The Judy Grahn Reader, and: A Human Eye: Essays on Art and Society, 1997-2008 (review)

The late 1970s and early '80s were heady days for young lesbian feminists like me in Northampton, Massachusetts. Smack in the middle of Smith, Mount Holyoke, Hampshire, and Amherst colleges and down the road from the University of Massachusetts, we had access to every aspect of what can best be described a "dyke cultural revolution." It was possible to hear lectures and readings by famous lesbian thinkers and writers, listen to women musicians, watch new plays by feminist theater collectives and drama students, attend women-only dances, watch women martial artists perform graceful katas, dine at a collectively owned women's restaurant, and shop at a women's bookstore, all within the space of a few miles and sometimes all in the same weekend. In between all that culture, a person could work on actions involving such things as surrounding the Pentagon; argue about the ethics of monogamy, sadomasochism, and celibacy; debate the place of race, class, and separatism inside the feminist movement; or make a mess of one's personal love life or find a girlfriend and mate with her forever.

It was during those early 1970s and '80s that I first laid hands on a mimeographed prose poem by a Bay Area writer named Judy Grahn. Her "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke" read like a hilariously horrible and familiar dream:

"Dr. Knox," Edward began, "my problem this week is chiefly concerning restrooms."

"Aahh," the good doctor sighed. Gravely he drew a sketch of a restroom in his notebook. "Naturally I can't go into men's restrooms without feeling like an interloper, but on the other hand, every time I try to use the ladies room, I get into trouble."

(16)

This poem/story continues for three pages to describe, almost casually, Edward's session with Dr. Knox. Slowly, Grahn does the double work of creating a situation many dykes and transgender people still find themselves in here in the twenty-first century, while at the same time pointing an accusing finger at the psychiatric profession that profited (still profits?) from our queer sense of alienation and outsiderhood.

There were also other poems in that mimeographed volume that chilled a person to the bone. Reading Grahn's "I'm Not a Girl":

I'm not a girl      I'm a hatchetI'm not a hole      I'm a whole mountain

(16)

or "A History of Lesbianism":

the women loving womencame in ten by tenand ten by ten againuntil there were morethan you could count.

(19)

it was impossible not to hear the poet's voice and rhythms sing off the page—a call to action, a political lesbian mythology.

These iconic poems and others, as well as selections from Judy Grahn's fiction, her play The Queen of Swords, and excerpts from nonfiction projects including The Highest Apple, Really Reading Gertrude Stein, and the newly revised essay "Ground Zero: The Rise of Lesbian Feminism," have been generously compiled into one gorgeous paperback volume, The Judy Grahn Reader, by one of North America's steadfast, independent women's presses, Aunt Lute Books. The press, which was founded on the West Coast in 1982 during the heyday of women's publishing, is luckily still publishing today, and for anyone interested in a chronological examination of lesbian literary culture or simply looking for some really good examples of what lesbian literature is, The Judy Grahn Reader is a real gift.

Here, the nostalgic reader and the student of lesbian feminist history alike can delight in Grahn's wicked sense of irony in short stories, such as her 1978 "Boys at the Rodeo":

A lot of people have spent time on some women's farm this summer of 1972, and one day...