Joan Nestle

so, first, the things i liked: i liked that each of these stories was written by or about people we don't often hear from. while every story in some way touched or was about lesbians and/or lesbianism, many of them were also written by and about people of color. i liked that. it's also nice to see how far we've come, because these stories were all written by 1989 at the latest, and a lot has changed in our mainstream culture. it's easy to lose sight of that when you're looking at how far show more there is to go, so that was a nice reminder.

so, what i didn't like: most of these stories are at best decently written. most of the stories were alright, idea-wise, but the writing was generally sub-par, which was really disappointing. a couple were pretty good, but that was about as good as it got. there's not a lot to choose from out there, so i'll keep reading stuff like this, but i wish there were better options. show less

there were a few really stellar pieces in here, by authors who can hardly be found elsewhere, which is great. i don't like reading excerpts from longer works and there was an awful lot of that here. maybe, though, these authors were too hard to find otherwise. because the editors did do a nice job of incorporating writing from many places in the world.

i didn't like the number of excerpts and i didn't like all of the writing, but this is an excellent look at international writing and show more translating, and has some work by authors that are hard to find elsewhere, so for that it's worth it. i still had a hard time getting through it and was hoping to like more of the selections than i did, though. show less

Phenomenal; an incredible multiplicity of voices, thoughtfully organized. Still feels very urgent and necessary nearly 30 years after its publication. My main complaint is the lack of inclusion of out transfem authors; though discussions of transfeminity are definitely present in the book, they remain entirely marginal.

This is a collection of essays/stories by people who don't fit into the neat packages of 'male' and 'female'. A number of them defy any labels, while others identify by their gender or sexual orientation, but aren't quite what you'd expect from that label.I did find it all interesting, but there was a lot more discussion of sex than I was expecting. It gives the impression that gender is all about (or mostly about) sex. Not a lot of asexual voices in here, for one thing.It's also a little show more inaccessible (wait, bad term, scratch that term). There are a number of references to people, places, events, and a lot of terms and acronyms that the writers and editors just expect you to know. It seems to be written with the LGB if not even also T community in mind. Now, I'm not ignorant, but there were a number of things that went over my head completely. And it took me a minute to figure out what GB meant.There are some really good ones in here. A few I even half-identified with. But even though I didn't identify with any of them fully, you sort of glean that it's okay that you don't. Because most of these writers are trying to carve their own path amongst all the labels.Weirdly, I kept thinking this was published in the early 90's. But it was 2002, I think. I kept having to remind myself that it really wasn't that old. Still, a lot has changed in even 8 years. Resources and information and community are a lot easier to find on the Internet now.I'd like to see another anthology like this, aimed at teens, maybe. More current. Less sex. More diversity of voices. show less