Core Reading for Lesbians
Discover essential lesbian literature with our curated list of core reading for lesbians. Explore groundbreaking novels, memoirs, and feminist works that celebrate LGBTQ+ voices and stories.
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The Well of Loneliness
by Radclyffe Hall
Originally published in 1928, Radclyffe Hall's The Well of Loneliness is the timeless story of a lesbian couple's struggle to be accepted by "polite" society. Shockingly candid for its time, this novel was the very first to condemn homophobic society for its unfair treatment of gays and lesbians.
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Chloe Plus Olivia
by Lillian Faderman
This landmark work is the most complete compilation of its kind, offering an enlightened view of a diverse and long-neglected genre. Arranged in thematic sections are a generous and wide range of selections--fiction, poetry, and essays from writers past and present, including Emily Dickinson, Carson McCullers, Christina Rossetti, and Rita Mae Brown.
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The Ladies
by Doris Grumbach
"Grumbach is acutely sensitive to the quiet hum of everyday living and the small acquired habits that bond lovers over long periods. It is especially touching to watch the women age as the pages turn, affecting a kind of time-lapse realism that doesn't diminish the Ladies' passion or love for each other." --Diane Salvatore, Ms.
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The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas
by Gertrude Stein
Stein's most famous work; one of the richest and most irreverent biographies ever written.
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Nightwood
by Djuna Barnes
Nightwood, Djuna Barnes' strange and sinuous tour de force, "belongs to that small class of books that somehow reflect a time or an epoch" (Times Literary Supplement). That time is the period between the two World Wars, and Barnes' novel unfolds in the decadent shadows of Europe's great cities, Paris, Berlin, and Vienna—a world in which the boundaries of class, religion, and sexuality are bold but surprisingly porous. The outsized characters who inhabit this world are some of the most memorable in all of fiction—there is Guido Volkbein, the Wandering Jew and son of a self-proclaimed baron; Robin Vote, the American expatriate who marries him and then engages in a series of affairs, first with Nora Flood and then with Jenny Petherbridge, driving all of her lovers to distraction with her passion for wandering alone in the night; and there is Dr. Matthew-Mighty-Grain-of-Salt-Dante-O'Connor, a transvestite and ostensible gynecologist, whose digressive speeches brim with fury, keen insights, and surprising allusions. Barnes' depiction of these characters and their relationships (Nora says, "A man is another persona woman is yourself, caught as you turn in panic; on her mouth you kiss your own") has made the novel a landmark of feminist and lesbian literature. Most striking of all is Barnes' unparalleled stylistic innovation, which led T. S. Eliot to proclaim the book "so good a novel that only sensibilities trained on poetry can wholly appreciate it." Now with a new preface by Jeanette Winterson, Nightwood still crackles with the same electric charge it had on its first publication in 1936.
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Patience and Sarah
by Isabel Miller
Early in the 19th century, in a puritanical New England town, two women fell in love with one another. And with nothing and no one to guide or support them, Patience and Sarah tried to follow their hearts. A remarkable story.--Publishers Weekly.
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Bastard Out of Carolina
by Dorothy Allison
Ruth Ann Boatwright, a South Carolina bastard, tells her life with her family and the emotional and physical violence she experiences.
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The Girls in 3-B
by Valerie Taylor
Three small-town girls move to the big city in this reissue of a classic 1950s pulp.
![Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe : [a novel] Cover](https://ec2.images-amazon.com/images/P/0804115613.01._SCLZZZZZZZ_.jpg)
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Fried green tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe : [a novel]
by Fannie Flagg
Mrs. Threadgoode's tale of two high-spirited women of the 1930s, Idgie and Ruth, helps Evelyn, a 1980s woman in a sad slump of middle age, to begin to rejuvenate her own life. By the author of Welcome to the World, Baby Girl! Reprint.
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