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Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger
When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York’s East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex–Southern Baptist born in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later she was consumed by the Lesbian Avengers, instigating direct action campaigns, battling cops on Fifth Avenue, mobilizing 20,000 dykes for a march on Washington, D.C., and eating fire—literally—in front of the White House. At once streetwise and wistful, Eating Fire is a witty and urgent coming-of-age memoir spanning two decades, from the Culture War of the early 1990s to the War on Terror. Cogswell’s story is an engaging blend of picaresque adventure, how-to activist handbook, and rigorous inquiry into questions of identity, resistance, and citizenship. It is also a compelling, personal recollection of friendships and fallings-out and of finding true love—several times over. After the Lesbian Avengers imploded, Cogswell describes how she became a pioneering citizen journalist, cofounding the Gully online magazine with the groundbreaking goal of offering “queer views on everything.”
The first in-depth account of the influential Lesbian Avengers, Eating Fire reveals the group’s relationship to the queer art and activist scene in early ’90s New York and establishes the media-savvy Avengers as an important precursor to groups such as Occupy Wall Street and La Barbe, in France. A rare insider’s look at the process and perils of street activism, Kelly Cogswell’s memoir is an uncompromising and ultimately empowering story of creative resistance against hatred and injustice.
The first in-depth account of the influential Lesbian Avengers, Eating Fire reveals the group’s relationship to the queer art and activist scene in early ’90s New York and establishes the media-savvy Avengers as an important precursor to groups such as Occupy Wall Street and La Barbe, in France. A rare insider’s look at the process and perils of street activism, Kelly Cogswell’s memoir is an uncompromising and ultimately empowering story of creative resistance against hatred and injustice.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2014
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 40 reviews
June 19, 2014
You know that cousin that you see once a year who has a *really* interesting life but no way of talking about it in an engaging way? They give you fragments of events, expecting you to keep up with their story, while never asking questions about yourself while holding a gaze that looks like they are looking at the wall behind you? Reading this book was like visiting that cousin. The large majority of this book I had no idea what I was reading. You can't just put this down at the end of a chapter, Cogswell never reiterates where she is or who she is with. It starts off with her in the Avengers, pretty much off of the bat, with no back story to what drew here there, and all of a sudden you're getting abbreviated chunks of actions and why they fell apart, sort of. Which is a shame, because I really wanted to learn more about queer groups from the 90s OTHER than ACT UP, and as this book states, the history of the Lesbian Avengers is largely erased. Cogswell seems traumatized by her involvement with this group, there is a lot of hostility toward the efforts to include women who date women who are not exclusively "lesbians" and women of color. At the same time, I realize that in the 90s every marginalized group was receiving so much hate, and perhaps the biggest problem with the groups of this era is that all they felt they could do was look out for themselves. Still, this book has been published in 2014, so the cousin is muttering to themselves, using slurs without thinking about who is in the room, while you tug at your shirt collar and try to decide if you abandon this person you have all of this history with, or take it for what it is.
June 27, 2016
Kelly Cogswell's Eating Fire may be the definition of a mixed blessing. On the one hand, Cogswell documents the gleeful, intoxicating immediacy of lesbian “street” activism in the 1990s, but her memoir serves equally well as a eulogy for queer and progressive grassroots activism in general. The direct-action group she co-founded, The Lesbian Avengers, rose, made a significant splash (including internationally), splintered, and eventually disintegrated in precisely that period during which grassroots movements were breathing their last in the U.S.
The heady days of ACT UP, Queer Nation, die-ins at the headquarters of pharmaceutical companies, “actions” at the San Francisco opera house and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, “political funerals,” and many others were, whether their participants knew it or not, about to go the way of the dinosaurs, destroyed by the twin asteroids of social media and Bush-era fear-mongering. Nevermore would queer activism look the way it looked in the 1980s and 1990s; rarely, after 9-11 and the advent of the “War on Terror,” would Americans of any stripe rise up in concerted, coordinated, consistent efforts to challenge the rules of a rigged game.
Yes, there continue to be protests. Yes, there is “Occupy,” whose sell-by date was inborn in the way its very first actions were organized. Yes, there is Black Lives Matter, which, in its refusal of hierarchies and structure, has never, and apparently never will, become an organization that can do more than express outrage at the thousand circumstances that so much deserve expressions of outrage but which outrage alone cannot cure. Because who is not outraged? And because, once the people have vented their anger, what are they to do next? Black Lives Matter has not made clear that it knows, but neither have any of the other groups that have, in the last decade, “trended” and then largely collapsed under their own ideological purity, impatience with process, distrust of leadership, and refusal to compromise. They are, to generalize grossly, political groups that aspire to have an impact on political systems through a relentless, sometimes even puritanical rejection of politics.
Cogswell also writes, and well, about the trap of ideological purity, and one can only wish she had written more. In one memorable passage she describes the cancerous phenomenon that would eventually come to be known, in the Orwellian Doublespeak of the left, as “intersectionality”:
Well, none of that has changed. Intersectionality, like many useful theoretical constructs applied to practice, began as an excellent shield (against ignorance, against tunnel vision, against intellectual and cultural hegemony, against the pitfalls of subjectivity), but it has ended as a swift and terrible sword, yielded with the jihadist’s inexorable sense of infallibility. In the ten years since the demise of The Gully, the only difference is that people of color and women and queers (along with trans and anti-marriage-equality activists) have become equally adept at silencing and shunning others through the joyous opportunities that online social media offer to screech at people with tainted perspectives.
In a brilliant essay, “Everything is Problematic: My Journey Into The Centre of a Dark Political World, and How I Escaped,” Aurora Dagny also describes what has become of activism in recent decades, identifying “dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism” as the key causes of the death of mass movements. (My heartfelt advice is to read it: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2014/11/everything-problematic.) Dagny goes deeply into territory that Cogswell mostly limns, though it is quite clear that she understood, years before Dagny wrote, exactly what was happening and precisely how dangerous it was going to be.
Her account of how The Lesbian Avengers became labeled a “racist, white group”—their punishment for losing what was, at its core, a turf war with a black lesbian activist in another city—is instructive not for what it says about the Avengers, but for what it says about the impact of accusations of "awareness crimes" and the near impossibility of remedying an organization's structural problems once they have been made. Like dunking, the ordeal once preferred for adjudicating the guilt of putative witches, the attempt to demonstrate innocence can itself be fatal. In the case in point, a person of color made the charge; therefore it had to be true (any curiosity regarding the accuser’s personal political agendas, fragile ego, or anxiety about losing control of her local fiefdom could, naturally, also be dismissed as racist).
In other words, whether or not the Avengers were “racist”—and to what extent or under what circumstances and against whom—was immaterial. Their actual work was unimportant (their first “action” in 1992 was in support of the “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum, proposed by then-chancellor of the New York City school system, Joseph A. Fernandez, as an attempt to “teach first graders to respect the city's myriad racial and ethnic groups”; the curriculum was immediately attacked by the right who termed it “as big a lie as any concocted by Hitler or Stalin.”[1]) Intentions were no longer important. A genuine desire for self-criticism and improvement was not important. Truth itself was not important.
That lack of interest in truth, in intellectual debate, in evidence, in intentions, in nuance; that dedication to dogmatism, ad hominem attacks, litmus tests, and character assassination has only fermented and soured. It is now virtually (and I choose the word advisedly) all that remains of queer and progressive activism.
The last third of Eating Fire, in particular, is a tale of bitterness, disillusionment, and resentment, though it’s unclear how any account of activism in those years could end differently. The reader feels Cogswell’s pain and frustration deeply, even as the description of the years she spent in essentially Brownian movement fails to cohere into a compelling narrative. It would be too painful (and, perhaps, unfairly pessimistic) to dismiss all those years of activism as pointless, yet Cogswell doesn’t know quite how to say what they meant or what her and her colleagues’ work accomplished.
In his 1978 play, Fifth of July, Lanford Wilson has June Talley, the former student radical, say this to her teenage daughter about the social and anti-war movements of the late 1960s:
A few lines later, June’s friend, Gwen, gently scolds the daughter: “Don’t knock your mother, ‘cause she really believed that ‘Power to the People’ song, and that hurts.”
Yes, the loss of idealism is agony.
One occasionally wishes Cogswell had had a better editor (such when she is in the “throws of” some experience) and a decent fact-checker (such as when she swallows wholesale the myth of the crusading journalist, Yoaní Sánchez, the Cuban dissident blogger and anti-Castro darling who has credibly been accused of being a U.S. State Department plant), but Cogswell’s desire to vent anti-Communism and to damn the Cuban government defeats the journalistic and political impulses she presumably avows. (“NOTHING is as important as Cuba’s mistreatment of queers.”)
While it may be possible to read Eating Fire as empowering, it is equally possible to read it as a kind of obituary for the world “we almost achieved.” The days of direct political engagement, of people’s movements, of effective mass action against deaf and uncomprehending structures of power may return, but it will not be soon. Rather, these are days of opacity, of the enthronement of lies, of terror-mongering and isolation, of sharded activism, of fracture and dispersal. In such times, it can be both a comfort and an unbearable heartache to recall the fire that once was, to bring to mind its warmth and light.
[1] Myers, Steven Lee (1992, 13 December). New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/13/wee....
The heady days of ACT UP, Queer Nation, die-ins at the headquarters of pharmaceutical companies, “actions” at the San Francisco opera house and St. Patrick’s Cathedral in New York, “political funerals,” and many others were, whether their participants knew it or not, about to go the way of the dinosaurs, destroyed by the twin asteroids of social media and Bush-era fear-mongering. Nevermore would queer activism look the way it looked in the 1980s and 1990s; rarely, after 9-11 and the advent of the “War on Terror,” would Americans of any stripe rise up in concerted, coordinated, consistent efforts to challenge the rules of a rigged game.
Yes, there continue to be protests. Yes, there is “Occupy,” whose sell-by date was inborn in the way its very first actions were organized. Yes, there is Black Lives Matter, which, in its refusal of hierarchies and structure, has never, and apparently never will, become an organization that can do more than express outrage at the thousand circumstances that so much deserve expressions of outrage but which outrage alone cannot cure. Because who is not outraged? And because, once the people have vented their anger, what are they to do next? Black Lives Matter has not made clear that it knows, but neither have any of the other groups that have, in the last decade, “trended” and then largely collapsed under their own ideological purity, impatience with process, distrust of leadership, and refusal to compromise. They are, to generalize grossly, political groups that aspire to have an impact on political systems through a relentless, sometimes even puritanical rejection of politics.
Cogswell also writes, and well, about the trap of ideological purity, and one can only wish she had written more. In one memorable passage she describes the cancerous phenomenon that would eventually come to be known, in the Orwellian Doublespeak of the left, as “intersectionality”:
Nothing was separate, class or race. Gender. Sexual identity. Even place.... When The Gully [the online magazine dedicated to international queer issues that Cogswell and her partner, Ana Simo, published between 2000 and 2006] insisted that all these things were related, you should have seen the screaming all-caps e-mails including, “NOTHING is as important as class.” “NOTHING is as important as the environment.” “Even to mention such differences is an attack on a more egalitarian, color-blind world.” There was a contest of oppression, and they used every old lefty excuse in the book to silence people of color and women and queers.
Well, none of that has changed. Intersectionality, like many useful theoretical constructs applied to practice, began as an excellent shield (against ignorance, against tunnel vision, against intellectual and cultural hegemony, against the pitfalls of subjectivity), but it has ended as a swift and terrible sword, yielded with the jihadist’s inexorable sense of infallibility. In the ten years since the demise of The Gully, the only difference is that people of color and women and queers (along with trans and anti-marriage-equality activists) have become equally adept at silencing and shunning others through the joyous opportunities that online social media offer to screech at people with tainted perspectives.
In a brilliant essay, “Everything is Problematic: My Journey Into The Centre of a Dark Political World, and How I Escaped,” Aurora Dagny also describes what has become of activism in recent decades, identifying “dogmatism, groupthink, a crusader mentality, and anti-intellectualism” as the key causes of the death of mass movements. (My heartfelt advice is to read it: http://www.mcgilldaily.com/2014/11/everything-problematic.) Dagny goes deeply into territory that Cogswell mostly limns, though it is quite clear that she understood, years before Dagny wrote, exactly what was happening and precisely how dangerous it was going to be.
Her account of how The Lesbian Avengers became labeled a “racist, white group”—their punishment for losing what was, at its core, a turf war with a black lesbian activist in another city—is instructive not for what it says about the Avengers, but for what it says about the impact of accusations of "awareness crimes" and the near impossibility of remedying an organization's structural problems once they have been made. Like dunking, the ordeal once preferred for adjudicating the guilt of putative witches, the attempt to demonstrate innocence can itself be fatal. In the case in point, a person of color made the charge; therefore it had to be true (any curiosity regarding the accuser’s personal political agendas, fragile ego, or anxiety about losing control of her local fiefdom could, naturally, also be dismissed as racist).
In other words, whether or not the Avengers were “racist”—and to what extent or under what circumstances and against whom—was immaterial. Their actual work was unimportant (their first “action” in 1992 was in support of the “Children of the Rainbow” curriculum, proposed by then-chancellor of the New York City school system, Joseph A. Fernandez, as an attempt to “teach first graders to respect the city's myriad racial and ethnic groups”; the curriculum was immediately attacked by the right who termed it “as big a lie as any concocted by Hitler or Stalin.”[1]) Intentions were no longer important. A genuine desire for self-criticism and improvement was not important. Truth itself was not important.
That lack of interest in truth, in intellectual debate, in evidence, in intentions, in nuance; that dedication to dogmatism, ad hominem attacks, litmus tests, and character assassination has only fermented and soured. It is now virtually (and I choose the word advisedly) all that remains of queer and progressive activism.
The last third of Eating Fire, in particular, is a tale of bitterness, disillusionment, and resentment, though it’s unclear how any account of activism in those years could end differently. The reader feels Cogswell’s pain and frustration deeply, even as the description of the years she spent in essentially Brownian movement fails to cohere into a compelling narrative. It would be too painful (and, perhaps, unfairly pessimistic) to dismiss all those years of activism as pointless, yet Cogswell doesn’t know quite how to say what they meant or what her and her colleagues’ work accomplished.
In his 1978 play, Fifth of July, Lanford Wilson has June Talley, the former student radical, say this to her teenage daughter about the social and anti-war movements of the late 1960s:
You have no idea of the life we led.... You’ve no idea of the country we almost made for you. The fact that I think it’s all a crock now does not take away from what we almost achieved.
A few lines later, June’s friend, Gwen, gently scolds the daughter: “Don’t knock your mother, ‘cause she really believed that ‘Power to the People’ song, and that hurts.”
Yes, the loss of idealism is agony.
One occasionally wishes Cogswell had had a better editor (such when she is in the “throws of” some experience) and a decent fact-checker (such as when she swallows wholesale the myth of the crusading journalist, Yoaní Sánchez, the Cuban dissident blogger and anti-Castro darling who has credibly been accused of being a U.S. State Department plant), but Cogswell’s desire to vent anti-Communism and to damn the Cuban government defeats the journalistic and political impulses she presumably avows. (“NOTHING is as important as Cuba’s mistreatment of queers.”)
While it may be possible to read Eating Fire as empowering, it is equally possible to read it as a kind of obituary for the world “we almost achieved.” The days of direct political engagement, of people’s movements, of effective mass action against deaf and uncomprehending structures of power may return, but it will not be soon. Rather, these are days of opacity, of the enthronement of lies, of terror-mongering and isolation, of sharded activism, of fracture and dispersal. In such times, it can be both a comfort and an unbearable heartache to recall the fire that once was, to bring to mind its warmth and light.
[1] Myers, Steven Lee (1992, 13 December). New York Times. Retrieved from http://www.nytimes.com/1992/12/13/wee....
August 14, 2020
Definitely worth reading for the portrait of '90s activism--the fire-eating is thrilling, the discussions of direct action are fascinating, and the depiction of Avengers doing door-to-door canvassing in small towns was so intriguing that I wished that section had been longer. Even the descriptions of Avengers meetings feel urgent!
Cogswell doesn't quite find an elegant way to intertwine the personal and the political. Her rural background and partnership with a Cuban woman both give color and context to her life with the Avengers, and the Avengers' worldview and possibilities in general, but some of the personal anecdotes felt perfunctory--as if Cogswell felt a duty to write an autobiography, rather than a memoir of the Avengers specifically. The descriptions of her performance art gave an extreme 1990s flavor, which is good in terms of setting the scene, but the later chapters seemed unfocused, as we're just following Cogswell through her life.
Her description of how the Avengers fell apart, in conflicts over which battles to pick and recriminations about racism, also comes across as still too defensive. You can hear the old ax grinding. There's an account here I'd believe, in which the Avengers experience their own version of gentrification and accusations of racism become a way to sideline the oldheads of the "neighborhood." Cogswell is expressing deep personal pain born of mistreatment, and I agree with what I think is one obvious conclusion, that you can't have a movement without at least a provisional assumption of good faith. But it's harder to trust that account when Cogswell trots out standard Well-Meaning White Person arguments. Obviously that kind of defensiveness is exactly what you have to work with if you practice the assumption of good faith, because it's so many people's starting point on so many different issues, but I really wish somebody had persuaded Cogswell to excise it and let events speak for themselves.
The original manifesto of the Avengers is included and it's glorious--sexy and playful and willfully stupid, full of bad decisions and glee.
Cogswell doesn't quite find an elegant way to intertwine the personal and the political. Her rural background and partnership with a Cuban woman both give color and context to her life with the Avengers, and the Avengers' worldview and possibilities in general, but some of the personal anecdotes felt perfunctory--as if Cogswell felt a duty to write an autobiography, rather than a memoir of the Avengers specifically. The descriptions of her performance art gave an extreme 1990s flavor, which is good in terms of setting the scene, but the later chapters seemed unfocused, as we're just following Cogswell through her life.
Her description of how the Avengers fell apart, in conflicts over which battles to pick and recriminations about racism, also comes across as still too defensive. You can hear the old ax grinding. There's an account here I'd believe, in which the Avengers experience their own version of gentrification and accusations of racism become a way to sideline the oldheads of the "neighborhood." Cogswell is expressing deep personal pain born of mistreatment, and I agree with what I think is one obvious conclusion, that you can't have a movement without at least a provisional assumption of good faith. But it's harder to trust that account when Cogswell trots out standard Well-Meaning White Person arguments. Obviously that kind of defensiveness is exactly what you have to work with if you practice the assumption of good faith, because it's so many people's starting point on so many different issues, but I really wish somebody had persuaded Cogswell to excise it and let events speak for themselves.
The original manifesto of the Avengers is included and it's glorious--sexy and playful and willfully stupid, full of bad decisions and glee.
October 31, 2015
When I started this book, I was hooked and read with urgency. about 100 pages into it, though, it fell apart for me. The author mentions criticism of the Lesbian Avengers by queer women of color and how the group handled that poorly. However it seems Cogswell hasn't given race and privilege even a passing thought in the intervening decades, and it comes of defensive and annoyed. Her treatment of race in general is strange, alternating between an exotic fetishism of her Cuban partner to tired tropes and stereotypes of African immigrants in France or Latino men in NYC. It is really disappointing. As a narrative, I feel like the period between the dissolution of the Avengers and the 2010s often felt like a laundry list. You hated Bush? How unique! With more editing of that period, it could have been a more cohesive book, though still troubling in its treatment of race.
July 12, 2014
This rollicking story of the Lesbian Avengers, a “direct action group” which was founded by six organizers in New York in the early 1990s, shows why historical accounts are best told by eyewitnesses. Kelly Cogswell doesn’t attempt to supply the reader with a full set of organizational records, but she describes a defining moment in radical history in all its messy, colorful complexity.
The title refers to a circus act, “eating fire,” which the author and several fellow-members learned to do as a public demonstration to draw attention to homophobic violence. The first “fire-eating” event commemorated the gruesome death in 1992 of a disabled gay man and his lesbian friend who were burned alive in their rooming house in Salem, Oregon, when skinheads threw a Molotov cocktail into it. This event was followed by numerous protests, sit-ins and educational campaigns.
A set of color photos show the author as a child with her sisters in Kentucky, as a young lesbian writer in New York, and in various events staged by the Avengers, including a Dyke March on Washington, DC. Posters featuring the Lesbian Avengers logo of a bomb with a lit fuse are included. According to a flyer that the author helped to write, “Lesbian Avengers believe in creative activism: loud, bold, sexy, silly, fierce, tasty and dramatic. Arrest optional. Think demonstrations are a good time and a great place to cruise women.”
The story of Kelly Cogswell’s life as an “out” lesbian intersects with the history of the Avengers, but the two stories have different arcs. The author’s long-time relationship with Cuban playwright Ana Simo, whom she met through other Avengers and to whom the book is dedicated, is shown starting with a tentative kiss; at the time, neither woman has faith that their cross-cultural relationship will last. Meanwhile, the actions of the Avengers are reaching their peak and creating spin-off groups in other cities.
Accounts of street action, which form the foreground of the first chapter, “Activist Honeymoon,” fade into the background in “Enemies Within,” when internal conflict begins to split the group. In this chapter, the author’s hindsight serves to illuminate personal and ideological attacks which seemed random and irrational to her at the time. Tracing the dissolution of an organization or a movement in retrospect is shown to be parallel to the post-breakup analysis of a love affair.
In the succeeding chapters, “A Laboratory of Identity” and “Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,” Ana’s poignant history as an imprisoned young radical in Cuba, and the author’s problematic relationship with her Christian relatives, are front and center. Despite the odds, Kelly and Ana are shown gaining strength as a couple, and drawing formerly-disapproving members of both their families into their orbit. Their on-line political journal, The Gully, outlives the Lesbian Avengers and reaches a different audience. Although the author vehemently denies that cyber-activism can replace the type of guerrilla theater for which the Lesbian Avengers were known, she shows the inevitable changes in the zeitgeist that followed the steady spread of computers.
Kelly Cogswell is a writer, not simply a chronicler of events in which she happened to be caught up. Her account of the intersection of the personal and the political is moving, droll, and bittersweet by turns. For fans of the largely untold history of lesbian politics, this book is a must-read.
The title refers to a circus act, “eating fire,” which the author and several fellow-members learned to do as a public demonstration to draw attention to homophobic violence. The first “fire-eating” event commemorated the gruesome death in 1992 of a disabled gay man and his lesbian friend who were burned alive in their rooming house in Salem, Oregon, when skinheads threw a Molotov cocktail into it. This event was followed by numerous protests, sit-ins and educational campaigns.
A set of color photos show the author as a child with her sisters in Kentucky, as a young lesbian writer in New York, and in various events staged by the Avengers, including a Dyke March on Washington, DC. Posters featuring the Lesbian Avengers logo of a bomb with a lit fuse are included. According to a flyer that the author helped to write, “Lesbian Avengers believe in creative activism: loud, bold, sexy, silly, fierce, tasty and dramatic. Arrest optional. Think demonstrations are a good time and a great place to cruise women.”
The story of Kelly Cogswell’s life as an “out” lesbian intersects with the history of the Avengers, but the two stories have different arcs. The author’s long-time relationship with Cuban playwright Ana Simo, whom she met through other Avengers and to whom the book is dedicated, is shown starting with a tentative kiss; at the time, neither woman has faith that their cross-cultural relationship will last. Meanwhile, the actions of the Avengers are reaching their peak and creating spin-off groups in other cities.
Accounts of street action, which form the foreground of the first chapter, “Activist Honeymoon,” fade into the background in “Enemies Within,” when internal conflict begins to split the group. In this chapter, the author’s hindsight serves to illuminate personal and ideological attacks which seemed random and irrational to her at the time. Tracing the dissolution of an organization or a movement in retrospect is shown to be parallel to the post-breakup analysis of a love affair.
In the succeeding chapters, “A Laboratory of Identity” and “Vivas to Those Who Have Failed,” Ana’s poignant history as an imprisoned young radical in Cuba, and the author’s problematic relationship with her Christian relatives, are front and center. Despite the odds, Kelly and Ana are shown gaining strength as a couple, and drawing formerly-disapproving members of both their families into their orbit. Their on-line political journal, The Gully, outlives the Lesbian Avengers and reaches a different audience. Although the author vehemently denies that cyber-activism can replace the type of guerrilla theater for which the Lesbian Avengers were known, she shows the inevitable changes in the zeitgeist that followed the steady spread of computers.
Kelly Cogswell is a writer, not simply a chronicler of events in which she happened to be caught up. Her account of the intersection of the personal and the political is moving, droll, and bittersweet by turns. For fans of the largely untold history of lesbian politics, this book is a must-read.
April 30, 2014
I was a Lesbian Avenger and remember being inspired by the actions of Lesbian Avengers in New York. My hope in reading this book was that it would be a history of the Lesbian Avengers with some analysis of that moment, the early 1990s, in lesbian history. Eating Fire offers some of that history, but the subtitle reveals the focus of this book: MY LIFE. Eating Fire is Kelly Cogswell's memoir of a twenty year period from about 1990 through 2010. The first third or so of the book talks about the Lesbian Avengers, but Cogswell does not offer a particularly thorough recounting of the group, the people involved, or the work that the Lesbian Avengers did. Rather, the stories are filtered through Cogswell's memories and impressions. The last half of the book is about Cogswell's post-Lesbian Avenger life, which is interesting (she worked on a number of great projects and activist formations) but lacks a compelling story or satisfying narrative arc. So I was disappointed in some ways by this book. I still want someone to write a thoughtful and critical treatment of the Lesbian Avengers. As a memoir, Eating Fire is fine; it is not particularly revealing or revelatory, but it a life story of a political dyke and we do not have enough of those.
April 30, 2014
I've been putting off finishing this book because I was so in love with it. It is the perfect activist rulebook and memoir. Cogswell describes the ups and downs of activism and devoting your life to the fight against mainstream. My copy has 100 highlighted passages, easily. This is everything you could want for a memoir about direct action and queer history. There are so many people like Cogswell that get overlooked, and I'm glad she didn't let her become forgotten. Baby queers need to read this to remind them of the struggle queers faced only a few years ago. ALL queers need to read it to get us off of our asses, onto the street, and eating fire!
June 28, 2015
First of all, I feel like the title is a bit of a misnomer, as Cogswell spends just as many pages discussing her life post-Avengers as she dedicates to the time the group was active.
The overall narrative style is like listening to someone you happened to sit next to on a bus in that it's very casual and there are randomly inserted opinions but not much contextualization. I found this to be slightly off-putting (probably because I'm not old enough to remember the mid-1990s), but other readers might enjoy it.
Anyway, some parts made me cry, some parts made me roll my eyes; it was pretty much what I expected.
The overall narrative style is like listening to someone you happened to sit next to on a bus in that it's very casual and there are randomly inserted opinions but not much contextualization. I found this to be slightly off-putting (probably because I'm not old enough to remember the mid-1990s), but other readers might enjoy it.
Anyway, some parts made me cry, some parts made me roll my eyes; it was pretty much what I expected.
January 4, 2018
I was enthusiastic about this book initially, but it grew frustrating as I continued reading. The author's dismissiveness toward and erasure of the viewpoints of people of color made it difficult to take her seriously as an activist. In addition, it was hard to follow; it felt more like I was sort of watching the other process her own experiences rather than listening to her tell me a story, and while sometimes that form of narration works as a literary device, it didn't improve this book for me.
Read
August 31, 2025* The book is a memoir of Kelly J. Cogswell’s years as a founding member of the **Lesbian Avengers**, a direct-action activist group formed in New York City in the early 1990s.
* Cogswell recounts the group’s bold, often theatrical protests, which used spectacle and humor—such as fire-eating, marches, and creative stunts—to demand visibility and equality for lesbians.
* She describes key actions, including demonstrations against censorship, anti-gay violence, and right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly those targeting lesbians.
* The memoir includes vivid descriptions of the Avengers’ most famous actions, such as the **Dyke March**, which they launched as a political, lesbian-centered alternative to more mainstream Pride events.
* Cogswell situates these actions within the larger context of LGBTQ+ activism of the era, contrasting the Avengers’ radical, unapologetic tactics with the more assimilationist strategies of other organizations.
* The book offers candid reflections on the group’s internal conflicts, including debates about race, class, and inclusivity, which sometimes fractured their unity.
* Cogswell weaves in her own personal struggles—navigating poverty, unstable housing, and intense relationships—showing how activism and survival were often intertwined.
* The memoir also examines the toll of constant activism, including burnout, disillusionment, and the eventual dissolution of the Avengers as a formal group.
* Through her story, Cogswell documents a critical moment in lesbian and queer history, ensuring that the radical voices of the 1990s are not erased or overshadowed by more mainstream narratives of LGBTQ+ progress.
---
### Tone and Writing Style
* **Tone:** Fierce, urgent, unapologetic, and deeply personal.
* **Style:** Conversational, vivid, and memoir-driven, blending political analysis with raw storytelling.
* **Support for Content:** The gritty, candid style mirrors the energy and intensity of street activism, while the mix of personal vulnerability and political passion makes the history immediate and visceral.
---
### Author’s Qualifications
* **Kelly J. Cogswell** is a journalist, activist, and co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers.
* Her firsthand experience as a central participant gives her unique authority to document the movement’s strategies, culture, and challenges.
* Cogswell’s later career as a columnist and writer sharpened her ability to critically analyze activism while maintaining a clear, engaging narrative voice.
* Her dual role as both activist and observer allows her to situate her memoir at the intersection of lived experience and historical record, making *Eating Fire* both a personal testimony and an essential contribution to queer history.
* Cogswell recounts the group’s bold, often theatrical protests, which used spectacle and humor—such as fire-eating, marches, and creative stunts—to demand visibility and equality for lesbians.
* She describes key actions, including demonstrations against censorship, anti-gay violence, and right-wing attacks on LGBTQ+ rights, particularly those targeting lesbians.
* The memoir includes vivid descriptions of the Avengers’ most famous actions, such as the **Dyke March**, which they launched as a political, lesbian-centered alternative to more mainstream Pride events.
* Cogswell situates these actions within the larger context of LGBTQ+ activism of the era, contrasting the Avengers’ radical, unapologetic tactics with the more assimilationist strategies of other organizations.
* The book offers candid reflections on the group’s internal conflicts, including debates about race, class, and inclusivity, which sometimes fractured their unity.
* Cogswell weaves in her own personal struggles—navigating poverty, unstable housing, and intense relationships—showing how activism and survival were often intertwined.
* The memoir also examines the toll of constant activism, including burnout, disillusionment, and the eventual dissolution of the Avengers as a formal group.
* Through her story, Cogswell documents a critical moment in lesbian and queer history, ensuring that the radical voices of the 1990s are not erased or overshadowed by more mainstream narratives of LGBTQ+ progress.
---
### Tone and Writing Style
* **Tone:** Fierce, urgent, unapologetic, and deeply personal.
* **Style:** Conversational, vivid, and memoir-driven, blending political analysis with raw storytelling.
* **Support for Content:** The gritty, candid style mirrors the energy and intensity of street activism, while the mix of personal vulnerability and political passion makes the history immediate and visceral.
---
### Author’s Qualifications
* **Kelly J. Cogswell** is a journalist, activist, and co-founder of the Lesbian Avengers.
* Her firsthand experience as a central participant gives her unique authority to document the movement’s strategies, culture, and challenges.
* Cogswell’s later career as a columnist and writer sharpened her ability to critically analyze activism while maintaining a clear, engaging narrative voice.
* Her dual role as both activist and observer allows her to situate her memoir at the intersection of lived experience and historical record, making *Eating Fire* both a personal testimony and an essential contribution to queer history.
January 10, 2018
(https://iwriteinbooks.wordpress.com/2...)
A young, starry-eyed Kentucky twenty-something lands in New York City in the early nineties, sketchbook, guitar, and dreams in her pockets. In the grunge and starlight of the ACT-UP era, Kelly Cogswell runs in and out of light and shadows with her merry band of Lesbian Avengers, artists, and writers, finding her home and finding herself in the process.
Sounds good, right?
It sounds like fiction and reads like it, too. I’m sure there is some flowery prose added to some of the elements of the book but I tracked down events and names and dates and, yes, folks this is really Kelly’s life.
I ended up picking this up for a paper, last semester, and it has become one of my favorite recommendations.
Though the queer culture of New York and the time period vary from other times and places, the narrative and energy and action are so clearly representative of the queer communities we’ve all encountered, in one form or another. I find so many narratives written by men for these communities which is great in and of itself, however, it’s sometimes very needed to have that strong, clear, queer female voice singing out for this purpose.
I’m really glad I’m back to reviewing, going into this semester so I can work a little real-life work into the fictional stuff. Especially the sexuality fiction, but the harder stuff in general, is always better taken with a lot of the true history behind the concept.
A young, starry-eyed Kentucky twenty-something lands in New York City in the early nineties, sketchbook, guitar, and dreams in her pockets. In the grunge and starlight of the ACT-UP era, Kelly Cogswell runs in and out of light and shadows with her merry band of Lesbian Avengers, artists, and writers, finding her home and finding herself in the process.
Sounds good, right?
It sounds like fiction and reads like it, too. I’m sure there is some flowery prose added to some of the elements of the book but I tracked down events and names and dates and, yes, folks this is really Kelly’s life.
I ended up picking this up for a paper, last semester, and it has become one of my favorite recommendations.
Though the queer culture of New York and the time period vary from other times and places, the narrative and energy and action are so clearly representative of the queer communities we’ve all encountered, in one form or another. I find so many narratives written by men for these communities which is great in and of itself, however, it’s sometimes very needed to have that strong, clear, queer female voice singing out for this purpose.
I’m really glad I’m back to reviewing, going into this semester so I can work a little real-life work into the fictional stuff. Especially the sexuality fiction, but the harder stuff in general, is always better taken with a lot of the true history behind the concept.
June 19, 2018
Wow! This is easily one of the most interesting books I've read in a while. It's both a historical document outlining a political action group and a deeply personal reflection into what it means to be a woman, a lesbian, a white American. I really just love this. I am moved, I am inspired.
A side note-- it's extra interesting to read about the geopolitical climate from like 1995 onwards. I feel like there's not a ton of information out there in a historic documentation sense. I guess that era was pretty recent but, as a person who was just a tiny child at that time... it's really eye opening to learn about how much has changed (and how much hasn't) in the last 20 years.
A side note-- it's extra interesting to read about the geopolitical climate from like 1995 onwards. I feel like there's not a ton of information out there in a historic documentation sense. I guess that era was pretty recent but, as a person who was just a tiny child at that time... it's really eye opening to learn about how much has changed (and how much hasn't) in the last 20 years.
November 7, 2018
At the risk of being seen as missing the point of the book, this book was so brash and militaristic that at times I found myself uncomfortable reading it. Without a doubt, the Lesbian Avengers did good work, but the author's personal connection made it impossible for her to recognize the areas where the Avengers failed. I also really struggled to read a book that uses the word 'dyke' so often. I understand that many of us have reclaimed terms like 'dyke' and especially 'queer,' but dyke in particular is still a slur and it was jarring to see the author refer to so many women that way.
July 31, 2024
the beginning was a super interesting look into the lesbian avengers and the social climate they were fighting against, but after she left the avengers it felt disorganized--a lot of ideas were introduced but it didn't feel like she fully examined any of them. i wanted some analysis of activist infighting, intersectionality as a weapon, the manifestation of worldwide homophobia, the privilege of being an american even as you suffer for being gay--it felt like all those topics were just touched on, though. i still think it's worth a read!
did-not-finish
February 25, 2021I don't remember exactly why I abandoned this a few years ago, but I heard an interview with the author recently and it appears that she holds (not always overt or loudly publicized) beliefs that I would categorize as trans-exclusionary. Which is a shame given that the Lesbian Avengers seem to have something of a history of being trans inclusive and supportive - a group of them went to Camp Trans (protesting MichFest policies) in 2000.
March 6, 2021
Trigger warning: racism, homophobia
An excellent bite sized look at an often overlooked part of our history. This book discusses intersectionality in communities in a very on-the ground view. Also I’m biased because I’m also from Kentucky and found her stories about Kentucky very relatable.
The book was a little disorganized, going from one thought to the next, but overall followed a chronological order that meant it wasn’t too difficult to follow.
An excellent bite sized look at an often overlooked part of our history. This book discusses intersectionality in communities in a very on-the ground view. Also I’m biased because I’m also from Kentucky and found her stories about Kentucky very relatable.
The book was a little disorganized, going from one thought to the next, but overall followed a chronological order that meant it wasn’t too difficult to follow.
October 24, 2018
so good to read activist history - that is so often lost. this book talks of the complexities of activism, the politics within the community, the conflicts, and the questions of identity and what is resistance. I also appreciated the fact that this was not just approached from a new york perspective. It was an inspiring reminder of those who have forged the way and how to continue to do so.
July 6, 2024
It’s just not what I expected/wanted. Very slow and personal. I wanted more of an overview historical take on lesbian activism but it was basically a memoir that I didn’t care much about. I wanted to hear more about the activism and organizing and less about the random social interactions.
January 14, 2025
Interesting but comes off really flippant and some of the race discussions are not handled with as much sensitivity as they could have been.
Was very sad to see that no radical lesbian movements have taken off since and how lesbian is still just as much of aa dirty word
Was very sad to see that no radical lesbian movements have taken off since and how lesbian is still just as much of aa dirty word
Read
March 16, 2019i have so much i need to unpack after this wow
February 20, 2023
The memoir aspect outweighed the history (obviously the two are intertwined, but there was a lot of post-Avengers) but the writing is propulsive and energetic.
March 30, 2024
A love letter to direct action despite how complicated people & our problems can be.
June 23, 2014
Eating Fire opens in 1992. The Irish Lesbian and Gay Organization is fighting for the right to march in New York’s annual St. Patrick’s Day Parade; anti-gay violence is prevalent; the AIDS epidemic is underway; mainstream gay and lesbian activist groups are rejecting their fringes in an effort to present themselves as normal and “framing their campaign as a question of abstract equality and civil rights, and not about those creepy flesh-and-blood homos.”
The author, Kelly Cogswell has arrived in New York from Kentucky, having abandoned her Southern Baptist faith, ready to live a life full of art, words, and action. She is one of the founding members of the Lesbian Avengers, a direct-action group determined to keep the fringe at the heart of things, celebrating and empowering this part of the community, rather than sweeping it under a (very tasteful, I’m sure) rug.
Cogswell’s voice is sure, brimming with passion and intelligence. She drops readers into the middle of this historical moment, taking them on a wild and wide-ranging ride. She builds a home for herself in the Lesbian Avengers, whose organizing includes the principle that “Butch, femme and androgynous dykes, leather queers, drag kings and queens, transsexuals and trans-genders will not be thrown to the wolves so that straight-acting ‘gay people’ can beg for acceptance at our expense.”
One of the most valuable messages of Cogswell’s book is that direct action is an essential tool for political change: “Everybody should know how to use it. Especially dykes who rarely have lobbyists or representatives or cultural power…. Every time the Avengers pulled off an action, we weren’t just making lesbians visible or trying to change society. We were changing lesbians. Creating a new kind of dyke who saw public space as hers, who could step out into the street and make noise, be herself, feel at home in the world. In some ways, we were the last utopian group of the millennium, aiming not only for justice, but for pure freedom.” This mix of celebration, self-affirmation, wicked humor and outrage is all too rare in the U.S.’s current political discussions, and our current era is lessened by this fact.
Eating Fire captures the way that the internet transformed activism, allowing groups and individuals to produce low-cost, high-quality reporting, argument, and education. At one point in her book, Cogswell, whose lightening-quick mind has her offering claims and rebuttals one after another, gives the role of technology in the more recent “Arab Spring,” a nod, while reminding us that revolution requires much more than a strong on-line presence and regular tweets: “the triumph of nonviolent organizing [that was the Arab Spring] was getting called a revolution by the internet despite crowds in the street day after day, despite years of activism.”
Reading this book can remind us to be our own bravest, weirdest selves: “Visibility isn’t change itself, but a kind of wedge others can follow.” In a time when the politics of visibility seems much more about obstructionism than creativity, we need this book, this reminder of what we have done—not because we need to return to the past, but because of the necessity of working towards a transformative future.
The author, Kelly Cogswell has arrived in New York from Kentucky, having abandoned her Southern Baptist faith, ready to live a life full of art, words, and action. She is one of the founding members of the Lesbian Avengers, a direct-action group determined to keep the fringe at the heart of things, celebrating and empowering this part of the community, rather than sweeping it under a (very tasteful, I’m sure) rug.
Cogswell’s voice is sure, brimming with passion and intelligence. She drops readers into the middle of this historical moment, taking them on a wild and wide-ranging ride. She builds a home for herself in the Lesbian Avengers, whose organizing includes the principle that “Butch, femme and androgynous dykes, leather queers, drag kings and queens, transsexuals and trans-genders will not be thrown to the wolves so that straight-acting ‘gay people’ can beg for acceptance at our expense.”
One of the most valuable messages of Cogswell’s book is that direct action is an essential tool for political change: “Everybody should know how to use it. Especially dykes who rarely have lobbyists or representatives or cultural power…. Every time the Avengers pulled off an action, we weren’t just making lesbians visible or trying to change society. We were changing lesbians. Creating a new kind of dyke who saw public space as hers, who could step out into the street and make noise, be herself, feel at home in the world. In some ways, we were the last utopian group of the millennium, aiming not only for justice, but for pure freedom.” This mix of celebration, self-affirmation, wicked humor and outrage is all too rare in the U.S.’s current political discussions, and our current era is lessened by this fact.
Eating Fire captures the way that the internet transformed activism, allowing groups and individuals to produce low-cost, high-quality reporting, argument, and education. At one point in her book, Cogswell, whose lightening-quick mind has her offering claims and rebuttals one after another, gives the role of technology in the more recent “Arab Spring,” a nod, while reminding us that revolution requires much more than a strong on-line presence and regular tweets: “the triumph of nonviolent organizing [that was the Arab Spring] was getting called a revolution by the internet despite crowds in the street day after day, despite years of activism.”
Reading this book can remind us to be our own bravest, weirdest selves: “Visibility isn’t change itself, but a kind of wedge others can follow.” In a time when the politics of visibility seems much more about obstructionism than creativity, we need this book, this reminder of what we have done—not because we need to return to the past, but because of the necessity of working towards a transformative future.
April 29, 2014
I preface this review by saying I received this book free of charge as a Goodreads Giveaway- however, that by no means impacted my review on the book.
Being very unaware and uneducated about homosexual (lesbian and dyke) history I was very excited to dive into this book. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations.
First off it's very energetic but verging on sporadic. She skips around in time a lot but doesn't give you anything to gauge where you are chronologically in the story. One moment it's 2001 and the next she's back to her childhood and then she's fast-forwarding to 2008.
Next, this reads more like a personal journal rather than a history of The Lesbian Avengers. The author makes a lot of assumptions that readers are familiar with certain events, people and places-some important historically, most not. On those historical moments she seems to glaze over them with her point of view but it doesn't lend much to the story. The moments seem very out of place.
Her voice in the story is very immature, there are moments I think she's an 18 year old writing this coming of age story, but rather she's over 40 while writing this. She sounds like a romantic, soul-searching teen writing a love letter to her girlfriend rather than an accomplished, self-assured woman. She even refers to herself as "girl", shortly after she writes about celebrating her 40th birthday. This book in fact seems more love letter to her girlfriend Ana, rather than an actual history of an important organization.
The organization, The Lesbian Avengers, almost seems to be a 2nd thought for most of the book. Only about half of it is about the organization and the part that is seems so bogged down in personal details that I'm still longing for the real actual story.
Overall, an okay read, but I found myself having to force myself back to it. It may be better for readers just looking for a LGBT memoir rather than a history memoir about a group.
Being very unaware and uneducated about homosexual (lesbian and dyke) history I was very excited to dive into this book. Sadly, it did not live up to my expectations.
First off it's very energetic but verging on sporadic. She skips around in time a lot but doesn't give you anything to gauge where you are chronologically in the story. One moment it's 2001 and the next she's back to her childhood and then she's fast-forwarding to 2008.
Next, this reads more like a personal journal rather than a history of The Lesbian Avengers. The author makes a lot of assumptions that readers are familiar with certain events, people and places-some important historically, most not. On those historical moments she seems to glaze over them with her point of view but it doesn't lend much to the story. The moments seem very out of place.
Her voice in the story is very immature, there are moments I think she's an 18 year old writing this coming of age story, but rather she's over 40 while writing this. She sounds like a romantic, soul-searching teen writing a love letter to her girlfriend rather than an accomplished, self-assured woman. She even refers to herself as "girl", shortly after she writes about celebrating her 40th birthday. This book in fact seems more love letter to her girlfriend Ana, rather than an actual history of an important organization.
The organization, The Lesbian Avengers, almost seems to be a 2nd thought for most of the book. Only about half of it is about the organization and the part that is seems so bogged down in personal details that I'm still longing for the real actual story.
Overall, an okay read, but I found myself having to force myself back to it. It may be better for readers just looking for a LGBT memoir rather than a history memoir about a group.
October 16, 2014
This book was a hard read, but a rewarding one. Not difficult because of the language, but because of the twinges of recognition with some of Cogswell's most cynical andfrustrated passages. Discussing her life and activism, the book begins with the founding of the Lesbian Avengers (a lesbian direct-action group active in the USA in the early-mid 90s). However, the Avengers and their activities - from gatecrashing a UNIFEM meeting to eating fire in front of the White House to organising the thousands-strong Dyke March - only make up the first half of the book. The group's dissolution marks a turning point in the narrative, and Cogswell travels to Cuba and Paris as the 21st Century dawns reflecting on her past and present identity, activism and visibility.
It's sobering and sad to read about infighting and respectability politics, especially because of how relevant those issues still are in modern activism. When she talks about shame being a core part of mainstream LGBT establishment politics, the deliberate depoliticisation of queer issues, and how that impacts on real human beings, it's hard not to nod along. I learned a lot from this book, not just about queer activism but Cuban history, French contemporary politics, and the view from the ground at the height of the 90s culture wars. Above all, I felt inspired to continue my own activism, and to know when to speak.
It's sobering and sad to read about infighting and respectability politics, especially because of how relevant those issues still are in modern activism. When she talks about shame being a core part of mainstream LGBT establishment politics, the deliberate depoliticisation of queer issues, and how that impacts on real human beings, it's hard not to nod along. I learned a lot from this book, not just about queer activism but Cuban history, French contemporary politics, and the view from the ground at the height of the 90s culture wars. Above all, I felt inspired to continue my own activism, and to know when to speak.
December 21, 2014
Literary memoir about Cogswell's political life as a lesbian activist. She was a founder of the Lesbian Avengers, a guerrilla theatre-type political action group that was famous for its dramatic fire-eating performances in the 1990s. Cogswell writes beautifully. She and Ana Simo have managed to maintain both their artistic sensibilities and their anger at bigotry and persecution over the decades of their partnership. She almost lost me at the first sentence though, which includes the word "fag." I find this term offensive, not edgy. It's not like "queer," which reclaims a straight slur and turns it into something magnificent. I'm sure that the author used the term intentionally and without malice, but I don't think the f-- word can be reclaimed and I would advise against anyone using it.
Aside from that, the book is poetic, introspective, and has a broad geography, moving from New York, to Kentucky, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Paris. Recommended for those interested in gay social movements.
Aside from that, the book is poetic, introspective, and has a broad geography, moving from New York, to Kentucky, Cuba, Puerto Rico, and Paris. Recommended for those interested in gay social movements.
July 20, 2016
More than a memoir, in some ways this is a historical record of 1980s/1990s LGBTQ activism and LGBTQ community life. However, the author still seems to be fighting some battles with some people in the movement decades later. Her continuing antipathy toward some of the Black lesbian feminist writers and activists she met during her activist period stands out; she seems not to have been willing to listen to or read their perspective years ago and the passing of time appears to have little effect. Younger readers familiar with feminism’s current discussions of intersectionality, particularly as it relates to race and class, will recognize the ways in which history repeats itself. Aside from that, her personal story is compelling and will be interesting to younger LGBTQ readers seeking historical perspectives. Would recommend with a reader's advisory suggesting that students also read works from the same historical period written by authors such as Audre Lorde, Barbara Smith, Gloria Anzaldua, Chrystos, Merle Woo, etc. to gain a more balanced perspective.
July 6, 2017
I had no idea how far women, lesbians have come in the last decade or so. The book was hard for me because I had to look up almost everything Kelly was referencing to understand the whole picture of activism history. I didn't recognize any of the landscapes either. I think it could have been explained in better detail and I got confused as to where Kelly was narrating from in the story. She would flip from one topic or scene to a completely unrelated one. I did enjoy learning about the lesbian avengers!
"I always thought about visibility as a jumping off place, a pre-condition for having a voice. Because if you aren't visible in the culture,or in politics, or even on the streets, how can you demand anything or participate like a grown-up in the ongoing narrative of your country" -Kelly Cogswell
I received this book from Goodreads First Reads
"I always thought about visibility as a jumping off place, a pre-condition for having a voice. Because if you aren't visible in the culture,or in politics, or even on the streets, how can you demand anything or participate like a grown-up in the ongoing narrative of your country" -Kelly Cogswell
I received this book from Goodreads First Reads
February 19, 2016
I'm not quite sure what to make of this one. While it made for a quick and largely pleasant read, I'd expected it to be heftier, somehow. I came to it anticipating a more intimate and thorough account of the Avengers than it actually contains. The first half of the book is a somewhat breezy first person perspective on the Avengers, seeming more like snapshots in a home photo album than a history. (In the intro the author herself notes that "readers should be aware that this is not an exhaustive history, especially of the New York Lesbian Avengers.") The second half of the book is part memoir, part a series of reaction shots to the top headlines of the late nineties onward. In the end I wanted more substance in the first half, while I found myself skimming the less personal parts of the second. It's not a bad book, but I wanted it to be more.
September 17, 2014
I loved this book. It's great to see memoirs coming out from my generation of activists, filling in readers on what was going on activist-wise in the late '80s and early '90s. As a movement veteran myself (although not the Lesbian Avengers, as my stint with the San Francisco group was very short-lived), I liked that she covered some of the group's infighting, as well as the challenges based on race and class.
While I don't agree with all of Cogswell's assertions (particularly her writing off of the Seattle WTO protestors, and her troubled feelings about NOW's distancing itself from Sarah Palin (????), I still loved reading about her journeys through life and the movement.
(And now this book is REALLY overdue at the library and I must return it.)
While I don't agree with all of Cogswell's assertions (particularly her writing off of the Seattle WTO protestors, and her troubled feelings about NOW's distancing itself from Sarah Palin (????), I still loved reading about her journeys through life and the movement.
(And now this book is REALLY overdue at the library and I must return it.)
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