UPDATE: Jane Rule has been inducted as a member into the Order of Canada, announced February 20, 2007. In January, Jane also received the Alice B. Toklas Medal (US) for her long and storied career as a lesbian novelist.
Jane Rule's 1977 novel The Young in One Another's Arms is set at the end of the Vietnam War in and around a boarding house in the Kitsilano neighborhood of Vancouver. Ruth, a middle-aged woman accustomed to tragedy in her own life, cares for the young and changing boarders of her house as a mother and guide.
First published by Doubleday and reprinted by The Naiad Press, The Young in One Another's Arms is about the building of female communities. Combining issues of race, gender, sexuality and politics, this warm, sophisticated novel celebrates the cameraderie and strength of women against a backdrop of war and tragedy. The novel won the Canadian Authors Association Best Novel of the Year Award in 1978.
With an introduction by novelist Katherine V. Forrest (Curious Wine and Daughters of a Coral Dawn).
"Lesbian identity itself is not so much subsumed into the community as kept whole within it . . . not singled out as an angle of vision any more or less valid than others." ―Marilyn Schuster, Feminist Studies
Little Sister's Classics is a series of books from Arsenal Pulp Press, reviving lost and out-of-print classics of gay and lesbian literature. The books in the series are produced in conjunction with Little Sister's, the Canadian bookstore well-known for its anti-censorship efforts.
(arsenalpulp.com 20051110)
