While we may have gotten our wish for an anti-corporate Pride this month, it has come at the cost of the physical safety and institutional protections of our community, especially that of our trans siblings. Pride is always a good time to learn more about our history and the voices who shaped it, but this year, we're going full communist. June's Gay Writes pick is the seminal novel from renowned activist and author, Leslie Feinberg — Stone Butch Blues. 

The largely autobiographical novel follows Jess Goldberg, a blue-collar butch lesbian growing up in the 1950s on a propulsive journey of gender transformation. Jess navigates the factories, gay bars, and activist spaces of the Stonewall era and beyond, facing graphic police brutality, sexual violence, systemic oppression — a world that punished queer bodies for simply existing. But a tentative hope pulses through the joy of queer kinship and the resistance in labour solidarity. 

Published in 1993 by a small lesbian press, Firebrand Books, this visceral and unapologetic landmark in queer/trans literature is not your summer beach read (seriously, please read it with care, friends). One of the most celebrated works to centre the complexities of gender-queer identities amidst the harsh realities of racial and economic marginalization, Leslie writes with the urgency of someone who *had* to tell their story, never flinching from the steep costs of survival and giving voice to the people that history has tried to erase. It’s a necessary demand for revolutionary action, one that rings all too loudly today. 


iRL meeting: URL meeting:

29 JUNE 3 JULY
6pm 730pm EST
Pulp Books zoom


**Stone Butch Blues is available for free to download at lesliefeinberg.net, just as Leslie wanted. You can also purchase an at-cost print version from the same website.