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gwen_konchar 's review for:
Stone Butch Blues
by Leslie Feinberg
edit: forgive me for my incredibly long review. i also kept saying this to my partner at lunch but this book has changed how i think about all other books, maybe it's revency bias but this is the most 5/5 book ive ever read and idk how many other books ive read that hit the same mark.
wow what an incredible book, truly a piece of text that defies explanation and expectations. ive heard this book talked about over and over and thought many times 'theres no way it can be that incredible' but here i am! 4 days after starting it finished (an unheard of feat even for texts i adore), completely blown away by its truth, beauty and heartache.
stone butch blue is 22 years old. the struggles in this text are not the same struggles of today but the struggles of today are the echos of the past. the queer community is under incredible scrutiny especially the trans community as a whole. if you're trans i dont have to explain the vile rhetoric we wake up to every morning, our existence deemed other, unnatural, and disgusting. the hard times jess experiences are very similar to the hard times coming our way and while reading its hard to remember this isnt an autobiographical account of life but like leslie says
"Like my own life, this novel defies easy classification. If you found Stone Butch Blues in a bookstore or library, what category was it in? Lesbian fiction? Gender studies? Like the germinal novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe/John Hall, this book is a lesbian novel and a transgender novel-making "trans" gente a verb, as well as an adjective.
"Is it fiction?" I am frequently asked. Is it true? Is it real? Oh, it's real all right. So real it bleeds. And yet it is a remembrance: Never underestimate the power of fiction to tell the truth."
it can be so difficult and heartbreaking to read through the abuse the characters of this story experience, the loss and utter despair they have to survive through. but with every moment of difficulty and anguish there is so much love. the community jess and i inhabitant is one so beautiful that it can never be taken from it's people. we have and will continue to face abuse and discrimination but there will be beauty and joy and love. no matter what our love we give to each other cannot be taken from us.
to finish off some passages that i will always hold in my heart
""Caw, caw!" A huge black crow circled above me in the air and landed on a rock nearby. We looked at each other in silence.
"Crow, are you a boy or a girl?"
"Caw, caw!"
I laughed and rolled over on my back. The sky was crayon blue.
I pretended I was lying on the white cotton clouds. The earth was damp against my back. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool. I felt happy. Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me."
"When it was my turn to read the next day, I brought my math book with me up to the front of the room. At the beginning of the semester I'd made a cover for the textbook out of a brown grocery bag and copied a poem by Poe across the inside flap.
I cleared my throat and looked at Mrs. Noble. She smiled and nodded at me. I read the first eight lines:
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were-I have not seen
As others saw I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone.
I tried to read the words in a flat sing-song tone without feeling, so none of the kids would understand what his poem meant to me, but their eyes were already glazed with boredom. I dropped my gaze and walked back to my seat. Mrs. Noble squeezed my arm as I passed, and when I looked up I saw she had tears in her eyes. The way she looked at me made me want to cry, too. It was as though she could really see me, and there was no criticism of me in her eyes."
"There's this couple-a he-she and a femme. All they were doing was looking at rings, you know?" Angie sat back and exhaled slowly. "Everyone was glaring at them. The pressure just popped those two women out the door like corks. I wanted to run out after them and beg them to take me with them. And all the while I was thinking, Oh shit, that's gonna be me."
Angie shook her head. "It's tough when you see it coming, ain't it?"
"Yeah," I said, "it's like driving on a single-lane highway and seeing an eighteen-wheeler heading right for you.""
"...I thought if I called you in sick, you might be able to keep your job. I told them you got mugged and you'd be out for a week or two. Jess, I referred to you as she. I wasn't thinking. They heard it. I'm so sorry. I know it means I lost that job for you."
Ruth touched my face. "I know you must be really mad at me." I shook my head. It was a mistake, that's all. I thought about Duffy, the union organizer who'd done the same thing, and I forgave him in retrospect.
I fluttered my hand to ask for something to write with. Ruth came back with a pen and paper. My right hand was stiff and sore, but the words I wrote were legible-the message life had given me another chance to deliver. Ruth read the words out loud: Thank you for your love. And then we cried together."
"I am typing these words as June 2003 surges with Pride. What vear is it now, as you read them? What has been won; what has been lost? I can't see from here; I can't predict. But I know this: You are experiencing the impact of what we in the movement take a stand on and fight for today. The present and past are the trajectory of the future. But the arc of history does not bend towards justice automatically as the great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass observed, without struggle there is no progress....
That's what the characters in Stone Butch Blues fought for. The last chapter of this saga of struggle has not yet been written."
wow what an incredible book, truly a piece of text that defies explanation and expectations. ive heard this book talked about over and over and thought many times 'theres no way it can be that incredible' but here i am! 4 days after starting it finished (an unheard of feat even for texts i adore), completely blown away by its truth, beauty and heartache.
stone butch blue is 22 years old. the struggles in this text are not the same struggles of today but the struggles of today are the echos of the past. the queer community is under incredible scrutiny especially the trans community as a whole. if you're trans i dont have to explain the vile rhetoric we wake up to every morning, our existence deemed other, unnatural, and disgusting. the hard times jess experiences are very similar to the hard times coming our way and while reading its hard to remember this isnt an autobiographical account of life but like leslie says
"Like my own life, this novel defies easy classification. If you found Stone Butch Blues in a bookstore or library, what category was it in? Lesbian fiction? Gender studies? Like the germinal novel The Well of Loneliness by Radclyffe/John Hall, this book is a lesbian novel and a transgender novel-making "trans" gente a verb, as well as an adjective.
"Is it fiction?" I am frequently asked. Is it true? Is it real? Oh, it's real all right. So real it bleeds. And yet it is a remembrance: Never underestimate the power of fiction to tell the truth."
it can be so difficult and heartbreaking to read through the abuse the characters of this story experience, the loss and utter despair they have to survive through. but with every moment of difficulty and anguish there is so much love. the community jess and i inhabitant is one so beautiful that it can never be taken from it's people. we have and will continue to face abuse and discrimination but there will be beauty and joy and love. no matter what our love we give to each other cannot be taken from us.
to finish off some passages that i will always hold in my heart
""Caw, caw!" A huge black crow circled above me in the air and landed on a rock nearby. We looked at each other in silence.
"Crow, are you a boy or a girl?"
"Caw, caw!"
I laughed and rolled over on my back. The sky was crayon blue.
I pretended I was lying on the white cotton clouds. The earth was damp against my back. The sun was hot, the breeze was cool. I felt happy. Nature held me close and seemed to find no fault with me."
"When it was my turn to read the next day, I brought my math book with me up to the front of the room. At the beginning of the semester I'd made a cover for the textbook out of a brown grocery bag and copied a poem by Poe across the inside flap.
I cleared my throat and looked at Mrs. Noble. She smiled and nodded at me. I read the first eight lines:
From childhood's hour I have not been As others were-I have not seen
As others saw I could not bring
My passions from a common spring.
From the same source I have not taken
My sorrow; I could not awaken
My heart to joy at the same tone;
And all I lov'd, I lov'd alone.
I tried to read the words in a flat sing-song tone without feeling, so none of the kids would understand what his poem meant to me, but their eyes were already glazed with boredom. I dropped my gaze and walked back to my seat. Mrs. Noble squeezed my arm as I passed, and when I looked up I saw she had tears in her eyes. The way she looked at me made me want to cry, too. It was as though she could really see me, and there was no criticism of me in her eyes."
"There's this couple-a he-she and a femme. All they were doing was looking at rings, you know?" Angie sat back and exhaled slowly. "Everyone was glaring at them. The pressure just popped those two women out the door like corks. I wanted to run out after them and beg them to take me with them. And all the while I was thinking, Oh shit, that's gonna be me."
Angie shook her head. "It's tough when you see it coming, ain't it?"
"Yeah," I said, "it's like driving on a single-lane highway and seeing an eighteen-wheeler heading right for you.""
"...I thought if I called you in sick, you might be able to keep your job. I told them you got mugged and you'd be out for a week or two. Jess, I referred to you as she. I wasn't thinking. They heard it. I'm so sorry. I know it means I lost that job for you."
Ruth touched my face. "I know you must be really mad at me." I shook my head. It was a mistake, that's all. I thought about Duffy, the union organizer who'd done the same thing, and I forgave him in retrospect.
I fluttered my hand to ask for something to write with. Ruth came back with a pen and paper. My right hand was stiff and sore, but the words I wrote were legible-the message life had given me another chance to deliver. Ruth read the words out loud: Thank you for your love. And then we cried together."
"I am typing these words as June 2003 surges with Pride. What vear is it now, as you read them? What has been won; what has been lost? I can't see from here; I can't predict. But I know this: You are experiencing the impact of what we in the movement take a stand on and fight for today. The present and past are the trajectory of the future. But the arc of history does not bend towards justice automatically as the great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass observed, without struggle there is no progress....
That's what the characters in Stone Butch Blues fought for. The last chapter of this saga of struggle has not yet been written."