A Fragile Union: New and Selected Writings

by Joan Nestle

Overview

A Fragile Union is Joan Nestle’s collection of intimate essays and narratives about lesbian sexuality, butch-femme relationships, sex writing, the importance of preserving lesbian and gay history, the love between lesbians and gay men, and the "often-shaky camaraderie among lesbians that as community continues to flex its diversity." Longtime readers of Nestle's writings are familiar with her themes of unity and difference. In A Fragile Union, Nestle delves still deeper. Living with cancer, Nestle explores other "fragile unions": the fragility of her sexual desire in the face of her illness, the fragility of memory in the face of loss, and always in the face of fear, her belief in the possibility of hope, her love for her people—women, lesbians and gays, working class, and all who struggle against injustice.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781573448703
Publisher:	Start Publishing Llc
Publication date:	01/02/2018
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	230
File size:	2 MB

About the Author

Joan Nestle is the author of A Fragile Union: New and Selected Writings. She is cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City, where she lives.Tristan Taormino is an American feminist author, columnist, sex educator, activist, editor, speaker, radio host, and pornographic film director.

What People are Saying About This

Blanche Wiesen Cook

Joan Nestle represents, for each of us, courage, intelligence, beauty, a sense of conviction, and humility. She has revolutionized history.

Adrienne Rich

Joan Nestle's work has always embodied a very large vision. This vibrant new collection burns with the generosity and courage of her spirit, the beauty of her writing -- on both pleasure and pain -- and the distinction of her critical intelligence. One the eve of the 21st century, A Fragile Union is a powerful, tensile span between past and future.

Editorial Reviews

Poignant and vigorousnand some sexually explicitnessays on both personal history and the "herstory" of the lesbian community in America. In her introduction, Nestle (co-editor, Sister and Brother, 1994) describes herself as a "fifty-eight-year-old white Jewish fem lesbian woman with cancer living in New York City in the United States of America at the end of the twentieth century." This collection comprises reflections on those particulars, ranging from commentary on her working-class mother's eloquent journals through the history of lesbianism as it began to accumulate in the Lesbian Herstory Archives (now housed in a Brooklyn townhouse), which Nestle founded. Included are chapters on Nestle's plunge into 1960s political activismnmarching and demonstrating against nuclear arms and communist-baiters while keeping her sexual preferences secret from her socialist comrades. Beginning in that decade, however, lesbianism began to come out of the closet and the basement bars (Nestle recalls the latter somewhat fondly). In "The Politics of Thinking," however, the author reveals her concern that in the 1990s, not only has "religious moral fervor" dampened free discussion of sexuality, but so have certain kinds of political correctness within the gay community, where anti-pornography factions had developed strength. Many of the stories that Nestle wrote then were descriptive tales of lesbian love affairs, and she found herself wondering whether those stories had "hurt lesbian women," as the anti-pornographers suggested. The author also raises questions about the meaning of gender and about the devaluation of the feminine. In the section titled "A Gift of Touch" are some detailed reminiscences oferotic encounters with loversnas well as reflections on coming to terms with cancer.

Kirkus Reviews