Lesbian and bisexual identities : constructing communities, constructing selves /

How people label and identify themselves, to themselves and to others, determines to a large extent where and how they define their place in the world. Esterberg examines the process of self (and other) identification in terms of the development of lesbian and bisexual women's identities and the construction of communities founded on those identities. Based on a series of interviews conducted between 1989 and 1994 with women in a small city in the northeast, Esterberg draws a picture of individuals and communities in flux. Some women's lives and therefore their identities changed markedly over the five-year period, while others remained constant, both in terms of how they described/identified themselves and how they lived out and through those identities. Esterberg tackles some difficult issues, particularly with respect to those women who identify either as bisexual or those for whom identity (and sexuality) is too "fluid" for them to feel comfortable within the confines of any fixed category. Although the first chapter, "Theorizing Identity," is highly theoretical, in much of the rest of the book Esterberg satisfies her goal of telling the women's stories in their own voices. Recommended for college and university libraries. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Broidy; University of California, Irvine

These two books are so similar as to be interchangeable; the only significant difference is that one study was done on the West Coast and the other on the East. Stein (sociology, Univ. of Oregon) interviewed 30 women in the San Francisco area, while Esterberg (sociology and director of women's studies, Univ. of Missouri, Kansas City) interviewed 43 women in an unidentified Northeast community. Focusing on the integration of feminism, antiracism, and social justice with lesbian lives, both discussions are fascinating, and their portrayal of lesbian identity as changeable and fluid is valuable. Although the word bisexual does not appear in Stein's title, her focus on bisexual women is easily as strong as Esterberg's. And Stein's discussion of separatists may be patronizing when she suggests that "separatism would give the lifelong lesbian some insurance that women she became involved with would not leave her for men." Despite these minor flaws, these are both important contributions. Recommended for academic libraries, especially those supporting lesbian, gay, and bisexual studies.‘Pauline Klein, DeKalb Cty. P.L., Decatur, Ga. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.