Status Updates From Loving Her

I'm going to be giving this three stars for historical importance but I want y'all to know I do NOT vibe with it. I would eat it up if it was pre-Stonewall pulp but I feel like we should've matured a bit by the early '70s. Need more books by Black lesbians that are my genre so I don't have to feel bad about disliking stuff like this and Rosewater (yuck).

Ok, so. She just raped her girlfriend. I'm used to plot points like this in lesbian pulp but this book was published well into the 1970s.

Was everyone at Naiad Press mentally well? Was Ms. Shockley ok? I understand that consent is complicated, but did she really have to write in 3 instances of Terry saying no AND have Renay push her down onto the bed????

"But I must find myself again" (pg. 140) yeah, I must find myself again, too, dear Renay. Tomorrow I will find myself a piano and play Gershwin, "The Man I Love." I will try to imagine what it means to love a man, and will try to cherish the woman I loved dearly.
This novel is doing things to me, changing me deeply. Cheers to love and cheers to music! I do love to be a woman, a musician and to be in love.

I’m at the place where Jerome Lee beat up Renay because she left him and now she is with a woman. Can’t help but remember how my ex would slap me on the face for no reason, I literally want to keep reading but can’t. Men who use violence on women, are you for real? Like, you all deserve to get your hands broken, or just die? I hate you.

If there was a prize for writing scenes of lovemaking, Ann Allen Shockley would be the winner of that prize every goddamn year. I literally am speechless of beautiful word usage and hyper-realistic chemistry. Also, I hope male writers get banned from writing any form of intimacy with women because apparently men can not even differentiate whether women fake it or not in the first place. (sighs in disappointment)

A great novel touching upon big topics so early for its time. A pioneer. Intersectionality of black lesbianism, against the myth of it being an illness or anything prompted by external factors; the racism, the sexism, heteropatriarchy, being a minority, the relativity of oppression… Not even talking about the weird similarity I feel with Renay! A jazz pianist… makes me feel a weird nostalgia for Sonny’s Blues.