Rating: 
Summary: SAD, BUT TRUTHFUL!!!!
Review: I thought it was my life being told by someone else.. It really made me think about how people have treated my friends and I, all this time.. This was the first book that I had ever really read, that had to deal with being a lesbian, and I cried as I read it.. It really brings out a lot of emotions as you read it.. I would encourage anyone that is having problems with their identity to read it, and see that there are other people out there just like us, that are going through the same thing..
Rating:
Summary: A Gender Mind Bender
Review: Leslie Feinberg has written a work of fiction that makes you think twice and three times about just what it means in this world to be a woman - or a man. From my femme perspective stone butches were always a somewhat aloof society - and now I know why. Yes, I've hurt for them, hungered for them, and wanted their attention - but I've never understood their refusal to be comforted, the loneliness worn as a badge, or their silent pain. To walk alongside Feinberg's protagonist as she passes for a man to keep her sanity, was to travel a path less traveled and I am much the richer for the experience. Told with a brevity of style that echoes my real life experiences with stone butches, I recommend this book highly to anyone who has ever loved, been loved, or simply admired these silent shadows of our intolerant society.
Rating:
Summary: Helped me be proud of who and what I am in the lesbian world
Review: Leslie's work caught me by surprise because I wasn't expecting it to have the impact it did on me. I am not a butch lesbian....I am a "stone femme". For many years this was something I was constantly teased about. Nicknames like "Donna Reed" were common, as well as complete confusion when I would come out to friends/co-workers. I also discovered in this book the pride in my ultimate attraction to "stone butches". Leslie has touched my heart more than hir knows, and I am looking forward to reading the rest of hir books, and would be honored to someday meet hir.
Rating:
Summary: Worth reading -- and re-reading
Review: Long before I finished "Stone Butch Blues," I knew I'd be back. In these busy days, that's saying a lot. Leslie Feinberg's autobiographical tale of growing up as a butch lesbian in blue collar Buffalo, pre-Stonewall, has its harrowing scenes, as you might expect. Tales of police abuse and love gone wrong fill its pages, and yet such is the author's honesty and gentleness that I want to return to her world and read it all again. Feinberg's alter ego, Jess Goldberg, wants only to love freely and be loved and live as who she is. Her touching, sometimes amusing attempts to do so hold together the narrative of her first twenty-some years, first in Buffalo, then in New York City. The story of what Jess does not have, and what is taken from her, is heartbreaking, but Feinberg is always there with the reader to hold that broken heart together and make it whole with moments of love and wonder at the beauty of the world -- from Jess' touching date with a woman who believes she, Jess, is a man, to a scene on a Manhattan subway platform where Jess hears Mozart played for the first time, by street musicians. Alongside the story of Jess' coming of age sexually runs the story of her awakening to the world of blue collar labor relations. She joins other butches on the assembly lines of Buffalo' factories, and soon becomes involved in union activism. Anyone who reads "Stone Butch Blues" will wish immediately to find more by Feinberg, so as to have her for a travelling companion a while longer. Her other book is "Transgender Warriors," a nonfiction work in which the connection between gender discrimination and class prejudice is examined in greater depth. By the time you're finished with that, who knows? -- you may well, like me, want to go back and read "Stone Butch Blues" again
Rating:
Summary: Connecting with Hir
Review: People see transsexuals in tabloids or an occasional film, either slasher or comedy roles. How often do we get to journey with a person who's transsexual from childhood through an adult coming into hir own? As a female heterosexual who grew up in a conservative background, I found this life-based novel a needed way to understand what my life might've been like, if. Feinberg shows all us what it's like to grow up and explain hir kind of natural to people who only acknowledge "it" in order to deny/destroy "it." You connect to Jess, because isolation, rejection, acceptance, foolishness, and growing are such universal themes. Feinberg's writing helps you to be Jess through childhood, adolescence, romance, jobs, arrests, stubbornness, and personal triumphs. I needed to walk in Jess's shoes, and Feinberg made that possible: the accomplishment of a good writer. Why didn't I get this book in my high school classes?
Rating:
Summary: Lest We Forget...
Review: Stone Butch Blues is a powerful and moving novel that informs the reader about the penalties paid by those who transgress gender norms while demonstrating the freedom experienced by those who are true to themselves. It also catalogues the historical changes in the women's movement and gay and lesbian liberation. Most importantly, however, it provides a tribute to the butch and transgender women who have been at the forefront of identity politics for most of this century. Too often these women have been derided as "copying men", and oppressing women, yet these critics have forgotten that it is those of us who are most visible that are most likely to be targetted with violence. Hopefully, all readers will learn a lesson in humility in this story of one person's struggle against the barriers of class, gender and sexuality.
Rating: 
Summary: stone butch blues rocks
Review: Stone butch blues is a touching story that attempts to explain the life of a young girl, Jess, and her journey into the culture of being different. From as long as she can remeber, Jess has never been like her peers, instead she is classified as the "other". The book describes her pain and hardship as she learns who she is and waht she is destined to be. Realising that she is a butch, a he-she.Through her experiences, both negative and positive, Jess finaly finds herself.This book draws upon various issues, such as discrimination and women's liberation, prividing an insightful experience in the life of a person who differs from the norm.
Rating:
Summary: terribly beautiful
Review: the book is an auto-biography of a woman, who grew up as a butch in the 60ies - the time which as we know was revolutionary in many concern. leslie feinberg - the author - is very sharp and "dry" while delivering numerous details concerning the process of her growning up as a ugly duckling and outsider in a "normal" american community. but behind her different sexualiy there is a human being which has needs, dreams who longs to be treated as a full member of a society. it is a book about ups and cruel downs in life. it is about intolerance and its mechanisms. it is also a beautiful story which will grasp your heard from the very begining. i recommend this book to everybody who wants to understand a little far more as this what we describe as "normal" regardless skin colour or sexuality.
Rating:
Summary: terribly beautiful
Review: the book is an auto-biography of a woman, who grew up as abutch in the 60ies - the time which as we know was revolutionary inmany concern. leslie feinberg - the author - is very sharp and "dry" while delivering numerous details concerning the process of her growning up as a ugly duckling and outsider in a "normal"american community. but behind her different sexualiy there is a human being which has needs, dreams who longs to be treated as a full member of a society. it is a book about ups and cruel downs in life. it is about intolerance and its mechanisms. it is also a beautiful story which will grasp your heard from the very begining. i recommend this book to everybody who wants to understand a little far more as this what we describe as "normal" regardless skin colour or sexuality.
Rating:
Summary: Stone Butch Blues
Review: This book has made a huge impact on myself and many other stonebutches, femmes, and transgendered folks. This book is excellent in giving hope and inspiration for not only the people in the world who have the terminology, but is an extraordinary introductory book for the ones who are searching for an identity, yet their resources are limited.
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