{"id":882,"date":"1992-03-07T17:57:33","date_gmt":"1992-03-07T23:57:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/?p=882"},"modified":"2012-07-07T18:02:51","modified_gmt":"2012-07-07T23:02:51","slug":"an-intimate-wilderness-lesbian-writers-on-sexuality","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/an-intimate-wilderness-lesbian-writers-on-sexuality\/","title":{"rendered":"An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality"},"content":{"rendered":"

The GLBTRT has been reviewing books and movies in its newsletter since the early 1990s. Trace the evolution of queer publishing through these historic reviews. This review was originally\u00a0published in\u00a0Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1992<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

\"Cover<\/a>An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality. Judith Barrington, editor. The Eighth Mountain Press, 1991. Paper. $14.95. (ISBN 0-933377-09-6) Hardcover.\u00a0$24.95. (ISBN 0-933377-10-X)<\/a><\/p>\n

An Intimate Wilderness<\/em> gathers in one place the\u00a0thoughts of forty-five well known writers. Nearly all of\u00a0the material is reprinted from earlier works with an\u00a0additional handful of pieces written expressly for this\u00a0anthology. This collection of essays, short fiction and\u00a0poetry by lesbian women is on the subject of sexuality,\u00a0specifically lesbians and lesbian sexuality. This is not a\u00a0collection of erotic writing, although some of the pieces\u00a0might be considered erotic. This anthology is a sampler of\u00a0perspectives and musings on what “lesbian sexuality”\u00a0means.<\/p>\n

The essays look at various aspects of this issue. In\u00a0“Lesbian Sexuality: Joining the Dots,” Anna Livia writes\u00a0about how lesbians write or don’t write about sex. In ‘The\u00a0Erotic Life of Fictional Characters,” Barbara Wilson\u00a0ponders whether or not lesbians should write about sex,\u00a0and how graphic any such writing should be. Marilyn\u00a0Frye in “Lesbian ‘Sex'” wonders whether existing language\u00a0is adequate or if a new vocabulary should be invented: “… it seems to me that the attempt to encode our lustiness\u00a0and lustfulness, our passion and our vigorous carnality in\u00a0the words ‘sex’, ‘sexual’, and ‘sexuality’ has backfired.\u00a0Instead of losing their phallocentricity, the words have\u00a0imported the phallcentric meaning into and onto\u00a0experience which is not in any way phallocentric.”<\/p>\n

Other pieces pose similar questions and\u00a0sometimes offer observations about ways that lesbians\u00a0might discuss, or in fact, do discuss their sexuality.\u00a0Intermingled with these theoretical discussions are many\u00a0stories and poems which illustrate the range of erotic\u00a0writing to be found in lesbian literature today.
\n<\/em><\/p>\n

An Intimate Wilderness<\/em> gives a glimpse and an\u00a0introduction to the work of each of these women writers.\u00a0It is an excellent overview to the particular issue of\u00a0lesbians who are writing and talking about lesbians and\u00a0sex. Many other issues and concerns to lesbians and to the\u00a0lesbian community are also presented in this collection.<\/p>\n

Recommended for public and academic libraries.<\/p>\n

Reviewed by Jo McClamroch<\/strong>
\nUniversity of Minnesota, Duluth, Minnesota<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The GLBTRT has been reviewing books and movies in its newsletter since the early 1990s. Trace the evolution of queer publishing through these historic reviews. This review was originally\u00a0published in\u00a0Vol. 4, No. 1, Spring 1992. An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality. Judith Barrington, editor. The Eighth Mountain Press, 1991. Paper. $14.95. (ISBN 0-933377-09-6) Hardcover.\u00a0$24.95. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1164,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[27,36,18,46,19],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1164"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.glbtrt.ala.org\/reviews\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}