Songs to a Handsome Woman

Rita Mae Brown

[description to come]

INCLUSION CRITERIA

Author Rita Mae Brown has often been referred to as a lesbian because of her well-known earlier works Venus Envy and Rubyfruit Jungle as well as her involvement with the radical feminist movement (she co-founded The Furies Collective in the 1970s), but in interviews she frequently pushed back against being labeled a “lesbian writer” (and most other labels). In an interview with TIME, she said “I don’t believe in straight or gay. I really don’t. I think we’re all degrees of bisexual. There may be a few people on the extreme if it’s a bell curve who really truly are gay or really truly are straight. Because nobody had ever said these things and used their real name, I suddenly became the only lesbian in America. It was hysterical. It was a misnomer, but it’s okay. It was a fight worth fighting.”