THE WHOLE NAKED TRUTH OF OUR LIVES

570 Pages·2013·2.26 MB·English

by  Julie R. Enszer

ABSTRACT

Title of Document: THE WHOLE NAKED TRUTH OF OUR
LIVES: LESBIAN-FEMINIST PRINT
CULTURE FROM 1969 THROUGH 1989

Julie R. Enszer, Doctor of Philosophy, 2013

Directed By: Professor Deborah S. Rosenfelt, Women’s
Studies, & Professor Martha Nell Smith, English

During the 1970s and the 1980s, lesbian-feminists created a vibrant lesbian print
culture, participating in the creation, production, and distribution of books, chapbooks,
journals, newspapers, and other printed materials. This extraordinary output of creative
material provides a rich archive for new insights about the Women’s Liberation
Movement (WLM), gay liberation (the LGBT movement), and recent U.S. social history.
In The Whole Naked Truth of Our Lives, I construct and analyze historical narratives of
lesbian-feminist publishers in the United States between 1969 and 1989. Interdisciplinary
in its conception, design, and execution, The Whole Naked Truth of Our Lives is the only
sustained examination of lesbian print culture during the 1970s and 1980s; it extends the
work of Simone Murray on feminist print culture in the United Kingdom as well as the
work of literary scholars Kim Whitehead, Kate Adams, Trysh Travis, Bonnie
Zimmerman, and Martha Vicinus, and historians Martin Meeker, Marcia Gallo, Rodger
Streitmatter, Abe Peck, John McMillian, and Peter Richardson. From archival material,
including correspondence, publishing ephemera such as flyers and catalogues, and
meeting notes, oral history interviews, and published books, I assemble a history of
lesbian-feminist publishing that challenges fundamental ideas about the WLM, gay
liberation, and U.S. social history as well as remapping the contours of current historical
and literary narratives.
In the excitement of the WLM, multiple feminist practices expressed exuberant
possibilities for a feminist revolution. Cultural feminism and lesbian separatism were
vibrant expressions of the WLM; they were not antagonistic to radical feminism or liberal
feminism but rather complementary and overlapping. Economic restructuring in the
United States (e.g. globalization, decreasing governmental support for the arts, and
neoliberalism) tempered visions for a lesbian-feminist revolution. Lesbian-feminist
publishers experienced economic restructuring as it unfolded and actively discussed the
political, economic, and theoretical implications. The strategies and responses of lesbian-
feminist publishers demonstrate the effects of and resistances to these macro-economic
forces. Examining the economics of book publishing explains how literary artists and
other creative intellectuals support themselves in capitalist economies, illuminates
broader intellectual and cultural currents, and suggests how broader economic trends in
the United States interacted with cultural production.
THE WHOLE NAKED TRUTH OF OUR LIVES:
LESBIAN-FEMINIST PRINT CULTURE FROM 1969 THROUGH 1989

By

Julie R. Enszer

Dissertation submitted to the Faculty of the Graduate School of the
University of Maryland, College Park, in partial fulfillment
of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Philosophy
2013

Advisory Committee:
Professor Deborah S. Rosenfelt, Co-Chair
Professor Martha Nell Smith, Co-Chair
Professor Katie King
Professor Claire Moses
Professor Sonya Michel
Assistant Professor Christina Hanhardt
© Copyright by
Julie R. Enszer
2013
Dedication
For my beloved, Kimberly A. Sherrill

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Acknowledgements
Since the late 1980s, I have been reading books, journals and other artifacts of
lesbian print culture. This project is one part of my long intellectual and personal
engagement with these materials. First and foremost, I am grateful for and indebted to all
of the authors, publishers, distributors, and booksellers who brought lesbian books into
my life. Ultimately, this project is a way to honor their work, to let them know that I
heard them through the text on the page. They made a difference in my life.
I am grateful for the careful guidance and attention of my dissertation co-chairs,
Debby Rosenfelt and Martha Nell Smith. I could not have asked for better intellectual
guides through this process. Their good cheer and constant encouragement were vital. I
thank them both. The other members of my dissertation committee, Katie King, Claire
Moses, Christina Hanhardt, and Sonya Michel, each contributed enormously to the
creation of this dissertation. I appreciate the many thoughtful conversations I had with
each of them.
I am grateful to the following people who generously sent me materials for the
project, including copies of original lesbian-feminist journals, dissertations, and other
nuggets of lesbian-feminist print culture, including Judith Barrington, Ruth Gundle,
Esther Helfgott, Cheryl Clarke, Ellen Shapiro and Gail White. Many women involved in
lesbian print culture have been informants and supporters of this work from the
beginning, including Joan Larkin, Bea Gates, Cheryl Clarke, Marie Kuda and Minnie
Bruce Pratt; I appreciate their assistance. The Astraea Foundation delighted me by
providing a copy of their spring 1984 newsletter from their organizational records.
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Fortuitously, I connected with two daughters of June Arnold, Roberta and Fairfax, who
expanded my understanding of Arnold and Daughters, Inc.; I am grateful to both of them.
I appreciate the kind spirits and good conversations that many offered along the
way, enhancing my own thinking about the material and the work of this dissertation. I
extend special appreciation to the entire faculty and staff in the women’s studies
department at the University of Maryland, and particularly Elsa Barkley Brown, who
modeled intellectual engagement in ways that I want to emulate, and my graduate student
cohort, Lara Torsky, Laura Brunner, and our adopted cohort member Jeannette Soon-
Ludes. I am also grateful to colleagues and advisors in the LGBT Studies program,
particularly Marilee Lindemann, J.V. Sapinoso, and Jason Rudy. Linda Kauffman in the
English department provided extraordinarily helpful feedback and guidance at crucial
moments. Many others have provided enormous assistance to me in this work including
Sharon Deevey, a member of the Furies, always ready to answer questions from her
memories and experiences; Agatha Beins, dear friend, reader, and believer in this
dissertation; Gerald Maa, my constant correspondent throughout graduate school, who
has seen the ups and downs of this work mapped by pen on paper for many years; Jo
Passett, who shares my excitement for lesbian literary history; my dissertation writing
group Michelle Boswell, Mike Quilligan, Geneviève Pagé, Maria Velazquez, and Alyssa
Samek; and finally Minnie Bruce Pratt—her writing has been a beacon for me since I was
a young reader, and it has been an extraordinary pleasure to share work in progress with
her for her astute feedback and kind words.
This dissertation would not be possible without extensive research support. I am
grateful to the Women’s Studies Department and the University of Maryland for the
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Flagship Fellowship and on-going support as a graduate assistant; a Duberman
Fellowship at the New York Public Library supported archival research there; a Mary
Lily Research Grant supported travel to the Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History
and Culture at Duke University; the Jacob K. Goldhaber Travel Award provided support
for a research trip to Los Angeles, the Schlesinger Library Dissertation grant supported
research at Radcliffe; a summer 2011 research travel grant from the Women’s Studies
Department and a research travel grant from the Dickinson Electronic Archives enabled
me to visit San Francisco archives. The Mary Savage Snouffer Fellowship gave me the
time and space to think and write in a focused and productive way. The Woodrow Wilson
National Fellowship in Women’s Studies with the special designation as an Alicia
Ostriker Fellow sustained me for a final year. I am grateful to all of the people and
organizations that invested in this project; I hope this work is worthy of the support.
Grateful appreciation to Judy Grahn and Red Hen Press for permission to include
“Talkers in a Dream Doorway” and “I am the wall at the lip of the water.”
Finally, I share my great appreciation for animal companions. Shelby spent hours
sitting at my feet while I worked at the computer and was the first one to lead me back to
my work room when I had been away too long. Emma brought delightful puppy
distractions throughout the process, including ensuring that I took a break every day at
five P.M. to give her food and love. Some animal companions did not get to see me at the
finish line: Gertrude, HD, Homer, and Mary Claire. I appreciate them and miss them.
This work is dedicated to Kim. Kim fed me and supported me throughout graduate
school—she even legally married me at the nadir, when I never thought I would finish or
be employed again. Kimba, thank you. I love you.
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Table of Contents

Introduction ..........................................................................................................................1
Chapter 1 Women's Press Collective, Diana Press, and Daughters Publishing
Company, Inc. ....................................................................................................................55
Chapter 2 Persephone, Long Haul, Kitchen Table Press ............................................145
Chapter 3 Small Lesbian-Feminist Presses .................................................................229
Chapter 4 “To All of the Women Who Find Something of Themselves in It”: Lesbian
Anthologies ......................................................................................................................290
Chapter 5 Literary Appraisals .....................................................................................371
Chapter 6 Aesthetic Appraisals ...................................................................................447
Conclusion .......................................................................................................................531
A Note about the Lesbian Poetry Archive .......................................................................540
Bibliography ....................................................................................................................544
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Introduction
The Keeper of Accounts
“I am a keeper of accounts” - Irena Klepfisz, Different Enclosures.

“My subject is the extraordinary tide of poetry by American women in our own
time. An increasing proportion of this work is explicitly female in the sense that
the writers have chosen to explore experiences central to their sex and to find
forms and styles appropriate to their exploration. These writers are, I believe,
challenging and transforming the history of poetry. They constitute a literary
movement comparable to romanticism or modernism in our literary past.” Alicia
Ostriker, Stealing the Language.

The Whole Naked Truth of Our Lives is a history of lesbian print culture from 1969
through 1989. The title is from Dorothy Allison’s poem, “The Women Who Hate Me,”
the title poem of Allison’s poetry collection, first published by Long Haul Press in 1983
and later reissued by Firebrand Press in 1991. This rich poem, written in seven sections,
explores the tensions between and among women in the narrator’s life. Allison says of
the women who hate her, “they cut me/as men can’t. Men don’t count./I can handle men.
1
Never expected better/of any man anyway.” The pain of rejection by women, as opposed
to men, highlights the centrality of lesbianism in the poem. Women reject the narrator for
2
being poor, southern, fat, and having “life-saving, precious bravado.” The women who
hate the narrator often hate her for her lesbianism, for her open, carnal sexuality. The
narrator confides that the women who hate her also hate her sister, “with her many
3
children, her weakness for/good whiskey, country music, bad men.” Making this
connection with her sister, Allison demonstrates how sexuality, not just lesbianism, is

1
Dorothy Allison, “The Women Who Hate Me,” The Women Who Hate Me (Brooklyn,
NY: Long Haul Press), 18.

2
Ibid., 19.
3
Ibid., 22.
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