Stone Butch Blues : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Gut Wrenching
Review: While this book is suppose to be a novel, it definitely reads like the author lived it. I have read, and re-read this book several times.
This book tells the story of a very butch lesbian woman named Jess, who lives in the blue collar world of factories during the 1950's..
She knows she's different almost from the day she is born. It makes it impossible for her to fit in until she finds the bars in Buffalo.
There she finds her way with the aid of Butch Al, an older butch, who is her mentor. There Jess fits in, falls in love, but also endures the horror of the bar raids. She is brutalized, raped, traumatized by the male cops who haul in the butch "kings" and their counterparts the "drag queens."

It gets harder and harder for Jess to cope. She makes the decision to "become a man." Her decision leds to the break-up of her lesbian relationship.

At first life seems easier as a man, but ultimately it leads to a devastating loneliness. She meets a straight woman, and sleeps with her, managing to convince her, she is a man--but it is a risk. When she is confronted by the woman's homophobia, Jess realizes it isn't going to work

When she returns to the lesbian world, however, she finds it has changed and left her behind. Butch/femme is no longer politically correct---no longer welcome in the lesbian bars.

Much of this book is gut wrenching in the agony of human loneliness the heroine experiences, as well as the physical horrors she endures from the "so called normal" world.
The ending does, however, give both the reader and the heroine hope of a brighter, more tolerant future..

Rating:
Summary: This book profoundly changed my psyche
Review: You can't always explain why things happen the way they do, but let me just say that Feinberg's book is mroe than a classic. I told a friend i've been looking for Queer fiction and he turned me onto this book. I had it read in two days. Jess's struggle for freedom is everyone's struggle. Parts of the book were so incredibly painful to read that I cried myself to sleep. I didn't want to go on. But I also knew that reading this book was part of my journey to love myself for who and what I am. Jess's story is about survival and self-love amidst the violence and internalized oppression of homophobia. Read this book, you won't be sorry in the least!

Rating:
Summary: Powerful First Novel
Review: _Stone Butch Blues_ makes one appreciate coming of age in the late 1980s and early 1990s, when it seemed and was much more safe and accepted to explore gender and identity. I hear echoes of Abner Loueema and Rodney King in Feinberg's description of Jesse's encounters with the police and inability to even seek routine medical care.