Amazon.com (ISBN 1883523400, Paperback)

When they got together in the late 1970s, Barbara Macdonald, a 60-something lesbian, and her lover, Cynthia Rich, who is 20 years younger, learned that old women and young women are treated very differently, even within the women's movement. In response to this inequity, Macdonald wrote essays and open letters to feminist and social service organizations comparing ageism to racism. Her autobiographical essays describe an amazing lesbian childhood lived before the publication of The Well of Loneliness, a college career threatened by the revelation of a love affair with a woman, and frustration with young women's patronizing older women. Rich's essays examine how words and visual images in popular and feminist texts contribute to demonizing and demeaning older women.