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Lesbian Love Story: A Memoir In Archives
Finalist for the Lambda Literary Awards
For readers of Saidiya Hartman and Jeanette Winterson, Lesbian Love Story is an intimate journey into the archives—uncovering the romances and role models written out of history and what their stories can teach us all about how to love
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.
Centered around seven love stories for the ages, this is Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a drag king show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her record to the archive.
At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian?
For readers of Saidiya Hartman and Jeanette Winterson, Lesbian Love Story is an intimate journey into the archives—uncovering the romances and role models written out of history and what their stories can teach us all about how to love
When Amelia Possanza moved to Brooklyn to build a life of her own, she found herself surrounded by queer she read them on landmark placards, overheard them on the pool deck when she joined the world’s largest LGBTQ swim team, and even watched them on TV in her cockroach-infested apartment. These stories inspired her to seek out lesbians throughout history who could become her role models, in romance and in life.
Centered around seven love stories for the ages, this is Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the twentieth who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on. Possanza’s hunt takes readers from a drag king show in Bushwick to the home of activists in Harlem and then across the ocean to Hadrian’s Library, where she searches for traces of Sappho in the ruins. Along the way, she discovers her own love—for swimming, for community, for New York City—and adds her record to the archive.
At the heart of this riveting, inventive history, Possanza How could lesbian love help us reimagine care and community? What would our world look like if we replaced its foundation of misogyny with something new, with something distinctly lesbian?
283 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 6, 2023
250 people are currently reading
9821 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 223 reviews
January 13, 2024
I wanted more from these stories but I think the author was limited by historical archives :( Will always support lesbians tho
October 28, 2023
I liked learning about lesbians throughout history, especially given the erasure of queer romantic love between women. I thought Amelia Possanza did a sufficient job of paying attention to intersecting dynamics of class, race, and queerness when reflecting on these different lesbian narratives. Unfortunately I found the writing style a bit dry and the toggling back and forth between describing history and writing memoir clunky. Read for a book club so we’ll see what others think!
July 20, 2023
The subtitle of Amelia Possanza’s book is a little misleading, this isn’t so much history as unorthodox memoir and although on the surface it focuses on a series of Sapphic couples it frequently uses them as a means to tease out broader questions about gender, desire and identity. Possanza was isolated growing up, a lone lesbian in environments where she often found herself in the position of awkward outsider. Even after moving to New York and joining a queer swim team, she found herself mostly in the company of gay men. So, she set herself a project of constructing her own specific, lesbian history drawing on the lives of a selection of past women she might view as possible role models - supporting her in her attempts to map out a future for herself as a lesbian and probe into key aspects of her personal experience. She delved into archives and devoured lesbian histories, slowly compiling a list of women she wanted to know more about. Mostly these are women who also lived in New York and who shed light on what it might have meant to be a woman who loved women at different points in America’s history.
Possanza opens with Mary Casal (Ruth Fuller Field), who published one of the first autobiographies exploring lesbian desire. Thinking about Casal and her relationships, and their place within nineteenth-century notions of the ‘romantic friendship’ provides a space for Possanza to reflect on her own sexual desires. Black, working-class lesbian and stage performer Mabel Hampton who later co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archive offers a glimpse of lesbian subcultures in 1920s and 1930s Harlem, as well as raising issues about lost histories, class and white privilege. The treatment of athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias exposes misogynistic attitudes towards women in sport in the 1950s, as well as the suffocating constraints of conventional femininity, in turn leading to a discussion of Possanza’s sporting background and personal discomfort with gendered expectations about her body and self-presentation. Something that’s developed further in Possanza’s assessment of the life of Rusty Brown, a forerunner of contemporary ‘drag culture’ and someone whose “tendencies” led to a period of incarceration in a psychiatric facility. A longing for community leads Possanza to the work of Gloria Anzaldúa queer theorist and activist in the Chicana feminist movement during the 1970s, someone who also holds out the possibility of thinking about lesbian identity as political. Amy Hoffman’s work with ACT UP in the 1980s links to Possanza’s close friendships with gay men and thoughts about the ways in which queer communities might offer alternative forms of family and intimate connection. Possanza departs from her general script to include Sappho both as an iconic historical figure and as a link to Possanza’s childhood and time spent with her Classicist father.
Possanza’s partly indebted here to Saidiya Hartman’s approach in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Like Hartman, Possanza includes a series of creative reconstructions of her subjects’ lives, attempting to fill in the gaps and silences in the records that remain of their existence. When everything comes together this is a really fascinating book but there were times when I found the links between Possanza and her chosen women a little too forced or tangential or when the discussion seemed overly dry. Overall, Possanza’s idiosyncratic blend of memoir and creative biography is inventive and accessible but that accessibility could sometimes detract from her attempts to cover more complex issues, particularly around gender, making some of her more general arguments feel sweeping or insubstantial. But the experiences of the women represented here are consistently compelling, as are the histories they reveal.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Square Peg
Rating: 3.5
Possanza opens with Mary Casal (Ruth Fuller Field), who published one of the first autobiographies exploring lesbian desire. Thinking about Casal and her relationships, and their place within nineteenth-century notions of the ‘romantic friendship’ provides a space for Possanza to reflect on her own sexual desires. Black, working-class lesbian and stage performer Mabel Hampton who later co-founded the Lesbian Herstory Archive offers a glimpse of lesbian subcultures in 1920s and 1930s Harlem, as well as raising issues about lost histories, class and white privilege. The treatment of athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias exposes misogynistic attitudes towards women in sport in the 1950s, as well as the suffocating constraints of conventional femininity, in turn leading to a discussion of Possanza’s sporting background and personal discomfort with gendered expectations about her body and self-presentation. Something that’s developed further in Possanza’s assessment of the life of Rusty Brown, a forerunner of contemporary ‘drag culture’ and someone whose “tendencies” led to a period of incarceration in a psychiatric facility. A longing for community leads Possanza to the work of Gloria Anzaldúa queer theorist and activist in the Chicana feminist movement during the 1970s, someone who also holds out the possibility of thinking about lesbian identity as political. Amy Hoffman’s work with ACT UP in the 1980s links to Possanza’s close friendships with gay men and thoughts about the ways in which queer communities might offer alternative forms of family and intimate connection. Possanza departs from her general script to include Sappho both as an iconic historical figure and as a link to Possanza’s childhood and time spent with her Classicist father.
Possanza’s partly indebted here to Saidiya Hartman’s approach in Wayward Lives, Beautiful Experiments. Like Hartman, Possanza includes a series of creative reconstructions of her subjects’ lives, attempting to fill in the gaps and silences in the records that remain of their existence. When everything comes together this is a really fascinating book but there were times when I found the links between Possanza and her chosen women a little too forced or tangential or when the discussion seemed overly dry. Overall, Possanza’s idiosyncratic blend of memoir and creative biography is inventive and accessible but that accessibility could sometimes detract from her attempts to cover more complex issues, particularly around gender, making some of her more general arguments feel sweeping or insubstantial. But the experiences of the women represented here are consistently compelling, as are the histories they reveal.
Thanks to Netgalley and publisher Square Peg
Rating: 3.5
July 20, 2023
I'd be hard-pressed to really articulate what didn't quite work for me here. I liked this book in a macro sense; anything about queerness and archives is a pretty easy sell, and I think some of the writing and structural elements are very pretty.
I think the main issue is that there's both too much and too little memoir happening. Some chapters involve very little of Amelia's personal musings, while others are almost entirely about her own life (mostly just about swimming), which feels a bit random and uneven. There's also simply not much information on anyone in this book; Sappho's chapter, for example, is almost entirely vibes-based, which was disappointing. I couldn't quite get a handle on what this book was about--it wasn't really a memoir, in that I don't really feel like I learned anything about the author except that she likes to swim, but it also wasn't really substantive in any historical/archival sense because it's mostly about the author's feelings about history. Idk, man! It was a relatively fun, quick read that left me wishing it were something different.
I think the main issue is that there's both too much and too little memoir happening. Some chapters involve very little of Amelia's personal musings, while others are almost entirely about her own life (mostly just about swimming), which feels a bit random and uneven. There's also simply not much information on anyone in this book; Sappho's chapter, for example, is almost entirely vibes-based, which was disappointing. I couldn't quite get a handle on what this book was about--it wasn't really a memoir, in that I don't really feel like I learned anything about the author except that she likes to swim, but it also wasn't really substantive in any historical/archival sense because it's mostly about the author's feelings about history. Idk, man! It was a relatively fun, quick read that left me wishing it were something different.
March 22, 2023
Lesbian Love Story. Did Amelia Possanza know when she began what her results would be? She said she would “collect” lesbians. Lesbian Love Story is part archival history –
her
story – of lesbians throughout the ages, primarily in the US, and part personal experiences by Amelia. She often blends the two within chapters, interjecting her memories, feelings about her research, and much more.
This book consists of seven chapters ranging from Sappho in 595 BC to the 1980s. Possanza opens with a writer, Ruth Fuller Field, who used the pseudonym Mary Casal, Mary lived in the late 19th-early 20th Century. We learn about her relationship with a younger woman named Juno. We learn that “romantic friendships” were common and not necessarily frowned upon, as these were perhaps considered “practice” for “real” marriage. The state of women living together was known as a Boston marriage.
In several chapters, the author has chosen examples of women who lived lesbian lifestyles, i.e., apparently intimate relationships with at least one woman, who were married, or had been married to a man. Not all these women were monogamous in their lesbian relationships either, even if they declared themselves to be married to one another. She introduces interesting women from different decades. Mabel Hampton and Lillian Foster were Black women who moved from the South to New York when they were young. They were together for 40 years. Theirs was one example given of a “butch femme” relationship. Amelia learned much about the pair from interviews that Mable recorded. They called each other Big Bear and Little Bear, and Lillian was considered the “wifey.” Babe Didrikson, the famous multi-sport athlete/pro-golfer was another featured “butch” lesbian. Although Lillian “Babe” was married to pro wrestler-promoter George Zaharias, it was a well-known “secret” that Babe was “that way.” She claimed that she’d been taught how to be a lady, but she was still rough around the edges. However, she took Betty Dodd under her wing to make a lady of her, and the two were mostly inseparable. When Babe was dying of cancer in her early 40s, it was Betty who was at her side.
Perhaps there was no one more butch than Rusty Brown. Rusty made a living wearing pants to get a man’s job during WWII, and after the war worked as a male impersonator (as did Mabel). There are numerous mentions of drag queens in the book. There’s a hilarious story of the time Rusty and her drag queen partner switched roles one night. Rusty was uncharacteristically in dress and heels. She got arrested for impersonating a woman!
No herstory would be complete without Sappho, the Greek poet. She lived on the island of Lesbos – hence, the word lesbian. Because there was no record of her life, little is known about her personal story. Some of her lyric poetry remains; much of it is love poetry, written to be performed to music. She was thought to have killed herself by drowning after throwing herself off a cliff for love of a man named Phaon. However, much of her poetry referred to female beauty, and she got a bad reputation for her “impure friendships” with her female friends. Suffice it to say that Sappho is considered by some to be the “Tenth Muse” because of her lyric poetry and is practically a patron saint to many lesbians. I found parts of this chapter rather confusing, perhaps because of the fuzzy history.
Moving on to modern times, the author writes about two Chicana lesbians, Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga in a chapter that focuses on diversity, politics, and community. She describes the women’s pasts, and sadly, Cherríe Moraga is one of the only women I could find who is still alive. There was no women’s study program at the time, so, in order to write her thesis on feminist writings, she designed her own program with the help of her advisor, Sally Miller Gearhart, the first out lesbian to hold a tenure-track position. Gearhart sounded familiar to me. Sure enough – she was one of the women in a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women called Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. For her thesis at SF State University, Cherrie wrote, This Bridge Called My Back with Gloria. The seventies also saw the beginning of Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the formation of Olivia Records, and lesbian collectives.
The final chapter discusses friendship between lesbians and gay men, spotlighting a relationship between a man, Michael, who was dying of AIDS, and the woman, Amy, who nursed and cared for him throughout his illness. The author points out how the broader lesbian community supported their brothers in that same way in the 80s, and how women became more outspoken about healthcare equality, AIDS prevention, and treatment for all.
Throughout the book, Amelia inserts her own comments and memories. I think swimming is her first love. At times, it is distracting. Mostly, however, I found it endearing. It is, after all, her journey. In seeking a history, a herstory, to share with others, she discovers her own story and creates one as well. She has some valuable insights to share about gender and gender roles. She is often self-deprecating about her femininity, to which I can somehow relate; by the end, she seems to have come to terms with all her many selves. I could say much more. But please, read it for yourself, even if you’re not lesbian.
I received an ARC copy of Lesbian Love Story in exchange for my honest review. My opinions are my own, Thanks to NetGalley, Catapult Press, and the author.
This book consists of seven chapters ranging from Sappho in 595 BC to the 1980s. Possanza opens with a writer, Ruth Fuller Field, who used the pseudonym Mary Casal, Mary lived in the late 19th-early 20th Century. We learn about her relationship with a younger woman named Juno. We learn that “romantic friendships” were common and not necessarily frowned upon, as these were perhaps considered “practice” for “real” marriage. The state of women living together was known as a Boston marriage.
In several chapters, the author has chosen examples of women who lived lesbian lifestyles, i.e., apparently intimate relationships with at least one woman, who were married, or had been married to a man. Not all these women were monogamous in their lesbian relationships either, even if they declared themselves to be married to one another. She introduces interesting women from different decades. Mabel Hampton and Lillian Foster were Black women who moved from the South to New York when they were young. They were together for 40 years. Theirs was one example given of a “butch femme” relationship. Amelia learned much about the pair from interviews that Mable recorded. They called each other Big Bear and Little Bear, and Lillian was considered the “wifey.” Babe Didrikson, the famous multi-sport athlete/pro-golfer was another featured “butch” lesbian. Although Lillian “Babe” was married to pro wrestler-promoter George Zaharias, it was a well-known “secret” that Babe was “that way.” She claimed that she’d been taught how to be a lady, but she was still rough around the edges. However, she took Betty Dodd under her wing to make a lady of her, and the two were mostly inseparable. When Babe was dying of cancer in her early 40s, it was Betty who was at her side.
Perhaps there was no one more butch than Rusty Brown. Rusty made a living wearing pants to get a man’s job during WWII, and after the war worked as a male impersonator (as did Mabel). There are numerous mentions of drag queens in the book. There’s a hilarious story of the time Rusty and her drag queen partner switched roles one night. Rusty was uncharacteristically in dress and heels. She got arrested for impersonating a woman!
No herstory would be complete without Sappho, the Greek poet. She lived on the island of Lesbos – hence, the word lesbian. Because there was no record of her life, little is known about her personal story. Some of her lyric poetry remains; much of it is love poetry, written to be performed to music. She was thought to have killed herself by drowning after throwing herself off a cliff for love of a man named Phaon. However, much of her poetry referred to female beauty, and she got a bad reputation for her “impure friendships” with her female friends. Suffice it to say that Sappho is considered by some to be the “Tenth Muse” because of her lyric poetry and is practically a patron saint to many lesbians. I found parts of this chapter rather confusing, perhaps because of the fuzzy history.
Moving on to modern times, the author writes about two Chicana lesbians, Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga in a chapter that focuses on diversity, politics, and community. She describes the women’s pasts, and sadly, Cherríe Moraga is one of the only women I could find who is still alive. There was no women’s study program at the time, so, in order to write her thesis on feminist writings, she designed her own program with the help of her advisor, Sally Miller Gearhart, the first out lesbian to hold a tenure-track position. Gearhart sounded familiar to me. Sure enough – she was one of the women in a 1977 documentary film featuring interviews with 26 gay men and women called Word Is Out: Stories of Some of Our Lives. For her thesis at SF State University, Cherrie wrote, This Bridge Called My Back with Gloria. The seventies also saw the beginning of Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival, the formation of Olivia Records, and lesbian collectives.
The final chapter discusses friendship between lesbians and gay men, spotlighting a relationship between a man, Michael, who was dying of AIDS, and the woman, Amy, who nursed and cared for him throughout his illness. The author points out how the broader lesbian community supported their brothers in that same way in the 80s, and how women became more outspoken about healthcare equality, AIDS prevention, and treatment for all.
Throughout the book, Amelia inserts her own comments and memories. I think swimming is her first love. At times, it is distracting. Mostly, however, I found it endearing. It is, after all, her journey. In seeking a history, a herstory, to share with others, she discovers her own story and creates one as well. She has some valuable insights to share about gender and gender roles. She is often self-deprecating about her femininity, to which I can somehow relate; by the end, she seems to have come to terms with all her many selves. I could say much more. But please, read it for yourself, even if you’re not lesbian.
I received an ARC copy of Lesbian Love Story in exchange for my honest review. My opinions are my own, Thanks to NetGalley, Catapult Press, and the author.
June 6, 2023
this is really really great! but it ignores a lot of trans lesbians and gender nonconforming lesbians. still, it’s a really great look into historical lesbians who have done amazing things just by loving women.
June 18, 2023
A LESBIAN LOVE STORIES BASED IN ARCHIVAL RESEARCH CENTERED AROUND SWIMMING??? WHAT???? Released in my birthday month?? Thank you so much for writing this book for me!!!
Update post read:
This is everything to me.
Update post read:
This is everything to me.
January 25, 2024
I'm gonna rate this 2.5 stars... with a heavy heart ngl. When I read "This is the story of Possanza’s journey into the archives to recover the stories of lesbians in the 20th Century: who they were, how they loved, why their stories were destroyed, and where their memories echo and live on." on the blurb I was so excited to start this book and to learn more.
Especially because Amelia is right, there is in fact an issue with the erasure of romantic love between women in the stories that we tell / are being told. Which does result in a lack of role models, even more so for the queer women who came before me. But I did have an issue with the foundation of this book, which might be highly personal to my preferences, but I just could not get into how this was written and constructed. I would have LOVED to learn in depth about these women Possanza has researched, but to me that was not what I got. Sure I did still learn a lot of things but it felt incredibly messy. In my opinion this is because Amelia tells her own story at the same time as well, so as a reader you are constantly switching and this was simply too chaotic for me.
I can see why to other people it might actually be valuable to have Amelia's own pov to read as well but I just didn't like it that much / wasn't interested in it enough which made it hard to get through this story. No offense to Possanza! Just her story as a separate book might have worked a bit better. But I do want to credit her still for the research she has done and collected in this book, especially given the very limited resources. I just know that I usually enjoy the books I rate the full 3 stars a bit more than this one.
Especially because Amelia is right, there is in fact an issue with the erasure of romantic love between women in the stories that we tell / are being told. Which does result in a lack of role models, even more so for the queer women who came before me. But I did have an issue with the foundation of this book, which might be highly personal to my preferences, but I just could not get into how this was written and constructed. I would have LOVED to learn in depth about these women Possanza has researched, but to me that was not what I got. Sure I did still learn a lot of things but it felt incredibly messy. In my opinion this is because Amelia tells her own story at the same time as well, so as a reader you are constantly switching and this was simply too chaotic for me.
I can see why to other people it might actually be valuable to have Amelia's own pov to read as well but I just didn't like it that much / wasn't interested in it enough which made it hard to get through this story. No offense to Possanza! Just her story as a separate book might have worked a bit better. But I do want to credit her still for the research she has done and collected in this book, especially given the very limited resources. I just know that I usually enjoy the books I rate the full 3 stars a bit more than this one.
Read
June 10, 2023She reads nonfiction now! (At least when it’s about lesbians)
December 22, 2023
I DID NOT LIKE THIS BOOK! Oh my god I did not.
First issue, methodological: why is Saidiya Hartman only cited for her contributions to our knowledge of Black lesbians a century ago and not for her methodology in that book, which is literally just lifted here? Even if she weren’t going to credit Hartman, which imo is necessary, why wouldn’t she discuss the historiographical context of her project at least a bit rather than just presenting it as something new and groundbreaking that she just kind of felt like doing?
Second issue, sequential: the epilogue was, for me, the best part of the book and absolutely vital framing for establishing the stakes and scope of the project. The thesis she presents there is the reason I’m giving two stars and not one. Why was it at the end???
Third issue: I just didn’t really enjoy the self-insertions :( it’s hard because I’m coming right off of reading a relatively similar project that I LOVED particularly for how much thoughtfulness and reservation there was in the self-insertion. This one felt like the author just expounding on any slight archival detail that reminded her of something in her personal life, which so deeply reduced the impact/resonance/preciousness of those moments. I think it’s really necessary and beautiful to embrace self-insertion in queer archival work but I dooooo still think we need boundaries with the way we center that, as a matter of respect to the ancestors in the archive.
I feel soooo baaaad being so critical of a book like this but it bums me out that this one feels so high-profile compared to the last one I read ugh I cry, almost didn’t finish
First issue, methodological: why is Saidiya Hartman only cited for her contributions to our knowledge of Black lesbians a century ago and not for her methodology in that book, which is literally just lifted here? Even if she weren’t going to credit Hartman, which imo is necessary, why wouldn’t she discuss the historiographical context of her project at least a bit rather than just presenting it as something new and groundbreaking that she just kind of felt like doing?
Second issue, sequential: the epilogue was, for me, the best part of the book and absolutely vital framing for establishing the stakes and scope of the project. The thesis she presents there is the reason I’m giving two stars and not one. Why was it at the end???
Third issue: I just didn’t really enjoy the self-insertions :( it’s hard because I’m coming right off of reading a relatively similar project that I LOVED particularly for how much thoughtfulness and reservation there was in the self-insertion. This one felt like the author just expounding on any slight archival detail that reminded her of something in her personal life, which so deeply reduced the impact/resonance/preciousness of those moments. I think it’s really necessary and beautiful to embrace self-insertion in queer archival work but I dooooo still think we need boundaries with the way we center that, as a matter of respect to the ancestors in the archive.
I feel soooo baaaad being so critical of a book like this but it bums me out that this one feels so high-profile compared to the last one I read ugh I cry, almost didn’t finish
September 22, 2023
I went into this book expecting a queer history of Sapphic romance, as the subtitle for the UK publication would have one believe, but came out with the sense that it was so much more. Lesbian Love Story is more appropriately a memoir in archives, the story of the author's journey of reclaiming and recovering a lesbian identity for herself and those who come after her, told through her quest to restore and recognise the hitherto suppressed personal histories of those who lived the life before our time.
The 'love' in Lesbian Love Story means various things: Possanza here seeks not merely to illuminate the hidden histories of romantic love between women—those like Sappho and Anactoria, Mary Casal and Juno, Mabel Hampton and Lillian Foster, Babe Didrikson and Betty Dodd, and Rusty Brown and Terry; those who would not necessarily abide by being called women had they access to the language we do today. Instead, this book is a gentle examination of lesbian love in all its forms: love that helps us reimagine the idea of care, as illustrated by the friendship between Amy Hoffman and Mike Reigle during the AIDS crisis; love that, like the works of Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, helps cut through the foundational myths perpetuated by racism, classism, and misogyny and looks for true community against the grain of exclusionary politics and separatism; love that serves as an acceptance of the self—love for a lesbian identity, and all that it dares to encompass.
In looking for these loves, Possanza undergoes a journey of her own—through her attendance at drag shows, her participation in swim meets, her long walks across New York City, and her forays into histories that have thus far been averted, suppressed, ruined, and painstakingly assembled, she also creates a record of her own life to add to the archive—one that can enrich each woman who loves women, or loves women and men, into the comfort of knowing that she is not a creature apart as [she] had always felt. One of my favourite things about this memoir-as-archive is the fluency with which it fleshes out the "lesbian"—as something that is political, is social, is not just limited to the 'Gold Standard' or to whiteness or to being assigned female at birth. Another is that it is not a white herstory but one that reflects a broader array of lesbian experiences. Yet another is that it reminds me of the works of Saidiya Hartman (Possanza, too, deploys Hartman's idea of 'critical fabulations' to understand her predecessors), Jeanette Winterson, and even Olivia Laing (if Laing were to write more about women than they currently do).
A loving, tender, brilliantly researched and evocatively written history that I look forward to passing on to more of my friends.
The 'love' in Lesbian Love Story means various things: Possanza here seeks not merely to illuminate the hidden histories of romantic love between women—those like Sappho and Anactoria, Mary Casal and Juno, Mabel Hampton and Lillian Foster, Babe Didrikson and Betty Dodd, and Rusty Brown and Terry; those who would not necessarily abide by being called women had they access to the language we do today. Instead, this book is a gentle examination of lesbian love in all its forms: love that helps us reimagine the idea of care, as illustrated by the friendship between Amy Hoffman and Mike Reigle during the AIDS crisis; love that, like the works of Gloria Anzaldua and Cherrie Moraga, helps cut through the foundational myths perpetuated by racism, classism, and misogyny and looks for true community against the grain of exclusionary politics and separatism; love that serves as an acceptance of the self—love for a lesbian identity, and all that it dares to encompass.
In looking for these loves, Possanza undergoes a journey of her own—through her attendance at drag shows, her participation in swim meets, her long walks across New York City, and her forays into histories that have thus far been averted, suppressed, ruined, and painstakingly assembled, she also creates a record of her own life to add to the archive—one that can enrich each woman who loves women, or loves women and men, into the comfort of knowing that she is not a creature apart as [she] had always felt. One of my favourite things about this memoir-as-archive is the fluency with which it fleshes out the "lesbian"—as something that is political, is social, is not just limited to the 'Gold Standard' or to whiteness or to being assigned female at birth. Another is that it is not a white herstory but one that reflects a broader array of lesbian experiences. Yet another is that it reminds me of the works of Saidiya Hartman (Possanza, too, deploys Hartman's idea of 'critical fabulations' to understand her predecessors), Jeanette Winterson, and even Olivia Laing (if Laing were to write more about women than they currently do).
A loving, tender, brilliantly researched and evocatively written history that I look forward to passing on to more of my friends.
October 23, 2023
So one would think it's all in the title, but! It's all in the subtitle: "A memoir in archives".
This book has given me SO much food for thought. An intellectual cornucopia, if you will. So much to think about and process and ruminate and consider.
This book explores lives of some "lesbians" in history, some of them who even lived before the word lesbian existed. Even before the concept was given a name (hence the quotation marks before), when it was a sexual orientation and also a gender performance, a time when the lines between these two were blurred. Lesbianhood (?) as we know it (an identity and/or a political stance) is so so recent, and partially because of the archival silence around women, even more so dissident women. In this book there's an incredibly interesting dive into the little archives that do exist, unveiling specific queer stories, telling us more about the zeitgeist, and providing an abundance of musings on gender expression, queerness, friendship, love - all the good stuff!
This goes straight into my Lesbian Lore List (@Audrey get on it!), a must read for anyone identifying as a lesbian or as queer. Folks, we must know our past to define our collective future!
This book has given me SO much food for thought. An intellectual cornucopia, if you will. So much to think about and process and ruminate and consider.
This book explores lives of some "lesbians" in history, some of them who even lived before the word lesbian existed. Even before the concept was given a name (hence the quotation marks before), when it was a sexual orientation and also a gender performance, a time when the lines between these two were blurred. Lesbianhood (?) as we know it (an identity and/or a political stance) is so so recent, and partially because of the archival silence around women, even more so dissident women. In this book there's an incredibly interesting dive into the little archives that do exist, unveiling specific queer stories, telling us more about the zeitgeist, and providing an abundance of musings on gender expression, queerness, friendship, love - all the good stuff!
This goes straight into my Lesbian Lore List (@Audrey get on it!), a must read for anyone identifying as a lesbian or as queer. Folks, we must know our past to define our collective future!
March 31, 2025
I came for this historical lesbians. I stayed for the historical lesbians (and also because I refuse to review a book I DNF'd). And this book does contain historical lesbians. But it also contains so much more about this author than I cared to know. If this author had included a personal essay as the final chapter talking about living life in contemporary NYC as someone wrestling with sexuality and gender expression, I would have found it passable. But every single historic account was interjected with snippets of the author's life that I just didn't care about. It really detracted from the archival stories being revived here. That's not at all why I picked up this piece. If I had known I was getting a former Buzzfeed writer's personal memoir wrapped up in poorly-reconstructed snippets of historical lesbianism, well, I would have never picked up this book. But alas, that's what I got. And alas, that's why it took me six months to read this book. Because I wanted the historical lesbians, but I had to dredge through a lot of contemporary nonsense to get there.
April 1, 2024
This is not "a queer history of sapphic romance", 60% of it is the author telling her own life's story. If you're going to do that, name the book something else or people will be dissapointed!
It was one star but then I saw that she did use sources
It was one star but then I saw that she did use sources
July 7, 2025
this pissed me offfff...what a pale and shallow imitation of my autobiography of carson mccullers. i've had it up to here! with people gleefully admitting they aren't historians (or archivists or even, as in the case of the self deprecatory poor me epilogue, lesbians) and then being lauded for writing mediocre wikipedia articles interspersed with diary entries. what i mean is, even in the epilogue, ostensibly attempting to complicate and historicize the definition of lesbianism, possanza comes off as flatly self centered. i would care about her little stories if she were my friend. she is not my friend. as another reviewer said, citing sadiya hartmann once in a limited context and then yanking her entire methodology w/o comment is not a great look.
AND ANOTHER THING this was even more annoying to read directly after let the record show. in contrast to schulman writing about the contradictory frustrating powerful community she was a part of, it's evident that possanza literally just grabbed random life stories to tick boxes. madame please just write short stories this is not it.
AND ANOTHER THING this was even more annoying to read directly after let the record show. in contrast to schulman writing about the contradictory frustrating powerful community she was a part of, it's evident that possanza literally just grabbed random life stories to tick boxes. madame please just write short stories this is not it.
July 24, 2024
4.5 Stars
A great crash course on lesbian history. Obviously, we could only imagine how much of the earlier Sapphic women’s lives and stories were buried/hidden due to circumstances, poor data conservation and plain erasure. I commend the author’s effort on the research they did. It wouldn’t have been easy to dig up something that was purposely buried (for some women). My take away from the book is that, I would loooove to have been a spectator in the underground gay scene in Brooklyn between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
A great crash course on lesbian history. Obviously, we could only imagine how much of the earlier Sapphic women’s lives and stories were buried/hidden due to circumstances, poor data conservation and plain erasure. I commend the author’s effort on the research they did. It wouldn’t have been easy to dig up something that was purposely buried (for some women). My take away from the book is that, I would loooove to have been a spectator in the underground gay scene in Brooklyn between the late 1800’s and early 1900’s.
May 7, 2025
The writing was a bit...disjointed? I didn't enjoy this book as much as I thought I would. I still appreciate learning more about lesbians and our history.
June 18, 2023
Lesbian Love Story is a book that blends memoir and biography to explore the lives and romances of seven main figures, plus the author, whilst arguing for using past stories like these to illuminate the present and fight for the future. Each chapter explores a different love story from the archival research that Possanza has done, focusing mostly on one of the two people and exploring their life and how their actions and experiences fit into a broad definition of lesbianism.
What I didn't realise from the blurb is that out of the seven, all except Sappho spent time in New York (to connect with the author and the memoir element), and there's generally a real focus on twentieth century America. Obviously, you can write a book with a focus, but probably the blurb needs to make this clearer, highlighting the New York connection or something.. The ordering of the chapters is chronological apart from Sappho who is chapter 4, and I wasn't really sure why this was—it was a bit confusing to suddenly have Sappho discussed here and not at the start (or even at the end).
The chapters tend to explore broader issues affecting the main "protagonists", plus weaving in memoir elements from the author, so there's a lot to move between, and on top of that there's a lot of direct quotes from the individuals from the archives mixed in as well using italics. It is an interesting way to approach delving into archive history and trying to bring people to life, but at times I found it too easy to get lost. The chapter about Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga was most interesting for me, as it explored some of the histories of lesbian communities in the 1970s and 80s particularly and some of the arguments around lesbian separatism (and does mention how this has evolved into modern discourse, but only briefly). The chapter about queer friendship and AIDS very notably lacked any mention of trans women and the impact of AIDS upon them, and in general it is surprising in a book that argues for seeing the variation in lesbian experience and identity to not cover a trans lesbian in one of the chapters.
I liked that the ending called for radical change and using these historical figures from the archives as part of this work, as it gave a sense of purpose beyond uncovering histories, to look to the past but also the future. The acceptance that lesbians can have very diverse experiences was also a good note to end on, and in general the ending shows how queer history is important in allowing us to be united rather than divided.
Overall, the book wasn't always for me, as sometimes the threads it wove together didn't always work, and I wish it had maybe explored more the New York connection if that was the reason for having those figures chosen to cover. However, there's a lot of engaging content and I did learn about people I'd never heard of before.
What I didn't realise from the blurb is that out of the seven, all except Sappho spent time in New York (to connect with the author and the memoir element), and there's generally a real focus on twentieth century America. Obviously, you can write a book with a focus, but probably the blurb needs to make this clearer, highlighting the New York connection or something.. The ordering of the chapters is chronological apart from Sappho who is chapter 4, and I wasn't really sure why this was—it was a bit confusing to suddenly have Sappho discussed here and not at the start (or even at the end).
The chapters tend to explore broader issues affecting the main "protagonists", plus weaving in memoir elements from the author, so there's a lot to move between, and on top of that there's a lot of direct quotes from the individuals from the archives mixed in as well using italics. It is an interesting way to approach delving into archive history and trying to bring people to life, but at times I found it too easy to get lost. The chapter about Gloria Anzaldúa and Cherríe Moraga was most interesting for me, as it explored some of the histories of lesbian communities in the 1970s and 80s particularly and some of the arguments around lesbian separatism (and does mention how this has evolved into modern discourse, but only briefly). The chapter about queer friendship and AIDS very notably lacked any mention of trans women and the impact of AIDS upon them, and in general it is surprising in a book that argues for seeing the variation in lesbian experience and identity to not cover a trans lesbian in one of the chapters.
I liked that the ending called for radical change and using these historical figures from the archives as part of this work, as it gave a sense of purpose beyond uncovering histories, to look to the past but also the future. The acceptance that lesbians can have very diverse experiences was also a good note to end on, and in general the ending shows how queer history is important in allowing us to be united rather than divided.
Overall, the book wasn't always for me, as sometimes the threads it wove together didn't always work, and I wish it had maybe explored more the New York connection if that was the reason for having those figures chosen to cover. However, there's a lot of engaging content and I did learn about people I'd never heard of before.
July 28, 2023
I have my reservations about books that deliberately fictionalise parts of the factual stories they are telling. It seems to happen a fair bit in books that deal with lesbian history. I understand this is because lesbian history has, for so long been one that has been hidden or in a more sinister way, erased, but it still makes me squirm a bit. Lesbian Love Story does this with varying degrees of success. The love story of the title has multiple meanings in the book itself. This is a book about the author's love for her lesbian history, the women who make up that history and her own experiences of falling in love with what it means to her to be a lesbian. The celebration and raising up of the women she chooses is lovely. I also enjoyed the elements of her own story she chose to tell. It broke down for me when she filled in the gaps that were not there in documents or other people's memory, mainly because it felt like the author shoe horning her own desires into the stories and it broke the spell the stories cast by themselves. The book gets stronger and to me, much more coherent and interesting towards the end, where there is less to guess at because more lesbian history was documented and lesbians were able to be much more open about their lives.
dnf
October 15, 2024There are so many wonderful, well-written, interesting books out there. This unfortunately is not one of them and I feel that I am wasting my time. Really cool concept that was just badly executed sorryyyy
June 9, 2024
"i want to tell tales of a lesbian life... i want to talk about the wonderful women i've known and i want to talk about what it's meant to be a lesbian and how it was at the core of all i think that was best in me"
ngl i was first drawn to this bc of the gorgeous cover - but so glad i picked it up bc i LOVED this sm
i know people had mixed feelings about this being part history and part memoir/author commentary - but for me, anelia's commentary, humour, heart, and personal stories added such a depth and love to the story that really made this book special.
some takeaways/thoughts/feelings (i have 300 annotations in this book so this is nowhere near everything i loved/thought about this book):
- my very first impression was the joy of seeing lesbians/lesbianism written about with so much love and positivity. something that continued to mean so much to me throughout the book.
- so much of amelia's personal thoughts and feelings resonated so deeply with me. "i resolved to become a collector of lesbians... i had grown up without any lesbian role models and so i had gone out in search of them" - the constant desire to see yourself represented. to find others like you. the book constantly reflected amelia's desire to find herself represented in other women. throughout the book i kept feeling that joy of seeing that we had always been here. there are others like me. but god, the desire to be a part of these queer communities that she describes - both in her and these other women's lives.
- trying to find your identity, how you fit as a women who doesn't fit standard expectations of femininity
- but also, there was so much history - not just of these specific lesbians, but of queer history in general, which was so interesting to read and see from different perspectives. i wish i had my own physical copy to annotate bc digital just doesn't hit the same. so many more things i'd love to learn more about from this book.
- "all it takes to be a lesbian is the desire. do you want to be a lesbian? then you're a lesbian" - lesbianism/queerness being a choice - not in a bad way - but a positive way - people love their identity so much they continue to choose it etc, and also recognising there is nuance in the identity (e.g., rejecting gold standard lesbian etc) "in spite of the hetersoexuality that surrounded her, she made the choice to be queer" - a concept i first encountered at uni and really want to explore more!
- "isn't taking care of our friends the most radical thing we can do? isn't it only seen as less than that because it's so often been the purview of women?"
- while the book did a great job of showcasing lesbians of colour and from working class backgrounds, it was very us-centric
- i wish there had been some pictures throughout the book - of the lesbians she talks about, of the physical items she finds in the archives, of the places she visits etc.
- it also always makes me sad reading books like this because i know i won't remember a lot of what i read/unfortunately in a few months its likely i probably wont even remember the names of these women.
October 5, 2023
"the archives was created to break the concept of fame, if you have the courage to touch another woman and to claim that touch...that, for us, was fame enough." these are the last words in the book, a quote from joan nestle (founder of the lesbian herstory archives) and it is a pretty neat representation of what this book is grappling with. how do we find lesbians in archives which suppress their ability to "claim that touch," and how do we find ourselves without their archival presence? the concept of this book is really similar to that of "wayward lives, beautiful experiments" by saidiya hartman, which is ultimately a more successful book because hartman is a more compelling writer, and the ways she fills in archival absences from her subjects' lives are more exciting and richer and expansive, but i appreciated possanza's use of that framework nonetheless. it is hard to write about archival absence when the subjects you choose are present in archives, where only their lesbianism is elided— it seems limiting to possanza's project in some ways. but i liked the way she talked about love & lesbian identity & how to claim it, and i liked the moments where she talked about her own contact with the archives, and the intimacy with which she imbues them. worth a read if you're into queer history for sure! not so much if you're into memoir
February 15, 2023
This memoir/archival dive into the lives and loves of less explored lesbians in history was well-paced, interesting from start to finish, with end-of-chapter extracts which I looked forward to. The experience of reading this was informed by two previous reads: A Life of One's Own and Lesbian Death - the first being a similar format but not executed with the same amount of insight, or the same balance of personal and historical, and the second challenging the viability of (and in parts lamenting the loss of) the term lesbian from both a political and social context, but Possanza's book was unapologetically lesbian, without being exclusionary. And where in A Life a One's Own the author's story was sometimes a jarring departure from the literary criticism/author biography that dominated the narrative, Possanza's own story, all tied together thematically with swimming, worked perfectly within the other stories she was shedding light on, and never seemed an interruption from the "true" story being told.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
Thoroughly enjoyable.
April 7, 2024
I just wrote an essay that focused on some of the tangents or i guess realizations in this book which just made me really happy and excited because i love other peoples words and being able to articulate the exact thing you feel or watching someone else do it is one of the best feelings ever.
Anyway this was exactly the title and so so so good i really enjoyed it and all the lesbians i read about including the author.
Anyway this was exactly the title and so so so good i really enjoyed it and all the lesbians i read about including the author.
April 13, 2024
This was a very special read. Didn’t quite hook me like a fiction book, but I loved to read these people’s stories, and I don’t know (compare, relate, laugh) recognize them? Just a lot of stories that don’t often get told, and from such a kind light. The author added such great stories and thoughts to this book, I definitely recommend the read (Purdue friends it will be at the West Lafayette public library soon. likely tomorrow)
dnf
May 16, 2025DNF @ 21% :( Maybe I'll come back to this someday. The writing style is just very dry. I'm not getting as much archives as I want or as much memoir as I want. Still chasing that My Autobiography of Carson McCullers high...
Read
May 20, 2025This book is primarily about three things I love: lesbians, archives, and swimming. I should have loved it, but for some reason found it boring af!!!! Sorry queen
July 13, 2023
This is the best
December 3, 2025
I love lesbians and this book makes me love them more. As a lesbian, thank you for this and for the light shone on the archives of the forgotten.
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