American Lesbian Short Fiction

Women on Women

Riki Wilchins

When Genderqueer was first published in 2002, it was groundbreaking, even inventing a new word for those whose voices had been hidden behind the walls of the gender binary. Now-finally!-it's republished, and those voices are still fresh and compelling in a volume that can take its place as one of the field's early and most original "classics."Michael Kimmel SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies Stony Brook University (retired) Perhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, first published nearly two decades ago, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide the groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Joan Nestle is the cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York and the writer and editor of six books including the groundbreaking Women on Women series. Riki Wilchins is the executive director of GenderPAC, the national gender advocacy group, and the cofounder of the Gender Identity Project of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Center. She is the author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Gender Theory, Burn the Binary and TransGRESSIVE. Clare Howell is a senior librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.

Susan Wright

Silvia Rivera

Gina Reiss

When GenderQueer was first published in 2002, it was groundbreaking, even inventing a new word for those whose voices had been hidden behind the walls of the gender binary. Now—finally!—it's republished, and those voices are still fresh and compelling in a volume that can take its place as one of the field's early and most original "classics." Michael Kimmel SUNY Distinguished Professor of Sociology and Gender Studies Stony Brook University (retired) Perhaps more than any other issue, gender identity has galvanized the queer community in recent years. The questions go beyond the nature of male/female to a yet-to-be-traversed region that lies somewhere between and beyond biologically determined gender. In this groundbreaking anthology, first published nearly two decades ago, three experts in gender studies and politics navigate around rigid, societally imposed concepts of two genders to discover and illuminate the limitless possibilities of identity. Thirty first-person accounts of gender construction, exploration, and questioning provide the groundwork for cultural discussion, political action, and even greater possibilities of autonomous gender choices. Joan Nestle is the cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York and the writer and editor of six books including the groundbreaking Women on Women series. Riki Wilchins is the executive director of GenderPAC, the national gender advocacy group, and the cofounder of the Gender Identity Project of New York City's Lesbian and Gay Center. She is the author of Read My Lips: Sexual Subversion and the End of Gender, Gender Theory, Burn the Binary and TransGRESSIVE. Clare Howell is a senior librarian at the Brooklyn Public Library.

GenderQueer-Voices from Beyond the Sexual Binary

Joan Nestle tells of her own experiences as a Jewish, working class lesbian. In this collection of stories from her life, political essays and her fiction, she offers a complete politics of gender, sex and class.

Essays and Short Stories

Twenty-eight short works address a range of issues relevant to the lesbian community, such as love and sex, relationships, sexual abuse, and AIDS

Women on Women 2

A Fragile Union is Joan Nestle’s collection of intimate essays and narratives about lesbian sexuality, butch-femme relationships, sex writing, the importance of preserving lesbian and gay history, the love between lesbians and gay men, and the "often-shaky camaraderie among lesbians that as community continues to flex its diversity." Longtime readers of Nestle's writings are familiar with her themes of unity and difference. In A Fragile Union, Nestle delves still deeper. Living with cancer, Nestle explores other "fragile unions": the fragility of her sexual desire in the face of her illness, the fragility of memory in the face of loss, and always in the face of fear, her belief in the possibility of hope, her love for her people—women, lesbians and gays, working class, and all who struggle against injustice.

New and Selected Writings

Short fiction by Dionne Brand, Emma Donoghue, Violette Leduc, Anchee Min, Shani Mootoo, Sylvia Molloy, Achy Obejas, Alifa Rifaat, and others highlights an outstanding anthology of international lesbian fiction that captures the richly diverse political, emotional, cultural, and sexual landscapes of the writers' lives. Original. 17,500 first printing.

The Vintage Book of International Lesbian Fiction

A proud working class woman, an "out" lesbian long before the Rainbow revolution, Joan Nestle has stood at the forefront of American freedom struggles from the McCarthy era to the present day. Available for the first time in years, this revised classic collection of personal essays offers an intimate account of the lesbian, feminist, and civil rights movements.

Joan Nestle

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