The Stone Wall: An Autobiography

From a historical perspective, this book is fascinating as the first American autobiography written by/about a lesbian. However, Mary Casal (pseudonym for Ruth Fuller Field) never refers to herself as a lesbian in this book, and she spent much of her life isolated from any organized queer community. (This book was published in the 1920s, and the butch-femme labels and dynamic now famous in lesbian culture would not fully emerge until the 1940s.) Despite her numerous relationships with other women, she characterizes herself as a rarity and an "invert" (a sexological term of the time) who is exclusively attracted to women but not to men.

Although its understandings of sexuality are certainly dated by modern standards, the experience of show more compulsory heterosexuality and societal shame about sexual topics are still unfortunately quite current. I would recommend this book to people interested in historical queer literature, and who want to understand how queer people lived when they were separated from an open community of people like them. I feel that my empathy grew as I read this book.

Sensitive readers should note that the early chapters of the book have several scenes describing sexual assaults the author experienced, including child sexual abuse. show less