Loving before Loving: A Marriage in Black and White

by Joan Steinau Lester

Committed to the struggle for civil rights, in the late 1950s Joan Steinau marched and protested as a white ally and young woman coming to terms with her own racism. She fell in love and married a fellow activist, the Black writer Julius Lester, establishing a partnership that was long and multifaceted but not free of the politics of race and gender. As the women’s movement dawned, feminism helped Lester find her voice, her pansexuality, and the courage to be herself.
 
Braiding intellectual, personal, and political history, Lester tells the story of a writer and activist fighting for love and justice before, during, and after the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision striking down bans on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia . She describes her own shifts in consciousness, from an activist climbing police barricades by day and reading and writing late into the night to a woman navigating the coming-out process in midlife, before finding the publishing success she had dreamed of. Speaking candidly about every facet of her life, Lester illuminates her journey to fulfillment and healing.

288 pages, Hardcover

Published May 25, 2021

About the author

Joan Steinau Lester, Ed.D. is an award-winning NPR commentator, columnist, and the author of four books. Black, White, Other, a 2011 Young Adult novel, was her first fiction. Her latest novel, Mama's Child, will be released May 7. http://books.simonandschuster.com/Mam...

Reviews

[Michal Strutin · Rating 4 out of 5]

Loving Before Loving: a Marriage in Black and White. What a perfect title for a book about an interracial couple who married before the 1967 Loving v Virginia civil rights decision that struck down bans on interracial marriage. The author, Joan Steinau Lester, and her husband, Julius Lester, were no ordinary couple. They were near the center of the civil rights movement and we follow their marriage through the nation’s big civil rights incidents and meet the activists critical to the movement in the kitchen of their humble (read: the usual vermin) New York City apartment. Loving Before Loving takes readers through the political and emotional ups and downs of the civil rights movement and, following close on its heels, the women’s movement.

Joan and Julius—she white, he Black—met and fell in love as young activists and writers, she at the beginning of her writing journey, he further along. As the movement matured, so did the Lesters. Although they continued to respect each other intellectually, their paths diverged. The split was not easy on Joan Lester, especially when it came to their two children.

Often, the civil rights movement was not female-friendly and Lester found herself drawn to the women’s movement and the equality she found there. She pursued her writing with the support she found among women pursuing their own paths, fearlessly. Determined, Lester found her voice and many paths to publishing. She allowed herself openness to explore her views on feminism and, hesitant at first, to explore her sexuality. Because she did, she found her life’s partner. Loving Before Loving: an inspirational journey.

[Frances · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this book about a young couple who meet, fall in love and marry only to find their assumptions about the world and each other challenged by society. It starts during a time when there are still laws on the books forbidding intermarriage between whites and Blacks. That was overturned by the Supreme Court's 1957 decision in Loving vs Virginia. Lester's memoir takes us on a journey through the civil rights movement of the early 1960s and the women's movement that partly sprang from it. It's also the story of how Joan Lester educated herself, fought to express herself through writing, and finally claimed a place as an acclaimed essayist, biographer, and fiction writer.

[Gail Reitano · Rating 5 out of 5]

Joan Lester's beautiful memoir is stunningly honest about both the power and limits of love within her marriage to the Black writer and political activist Julius Lester. Having met her soulmate in a camp in the Catskills in 1962, Joan's life is set on a course, challenging the system's assumptions about what constitutes freedom and justice. But as we come to know her, we see the seeds of an activist life were always there. Empowered by de Beauvoir's The Second Sex, and scathing of Allen's Ginsburg's Howl, she is rebellious at the same time as she seems frightening vulnerable. Joan Lester walks a tightrope and never wobbles. Couldn't put it down.

[Lucille Day · Rating 5 out of 5]

An Inspiring Life!

Loving before Loving is more than the story of a marriage between a white woman and a Black man when interracial marriages were still illegal in many states. It’s also the story of a life dedicated to fighting racism, sexism, and all of the isms. Joan Steinau Lester has forged a creatively and emotionally fulfilling life and simultaneously has taken on some of the most important political and social issues of her time. Her memoir is a memorable and inspiring read. Brava!

[Elizabeth Rynecki · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a lot in this memoir in which the personal is definitely political. Lester tells her story with a great deal of honesty - both telling her story from within the social, political, and historical moments as she lived them but also looking backwards and reflecting on her experiences from a place of renewed perspectives. A unique life told with love, joy, and passion. A memoir not just about her life, but one that dovetails with today’s issues of MeToo and Black Lives Matter.

[David Koulack]

Loving Before Loving
Loving before Loving is a book to learn from, a book of love and history and heartbreak and romance. A book about finding one’s way and losing it. And finding it again in an entirely different fashion.
Joan Steinau Lester is an unusual person with an unusual story and she tells it very well. Her life and experiences are touching and uplifting and provide a glimpse of the possibilities that need to be nurtured in this troubled world of ours.
David Koulack