Women on women : an anthology of American lesbian short fiction /

An answer to NAL's successful anthologies of gay male writers' stories, Men on Men [BKL N 15 86] and Men on Men 2 [N 1 88]. Save for a very early Willa Cather story, the contents come from the 1970s and 1980s. Together, they reflect the more economically marginal position in American society of lesbians compared to gay men by pretty much excluding middle- and upper-class personae and by including several stories with black, Latina, and native American protagonists. Lesbian marginality is also evident in the more intense tone of most of these stories compared to the elegiac languorousness of a significant number of gay male writers. Although as a group these women are less-refined craftspersons than the men of the earlier collections, they define a more well-integrated community than the men, giving this collection greater sociological interest than the men's books. Since little of the output of the women's and lesbian small presses that publish most of the contributors finds its way into public libraries, Women on Women will fill a gap in many collections. --Ray Olson

Nestle ( A Restricted Country ) and Holoch ( Offseason ) assemble 28 short stories and novel excerpts, some appearing in print for the first time here. Although uneven in scope and quality, these pieces feature a surprising range of lesbian women, from a Jewish grandmother to a 21-year-old self-described bulldyke. Several selections grapple with personal solutions to common problems, such as surviving the loss of a lover, addressed by both Teya Schaffer in ``With Love, Lena'' and Becky Birtha's ``In the Life.'' In ``When It Changed,'' a separatist fantasy from Joanna Russ, men reclaim a planet that women have quite contentedly inhabited alone for 600 years. Jess Wells's ``Aqua'' is a woman who, 16 years after her mother's suicide, still fights to come to terms with that death and her own life. In ``A Letter to Harvey Milk'' Leslea Newman draws parallels between the Holocaust and the assassination of Milk, a gay San Francisco politician. The open eroticism of a few stories and a conspicuous shortage of likable male characters may diminish the collection's mainstream appeal. ( May ) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved