This work formed the foundations for a genre that would be taken up again a few decades later in the popular josei and shojo manga, like Sailor Moon, also aimed at young women. Their plots often deal with female friendships that are to a certain extent ambiguous but ostensibly platonic, which allowed the author to avoid censorship.
Nobuko Yoshiya made no attempt to conceal her relationship with a female teacher that lasted almost 50 years, in a Japan still fiercely conservative with regard to gay rights, and published a second work that was also much remarked upon, Yaneura no nishojo (Two Virgins in the Attic), in 1919, that critics considered to be largely autobiographical. It tells of the love story between two female dormmates who end up moving in together as a couple, in a shared apartment. These confident female characters assert that they have no need for a masculine figure of authority in their life.
japanese lesbians at work
After this book, Nobuko Yoshiya gradually abandoned the theme of homosexual love to turn more towards the situation of housewives in unhappy marriages. The author, who passed away in 1973, left the house she occupied and for which she had created the plans with her partner Monma Chiyo, to the city of Kamakura, not far from Tokyo. It has since been turned into a museum dedicated to the artist where visitors can discover her work and the different initiatives she took in this seaside city to promote culture and education for women.
Lesbian literature includes works by lesbian authors, as well as lesbian-themed works by heterosexual authors. Even works by lesbian writers that do not deal with lesbian themes are still often considered lesbian literature. Works by heterosexual writers which treat lesbian themes only in passing, on the other hand, are not often regarded as lesbian literature.[citation needed]
The fundamental work of lesbian literature is the poetry of Sappho of Lesbos. From various ancient writings, historians have gathered that a group of young women were left in Sappho's charge for their instruction or cultural edification.[2] Not much of Sappho's poetry remains, but that which does demonstrates the topics she wrote about: women's daily lives, their relationships, and rituals. She focused on the beauty of women and proclaimed her love for girls.[3]
Certain works have established historical or artistic importance, and the world of lesbian fiction continues to grow and change as time goes on. Until recently, contemporary lesbian literature has been centered around several small, exclusively lesbian presses, as well as online fandoms.[4] However, since the new millennium began, many lesbian presses have branched out to include the works of trans men and women, gay and bisexual voices, and other queer works not represented by the mainstream press. Additionally, novels with lesbian themes and characters have become more accepted in mainstream publishing.[citation needed]
The European Middle Ages lacked a specific term for lesbians, but medieval French texts, under the influence of the Arabic literature of the period, featured literary depictions of love and sexual desire between women. Such expressions are found in devotional texts to the Virgin Mary or the hagiography of Ida Louvain, by Beguines, or the writings of female Christian mystics, including Hildegarde of Bingen, Hadewijch, Margery Kempe, Mechtild of Magdeburg, and Marguerite Porete.[5]
Though lesbian literature had not yet evolved as a distinct genre in English in the 19th century, lesbian writers like the essayist and supernatural fiction writer Vernon Lee sometimes hinted at lesbian subtexts in their work[8] or, like Lee's lover Amy Levy, wrote love poems to women using the voice of a heterosexual man.[9] Others wrote, but kept their writing secret. Beginning in 1806, English landowner and mountaineer Anne Lister kept extensive diaries for 34 years, which included details of her lesbian relationships and seductions, with the lesbian sections written in secret code. The diaries were not published until the 1980s.[10] In 2010, they were the basis for a BBC television production, The Secret Diaries of Miss Anne Lister.[11]
Certain canonical male authors of the 19th century also incorporated lesbian themes into their work. At the beginning of the century, Samuel Taylor Coleridge published his unfinished narrative poem "Christabel". Scholars have interpreted the interactions in this poem between the titular character and a stranger named Geraldine as having lesbian implications.[19] Algernon Charles Swinburne became known for subject matter that was considered scandalous, including lesbianism and sadomasochism. In 1866, he published Poems and Ballads, which contained the poems "Anactoria" and "Sapphics" concerning Sappho of Lesbos and dealing explicitly with lesbian content.[14] Finally, Henry James portrayed a Boston marriage, considered an early form of lesbian relationship, between the feminist characters Olive Chancellor and Verena Tarrant in his 1886 novel The Bostonians.[14]
One of the more explicitly lesbian works of the 19th century is the Gothic novella Carmilla, by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu, first published in serial form in 1871-72. Considered a precursor to and an inspiration for Bram Stoker's Dracula, Carmilla tells the story of the relationship between the innocent Laura and the vampire Carmilla, whose sucking of Laura's blood is clearly linked to an erotic attraction to Laura. This story has inspired many other works that take advantage of the trope of the lesbian vampire.[20] It was also adapted into a YouTube webseries of the same name beginning in 2014.[21]
In the early 20th century, an increasingly visible lesbian community in Paris centered on literary salons hosted by French lesbians as well as expatriates like Nathalie Barney and Gertrude Stein, who produced lesbian-themed works in French and English, including Nightwood by Djuna Barnes, Idyll Saphique by Liane de Pougy, poetry by Renee Vivien, Barney's own epigrams, poetry, and several works by Stein. Radclyffe Hall also spent time in Paris at Barney's salon and modeled one of her characters in The Well of Loneliness after her.[26]
When publishing her novel Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing in 1965, the novelist May Sarton feared that writing openly about lesbianism would lead to a diminution of the previously established value of her work. "The fear of homosexuality is so great that it took courage to write Mrs. Stevens Hears the Mermaids Singing," she said, "to write a novel about a woman homosexual who is not a sex maniac, a drunkard, a drug-taker, or in any way repulsive, to portray a homosexual who is neither pitiable nor disgusting, without sentimentality ..."[52]
After the birth of an explicitly gay and lesbian literature in the 1970s, the following decades saw a tremendous rise in its production. While gay male novels had more crossover appeal and often became mid-list sellers in mainstream publishing houses; lesbian literature, depending on smaller presses, developed smaller but 'respectable' audiences.[59] In the 1980s, with the advent of sex-positive feminism, a few lesbian literary magazines began to specialize in more explicitly erotic work, such as On Our Backs, a satirical reference to the feminist 1970s magazine, Off Our Backs.[60] The 1988 founding of the Lambda Literary Award, with several lesbian categories, helped increase the visibility of LGBT literature.[61]
The influence of late 20th century feminism and greater acceptance of LGBT work was felt in Mexico, with the emergence of lesbian poets Nancy Cardenas, Magaly Alabau, Mercedes Roffe, and others. In Argentina and Uruguay, Alejandra Pizarnik and Cristina Peri Rossi combined lesbian eroticism with artistic and sociopolitical concerns in their work.[64]
In the 21st century, lesbian literature has emerged as a genre in Arabic speaking countries, with some novels, like Ana Hiya Anti (I Am You) by Elham Mansour, achieving best-seller status.[67][68][69] This century has also brought more attention to African literary works and authors, such as Cameroonian novelist Frieda Ekotto and Ghanaian writer Ama Ata Aido.[70][71][72]
The first lesbian publisher devoted to publishing lesbian and feminist books was Daughters, Inc.[85] in Plainfield, Vermont, which published Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown in 1973. Naiad Press, followed, which published the seminal lesbian romance novel Curious Wine (1983) by Katherine V. Forrest and many other books. The press closed in 2003 after 31 years.[86] Naiad co-founder Barbara Grier handed off her books and operation to a newly established press, Bella Books.[citation needed] Established in 2001, Bella Books acquired the Naiad Press backlist, including the majority of works by Jane Rule and all the works of Karin Kallmaker.[citation needed] Their catalog includes over 300 titles of lesbian romance, lesbian mystery and erotica.
The current[when?] largest publishers of lesbian fiction are Bella Books, Bold Strokes Books, Bywater Books, and Flashpoint Publications, which acquired Regal Crest Enterprises (RCE) in January 2021.[citation needed] Flashpoint Publications/RCE has a catalog of lesbian romance, lesbian mystery, some erotica, sci-fi, fantasy, and sagas currently exceeding 150 works.[citation needed] Bold Strokes Books, established in 2005, publishes lesbian and gay male mystery, thrillers, sci-fi, adventure, and other LGBT genre books, with a catalog including 130 titles. Alyson Books specialized in LGBT authors and published a number of lesbian titles.
As you can tell, the speaker of this sentence is clearly annoyed that someone didn't listen to them properly. In her fieldwork in lesbian bars in Shinjuku Nichome1, Hiroko Abe noticed that queer women who typically used 私 or 僕 as first-person pronouns would use 俺 in heated a situation. It seems that this choice had less to do with the speaker's gender identity, and more to do with their sudden burst of anger. It's unclear how common this is, even within the queer community, but it's an interesting example of how pronoun use is more varied than people think, and can be driven by factors other than gender identity alone. 2ff7e9595c
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