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Product Description
From Publishers Weekly
This compelling but uneven first novel follows the sexual travails of lesbian Jess Goldberg. At its start she is a girl who feels confused by strict ideas about gender and who wonders if she might be a "he-she" since people often ask whether she is a boy or a girl. Constantly searching, she quickly moves from trying on her father's suits to visiting bars and transforming herself into a full-blown "butch," complete with her own dildo. As police crackdowns on gay bars result in more than one night in jail, Goldberg decides to begin taking male hormones and have a breast reduction in order to pass as a man. Although she delights in visiting the barber and being able to use the men's room--and even manages to make love to a woman without being discovered--the emotional complications of changing her sex (and hence her identity) build up until she ceases to take her hormone shots. Certain transmutations, like her lowered voice, cannot be reversed, however, so she is now even less defined as a member of a specific gender. Goldberg and her like-minded friends who have embraced the butch/femme dichotomy find they have no place in either the nascent women's or gay pride movements. Feinberg attempts to present Goldberg's life as the personal side of political history, but the narrative seems unattached to time despite the insertion of landmark events like the Stonewall riot and the mention of Reagan and the Moral Majority.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Copyright 1993 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to an alternate Paperback edition.
Book Description
Published in 1993, this brave, original novel is considered to be the finest account ever written of the complexities of a transgendered existence.
Woman or man? That’s the question that rages like a storm around Jess Goldberg, clouding her life and her identity. Growing up differently gendered in a blue--collar town in the 1950’s, coming out as a butch in the bars and factories of the prefeminist ’60s, deciding to pass as a man in order to survive when she is left without work or a community in the early ’70s. This powerful, provocative and deeply moving novel sees Jess coming full circle, she learns to accept the complexities of being a transgendered person in a world demanding simple explanations: a he-she emerging whole, weathering the turbulence.
Leslie Feinberg is also the author of Trans Liberation, Trans Gender Warriors and Transgender Liberation, and is a noted activist and speaker on transgender issues.
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Most helpful customer reviews
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Singing the blues,
By
This review is from: Stone Butch Blues (Paperback)
Leslie Feinberg's Stone Butch Blues is a dialogue from a butch named Jess from behind a wall too tall to see over.Walls are built to close things off, to protect - sometimes to keep whats inside safe, othertimes to isolate people within. The protaganist Jess, had them built up around by others for not being something they could understand, and by herself to stay hard enough to stay in a world that didn't want her in it. Jess tells about about never having the words to describe how she feels or to create her own voice and make it fit. Its hard to fit when you're trapped by the world outside gender, outside sex, and stuck walled into yourself. I swallowed this book in two days - a quote I once heard is drumming in my head, "to live and die properly we must take back our words." This is one of the only things I've read that has given me new words, made old words have meaning again. When I finished I felt like something in me I didn't notice took form, and had a voice, as part of me.
5.0 out of 5 stars
The sad life of a butch,
By "h20jock" (Davis, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stone Butch Blues: A Novel (Hardcover)
I found Stone Butch Blues to be a truly amazing novel; I too had a hard time putting it down. As a heterosexual male from the SF Bay Area, I have been exposed to homosexuals, but have never really been "behind the scenes" of the struggle for gender equality. Stone Butch Blues was a gripping and consistently sad account of the life of a tough yet sensitive "butch" and I learned quite a bit from it.Jess definitely had to "walk a difficult path" in life as was prophecized early on by her neighbors and caretakers. The ever present emotional and physical struggles involved in Jess' life were heartbreaking and most of the time she found herself "drowning in loneliness." It is interesting to read the literary talent on display when Feinberg describes the first time Jess sees Rocco, or Jess' first dance, or when she asks Theresa to marry her. Feinberg has the ability to clearly describe these characters, create memorable scenes, and simultaneously lift your heart rate. I thoroughly enjoyed this eye and mind opening book and in the process gained an insight that formerly didn't exist.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Read this book immediately!,
By Jimmie Sanchez (Mission Hills, CA United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Stone Butch Blues (Paperback)
I have read "Stone Butch Blues" five times, and I still find new things to grab my attention and make me think. The first chapter admittedly starts out really slowly, but don't get discouraged! The second you start Chapter 2, there is no putting the book down. It is an amazing narrative about the human will to survive, come hell or high water (and believe me: Jess, the protagonist, confronts way worse). I know that sounds cheesy, but this novel is anything but! You don't have to be transgender or lesbian to appreciate this novel. Just human.
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