The Women’s Review of Books Vol. XXI, No. 3 December 2003 74035 $4.00 I In This Issue I Political organizers are serious, while the patrons of drag bars and cabarets just wanna have fun, right? Julie Abraham challenges the cate- gories in her review of Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco. Cover story D I Before she died, Carolyn Heilbrun contributed a final essay to the Women’s Review—a discussion of Beautiful Shadow: A Biography of Patricia Highsmith. The piece expresses Heilbrun’s lifelong inter- est in writing women’s lives, and we publish it with pride and sadness, along with a tribute to the late scholar and mystery novelist. p. 4 Kay Scott (right) and tourists at Mona's 440, a drag bar, c. 1945. From Wide Open Town. I When characters have names like Heed the Night, L, and Celestial, we could be nowhere but in a Toni Morrison novel. Despite Tales of the city its title, Love, her latest, is more by Julie Abraham philosophical exploration than pas- Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 by Nan Alamilla Boyd. sionate romance, says reviewer Deborah E. McDowell. p. 8 Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2003, 319 pp., $27.50 hardcover. I I The important but little-known n Wide Open Town, Nan Alamilla Boyd so much lesbian/gay/bisexual/transgender feminist Lucy Stone, who stumped presents queer San Francisco as the scholarship, have served as key points of the country for women’s suffrage, Iproduct of a town “wide open” to all reference in US queer studies over the past forms of pleasure, all forms of money-mak- two decades. kept her own name after marriage, ing, and the conjunction of the two. Boyd’s To embark on any such project is a bold and advocated for divorce, is the work is the latest addition to a series of move. But to take up San Francisco was par- subject of a much-needed new place-based studies by historians and anthro- ticularly brave, given the many already avail- pologists as well as geographers and urban- able accounts of queer San Francisco. San biography, Woman’s Voice, ists—including George Chauncey’s Gay New Francisco was the setting for one of the ear- Woman’s Place. p. 16 York, Elizabeth Kennedy and Madeline liest studies of lesbian feminist community, Davis’ Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold (about by Deborah Wolf, in the late 1970s. The city I and more... Buffalo, New York), Esther Newton’s Cherry appeared as the model of gay urban life in Grove, Fire Island, Marc Stein’s City of Sisterly geographer and social critic Manuel Castells’ 12> and Brotherly Loves (about Philadelphia), and 1983 landmark study The City and the Moira Rachel Kenney’s Mapping Gay L.A.— Grassroots (to which so many studies of that take their particular locations as the queer urban life still refer), and in journalist frame for detailed explorations of social and in journalist and cultural critic Frances relations, politics, and culture. Such studies, Fitzgerald’s attempt to characterize the 0374470 74035 each in their own way carrying forward the 1980s, in part through a portrait of the PRINTED IN THE USA impulse to recovery that was the origin of continued on page three The Women’s Review Contents of Books Wellesley College Center for Research on Women Wellesley, MA 02481 1 Julie Abraham I Wide Open Town: A History of Queer San Francisco to 1965 (781) 283-2087/ (888) 283-8044 by Nan Alamilla Boyd www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview Volume XXI, No. 3 4 Letters December 2003 4 REMEMBERING CAROLYN HEILBRUN EDITOR IN CHIEF: Amy Hoffman [email protected] 5 Carolyn G. Heilbrun I Beautiful Shadow: A Life of Patricia Highsmith by Andrew Wilson PRODUCTION EDITOR: Amanda Nash [email protected] 7 Marie J. Kuda I Highsmith: A Romance of the 1950s by Marijane Meaker CONTRIBUTING EDITORS: Martha Nichols, Jan Zita Grover 8 Deborah E. McDowell I Love by Toni Morrison POETRY EDITOR: Robin Becker ADVERTISING MANAGER: Anita D. McClellan 10 DYKES TO WATCH OUT FOR: Lisa London talks to Alison Bechdel about 20 years of cartooning [email protected] and her new book, Dykes and Sundry Other Carbon-Based Life-Forms to Watch Out For OFFICE MANAGER: Nancy Wechsler [email protected] 12 Laurie Stone I The Unprofessionals: A Novel by Julie Hecht EDITORIAL BOARD: Margaret Andersen I Robin Becker I Claudia M. Christie I 13 Karen Rosenberg I Eleanora Duse: A Biography by Helen Sheehy Marsha Darling I Anne Fausto-Sterling I Carol Gilligan I Sandra Harding I Nancy 14 Frieda Gardner I The Lightning Field by Carol Moldaw; The Cloud of Knowable Things Hartsock I Evelyn Fox Keller I Jean Baker Miller I Ruth Perry I Peggy Phelan I by Elaine Equi Helene Vivienne Wenzel 15 Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz I My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile EDITORIAL POLICY: The Women’s Review of Books is feminist but not by Isabel Allende restricted to any one conception of feminism; all writing that is neither sexist, racist, homo- 16 Louise W. Knight I Woman’s Voice, Woman’s Place: Lucy Stone and the Birth of the Woman’s phobic, nor otherwise discriminatory is wel- come. We seek to represent the widest possi- Rights Movement by Joelle Million ble range of feminist perspectives both in the books reviewed and in the content of the 17 Julia Query I Buying Dad: One Woman’s Search for the Perfect Sperm Donor reviews. We believe that no one of us can speak for feminism, or women, as such; all of by Harlyn Aizley our thinking and writing takes place in a spe- cific political, social, ethnic, and sexual con- 18 Sandra Kohler I Two Poems text, and a responsible review periodical should reflect and further that diversity. The Women’s Review takes no editorial stance; all the 19 Silja J. A. Talvi I Feminism without Borders: Decolonizing Theory, Practicing Solidarity views expressed in it represent the opinion of by Chandra Talpade Mohanty the individual authors. ADVERTISING POLICY: 20 Susan Ware I Kate Remembered by Scott Berg Visit www.wellesley.edu/WomensReview to book an ad online; preview the current issue 21 Sarah Lucia Hoagland I Wild Politics: Feminism, Globalisation, Bio/Diversity by Susan Hawthorne and classified ads; and download a media kit including display, classified, and line rates, sizes and shapes, policies, and deadlines. 22 Enid Shomer I We Never Speak of It: Idaho-Wyoming Poems, 1889-1890 by Jana Harris The Women’s Review of Books (ISSN #0738- 23 The Bookshelf 1433) is published monthly except August by The Women’s Review, Inc., 828 Washington Street, Wellesley, MA 02481. Annual subscrip- tions are $27.00 for individuals and $47.00 for institutions. Overseas postage fees are an Contributors additional $20.00 airmail or $5.00 surface mail to all countries outside the US. Back issues are JULIE ABRAHAM teaches LGBT Studies at Sarah Lawrence writer, and lecturer on lesbian history and culture since 1969. After available for $4.00 per copy. Please allow 6-8 College. She is the author of Are Girls Necessary?: Lesbian Writing 57 years in Chicago she now lives in Hemingway’s boyhood home, weeks for all subscription transactions. and Modern Histories (Routledge) and is currently working on The Oak Park, Illinois, researching and lecturing on his extensive con- Periodicals class postage paid at Boston, MA City of Feeling, a study of the interdependent histories of modern nection to lesbians in his life and art. and additional mailing offices. POSTMAS- homosexualities and modern cities, to be published by the LISA LONDON is the associate publisher of the Feminist Press TER: send address corrections to The Women’s University of Minnesota Press. Review of Books, Wellesley College Center for at the City University of New York. Research on Women, Wellesley, MA 02481. ROXANNE DUNBAR-ORTIZ has a doctorate in Latin DEBORAH E. MCDOWELL is Alice Griffin Professor of The Women’s Review of Books is a project of the American History, specializing in indigenous peoples of the English at the University of Virginia. Her latest book is an edition Wellesley College Center for Research on Americas. She has published numerous scholarly books and articles, of Pauline Hopkins’s novel, Of One Blood. Women. As an autonomous publication it has and two literary memoirs, Red Dirt: Growing Up Okie and Outlaw JULIA QUERY produced and co-directed the film Live Nude its own editorial board and board of directors, Woman: Memoir of the War Years, 1960-1975. A third memoir on Girls UNITE! She and her 15-month-old son often travel to uni- who set policy with regard to its editorial, Reagan’s war against Sandinista Nicaragua will be published in 2004. versities to screen the film. She is currently writing a thesis about financial and organizational character. FRIEDA GARDNER is a poet and social activist living in modern parenting books. The Women’s Review is distributed by Total Minneapolis. Her manuscript, The Play of Origins, circulates. KAREN ROSENBERG is a writer of plays, fiction and essays. Circulation, New York City, NY; Ingram, Nashville, TN; and Armadillo Trading, Culver CAROLYN G. HEILBRUN was the Avalon Foundation She has just returned from a playwriting residency in Denmark Professor in the Humanities Emerita at Columbia University. Her City, CA. All other distribution is handled and is completing an essay on the values of Russian revolutionar- directly by The Women’s Review. final book was When Men Were the Only Models We Had: My Teachers ies. She has finished her first novel, sections of which have The contents of The Women’s Review of Books Barzun, Fadiman, Trilling.