Wild Mares: My Lesbian Back-to-the-Land Life

by Dianna Hunter

A wry memoir of growing up, coming out, and going back to the land as a lesbian feminist in the rural Midwest of the 1960s and 70s

Dianna Hunter was a softball-loving, working-class tomboy in North Dakota, surviving the threat of the Cuban Missile Crisis and Mutually Assured Destruction in the shadow of a strategic air command base. Communists and antiwar hippies were the enemy, but lesbians were a threat, too: they were unhealthy, criminal, and downright insane. It took Dianna a while to figure out that she was one, a little longer to discover how she fit in with her new communities in the city and the countryside. This is her story—a frank account by turns comic and painful of a well-behaved Midwestern girl finding her way through polite denial and repression and running head-on into the eye-opening events of the 1960s and ’70s before landing on a dairy farm.

A bumpy route takes Dianna to the Twin Cities, then to rural Minnesota and Wisconsin as—by way of the antiwar movement, women’s liberation, and a dose of lesbian feminism—she and her friends try to establish a rural utopia free of sexual oppression, violence, materialism, environmental degradation—and men. They dream big, love as they see fit, and make do until they don’t. Dianna buys a dairy farm and, with it, a new set of problems thanks to the Reagan-era farm crisis. 

A firsthand account of the lesbian feminist movement at its inception, Wild Mares is a deeply personal, wryly wise, and always engaging view of identity politics lived and learned in real life and, literally, on the ground, flourishing in the fertile soil of a struggling dairy farm in the American heartland.

Genres: Nonfiction, LGBT, Memoir, Queer, Biography

248 pages, Paperback

First published April 10, 2018

Reviews

[dori · Rating 2 out of 5]

I would love to be more into this book than I am. She's a nice storyteller, and it's a good bit of history that has paved much of the way for how I am now able to live. I realize that this is a memoir, and thus, talks of the past - but some of the author's current opinions seem to have clearly stayed in the past as well, making this a hard book for me to swallow at times, such as the concept of "feeling like a patriot" and "remaking America in its own image". Now that many of us have a firm understanding of colonizer mentality and what indigenous women and POC suffer because of this concept, this author's idea of "America" leaves a bad taste in my mouth, especially when paired with "feminism" - it's the kind of "feminism" we're trying to dismantle now in lieu of something more intersectional.

[Melinda · Rating 4 out of 5]

If you’re interested in lesbian farmer books or first-person accounts from back-to-the-land movements, Dianna Hunter’s Wild Mares is an enjoyable, fascinating read. Reflecting on her life from the vantage point of her 60s, Hunter details her involvement in the feminist and lesbian movements. After college, Hunter and her friends headed to the countryside to live off-grid surrounded with horses, cats, dogs, and sometimes goats and cows. They hitchhike, take “road trips” on horseback, and build lives for themselves with little money, no running water and an often shifting group of women.

While capturing the enthusiasm and joy of those days, Hunter avoids presenting an overly romanticized view of life on the land. She details the interpersonal conflicts that emerged, including those around money and chores. She doesn’t dismiss the comforts of modern life, like a warm shower. And there’s a particularly horrifying farm accident involving a dog, the details of which I will never be able to scrub from my memory. It’s helpful that Hunter, reflecting on her life decades later, paints a fuller portrait of herself and her friends. I was surprised to see just how young everyone looked in the photos scattered throughout the book. But Hunter’s narration as an older woman gives the memoir the depth that would be lacking in a young adult’s account.
Mixing humorous incidents with painful ones, the memoir follows Hunter through highs and lows. In one poignant moment, the current love of her life leaves her, and within weeks, finds a man to marry. Devastated, she tells her parents, “Marea married a man.”

“Sounds normal to me,” her father asks, more uncomfortable with his daughter’s lesbianism than he is sympathetic to her heartbreak.

From feminist bookstores to lesbian proms, Hunter describes the events of women’s culture she and her friends participated in throughout the years. Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival makes a brief appearance. Hunter balances the joy of women’s music and being surrounded by lesbian culture against the unseasoned vegetarian food and icy, open-air showers.

Eventually, Hunter establishes her own dairy farm. This promising opportunity quickly grows into a ballooning debt, as Ronald Reagan’s devastating farm policies take effect. She offers an eye-opening look at the struggles of farmers in a globalized market.

A thoughtfully written, engaging read. Would recommend.

[Sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book couldn't have come to me at a better time. My mom and I are featured in this book and I feel like looking back at this time period through Dianna's eyes has given me new insight to understanding my mom. My mom isn't someone who would ever share or disclose any vulnerabilities and now, with her dementia, I can't ask her. But I can understand her now, like I never could before, through Dianna's work. I can see how being categorized as "mentally ill" in the DSM (for being gay) during the '60's and '70's would inform my mom's personality and choices.

As I read this book and I deal with my mom's real mental illness (vs. wrongly categorized DSM "mental illness"), I've been communicating with many of my mom's old friends (people also featured in this book). It's given me an odd perspective of living both in the past (reborn from Dianna's memory) and in the present. I feel like I'm looking at my life like it's a double exposure. This peek into the past through Dianna's perspective has given me an understanding I never had as a child growing up in the time period.

I loved how Dianna explained throughout her book why going back to the land was so important for women in the 70's. She shows how being self-sufficient, having animals, working the land, and building women's community were crucial building blocks to get us where we are today.

Although I liked this book in part because it is personal to me, I think it will be enjoyable for anyone who likes digging deeper into understanding how we have arrived where we are today by looking back at actions and ideals from the past. Also, if you entertain the idea of going back to the land you will get a healthy dose of knowledge by reading about Dianna's experience. Her story-telling is easy to follow, she touches on many topics that are still pertinent today, and her introspective style helped me see the era in a new way.

[Grace · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a great peek at one woman’s experience in the lesbian back-to-the-land movement. Really cool to see how multiple generations have women have tackled the patriarchy in so many different ways.

[Shelby Burrow · Rating 4 out of 5]

I’m glad she wrote it but it was not easy to follow at times and parts got a little too technical. Less horses than I was expecting!

[Ana Maria · Rating 4 out of 5]

It's hard to give this a star rating.

As I was reading through I kept thinking that I know these women in real life, and they are a part of my today queer reality, though we have obviously never met, and it's a good 40 years since the events in this memoir.

I know there are elements of rosy glasses involved, but it's hard to recognize both the badassery of what these women were trying to do (and did!) with how their dreams played out, changed, and fell apart and moreso how we keep returning as new generations to many of the same themes and problems.

I have more mulling to do on the subject, but that can wait to be appended later.

[Janice · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting memoir of a lesbian “back to the land” movement from the 1960s and 1970s. These were brave, intrepid pioneers and it was a pleasure to read of their experiences. Perhaps some of the current attitudes seem a little dated but this was an enjoyable read regardless.
My thanks to NetGalley for providing me with an arc in exchange for my honest review.

[Brooke · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book covered topics I know nothing about but it was interesting enough for me to finish.

[Gretchen · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book touched me as a queer woman who prefers country living with horses and cattle over living in the city and struggling to find a solid community of like minded women around me. Hunter's story is intriguing and frustrating and heartwarming and heart wrenching. There is her struggle coming out, finding community, and then maintaining those relationships and spaces. Her fortitude shines through despite her own constant worries and anxieties. And it is a story of queer women in Minnesota, so it was doubly intriguing and wonderful to me.,

[Katie Barron · Rating 4 out of 5]

While some people may have been disappointed that they didn’t read a modern manifesto regarding radical feminism, I read a beautiful memoir of a woman who is admittedly imperfect but tried her best to live her own life with the knowledge she had been given. She may be a Boomer, but this is the good Boomer narrative that’s necessary to read to know where our modern feminist ideas come from. And if you read it in that spirit, you won’t be disappointed.

[Britta · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wild Mares sat on my shelf for a few years before I finally picked it up. I didn’t expect it to be this good, probably. As a farm girl and now living in the Twin Coties, this book was filled with holy moments that I’ll be meditating on for awhile. The writing, like most farmers, is no-nonsense. There aren’t frills. When the author wants to make a point, she just says in this type of work with this type of agrarian context, it works perfectly.

[Elliot · Rating 4 out of 5]

this hit the spot. dianna's reminiscing tone made me feel like i was sitting at her kitchen table over coffee, listening to her tell me her stories. it was comforting to read an older lesbian's reflections on her youth.

[christa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a history that I've never read and it was fascinating. Especially the way Hunter applies names and faces.

[Larry · Rating 4 out of 5]

Hunter's book is a valuable, insightful, and thoughtful account of her life as a lesbian, back-to-the-land activist. It's a great piece of Minnesota history.

[Ian · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a great window to the world of the lesbian back to the land movement, with insights about day to day life, relationships and rural Minnesota.

[Susan]

The memoir of a girl who grows up as a tomboy in North Dakota. She survives the Cuban Missle Crisis, as well as communists and hippies who were the enemy not to mention lesbians. As she politely denies herself, she continues to grow as women's liberation and lesbian feminism draws attention to thinking and wondering where she fits in this time. She gets together with others to live in a rural utopia with freedom of all the problems they face. Eventually Dianna finds herself on a dairy farm with her “friend” discovering new problems.

The author has written an excellent yet personal story of her life including the difficulties she faced indifferent time periods. It is one of the best I have read.