San Antonio College Library

"Here I am, writing poems in my seventy-ninth and eightieth years, and the reason is partly because I am a foreigner in the land of old age and have tried to learn its language." With these words from the preface of her new, luminous collection, May Sarton takes on the subject of herself in old age. Here are Sarton's observations and reflections, many of which came to her as if by magic during the small hours of the morning. Along with the daily events...

"Since the Renaissance, countless writers have been magnetized by the notion of love between women. From Renaissance love poems to twentieth-century novels, plays, and short stories, The Literature of Lesbianism brings together hundreds of literary works on the subject of female homosexuality. This is not an anthology of "lesbian writers." Nor is it simply a one-sided compendium of "positive" or "negative" images of lesbian experience. Terry Castle...

SPRING FORWARD/FALL BACK focuses on two women, separated by twenty-six miles of ocean, whose lives are passing through distinct crises. Elizabeth Rivers, 17, gradually falls in love with her English teacher, must at summer's close, sever herself from her lover, family, and home on Catalina Island to begin the next passage of her life. On the California mainland, at the same point in time, Marci Tyson, 29 and pregnant, buys her own house, leaves her...

"Masks is the affecting, sometimes terrifying debut collection of poems by award-winning fiction writer Ruthann Robson. Here we find poems that are frankly sexual and often passionate, but bathed in a clear hard light, even when she is dealing with the violent and the ultimately irrational. Some of these poems zero in on moments or trends in the poet's own life, as a lesbian mother, a child of the city streets and a legal scholar, while others examine...

"When I was selling books at a Chicana conference, I noticed book buyers were literally afraid to touch this anthology. I say now what I said then, 'Don't be scared. Sexuality is not contagious, but ignorance is.' If you've ever been curious, been there, been voyeur, been tourist, or just plain under-informed, misinformed, or unaffirmed, here is a book to listen to and learn from". --Sandra Cisneros. "CHICANA LESBIANS is a love poem, a bible, a dictionary,...

Are Girls Necessary? was an astoundingly great idea, exploring the lesbian in nineteenth and twentieth century lesbian-authored literature, even that which is not as explicit as the lesbian novels that make up the heart of the lesbian literary canon. The subjects of Abraham's examinations are a veritable pantheon of lesbian, bisexual and feminist literary icons: Willa Cather, Mary Renault, Gertrude Stein, Virginia Woolf, Djuna Barnes, Alice B. Toklas,...

"Few novels in our time have received the extraordinary praise accorded Djuna Barnes' Nightwood. Originally published in 1936, it is recognized as one of the works that has changed the climate of the written word. It is the story of Robin Vote and those she destroys-her husband the 'Baron, ' their child Guido, and the two women, Nora and Jenny, who love her; the whole illumined by the fantastic monologues of the renegade doctor, Matthew O'Connor,...

"Completely Queer is a concise and balanced guide to the history, people, places, and ideas important to lesbian and gay communities worldwide. Linking a detailed chronology of homosexual life and achievement to nearly six hundred articles -- ranging from "ACT UP" to "Lesbian Continuum," from "Military" to "Wilde" -- it explores in depth more facets of today's gay and lesbian subcultures than any other one-volume reference work. Recognizing that the...