{"id":635,"date":"2017-02-07T00:28:36","date_gmt":"2017-02-07T08:28:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/monicanolan.jayuen.com\/pulppep\/?p=635"},"modified":"2020-05-28T20:49:49","modified_gmt":"2020-05-29T03:49:49","slug":"three-barbaras","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/2017\/02\/07\/three-barbaras\/","title":{"rendered":"Three Barbaras"},"content":{"rendered":"

So I recently finished Indomitable: The Life of Barbara <\/em>Grier by Joanne Passet and at last I understand why\u00a0those Naiad Press books ol’ Babs\u00a0put out had that distinctive\u00a0look. Barbara, it seems, was your classic lesbian cheapskate; she would do anything to maximize the number of books she could get in a box, and that included squishing more words on the page than is\u00a0compatible with visual pleasure, not to mention legibility.<\/p>\n

Below we have pages from two lesbian novels. Figure 1\u00a0is a Naiad from the 80s and Figure 2\u00a0is an upscale lesbian hardback from the new millenium.<\/p>\n

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Figure 1<\/p><\/div>\n

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Figure 2<\/p><\/div>\n

As you can see, the words are crowded onto the page in Figure 1 in a way that would make any self-respecting graphic designer cringe in horror. The leading is laughable. As if to compensate, the type is oddly large.\u00a0Contrast the comparatively generous leading in Figure 2,\u00a0and the way the slightly smaller font actually makes it more readable.<\/p>\n

Not to nitpick.<\/p>\n

The other thing the Grier bio\u00a0got me thinking about is\u00a0how many important lesbians have been\u00a0named Barbara. Below is a quick cheat sheet to distinguish\u00a0Barbara Grier from two of her notable contemporaries.<\/p>\n

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Barbara Deming at the Seneca Women’s Peace Encampment<\/p><\/div>\n

Barbara Deming
\n<\/strong>July 23, 1917 \u2013 August 2, 1984.
\nCame out:<\/strong> when she was sixteen.
\nMain Cause:<\/strong> Non-violence.
\nHung out with:<\/strong> Lotte Lenya, Daniel Berrigan, William Kunstler, Edmund Wilson, Fidel Castro, Grace Paley.
\nLovers:<\/strong> Norma Millay (Edna St. Vincent Millay\u2019s sister), Vida Ginsburg, Mary Meigs, Marie-Claire Blais, Jane Verlaine
\nFirst jailed:<\/strong> Protesting nuclear testing in New York in 1962. In 1964 she took part in the Quebec-Washington-Guantanamo Walk for Peace, which attempted to combine a protest against America\u2019s Cuba policy and civil rights (Deming said \u201cthe two struggles\u2014for disarmament and negro rights\u2014were properly part of one struggle,\u201d) and was jailed in Georgia, inspiring her first book, Prison Notes <\/em>(1966). Her last arrest was in 1983 at the Seneca Women\u2019s Peace Encampment.
\nBiography:<\/strong> A Saving Remnant: The Radical Lives of Barbara Deming and David McReynolds<\/em>, by Martin Duberman (2011)
\nPapers at: <\/strong>Harvard
\nWe love her for:<\/strong> Her second book, Running Away from Myself: A Dream Portrait of America Drawn from the Films of the Forties<\/em> (more on that here<\/a>); and for the Money for Women Fund she started in 1975 with just a few thousand bucks. Later she kicked in insurance money from a bad auto accident and an inheritance from her aunt. It is now the Barbara Deming Memorial Fund, and makes grants to feminist women in the arts. Once notable for having no website, email, or phone number, you can now find info about the fund online at demingfund.org<\/a>.
\nConnections to other Barbaras:<\/strong> Barbara Grier\u2019s Naiad Press published a collection of Barbara Deming\u2019s essays, letters, and poems, Remembering Who We Are<\/em> in 1981.<\/p>\n

<\/a>

Barbara Gittings, Frank Kameny, and Dr. H. Anonymous at a 1972 American Psychiatric Association meeting<\/p><\/div>\n

Barbara Gittings
\n<\/strong>July 31, 1932\u00a0\u2013 February 18, 2007
\nCame Out:<\/strong> On the picket line in 1965. You\u2019ve seen the photo; she\u2019s the one in the shades and stripey dress holding a sign that demurely suggests \u201cHomosexuals should be judged as individuals.\u201d
\nMain Cause:<\/strong> Gay Rights, especially when it came to confronting the church, state, and medical establishment
\nHung Out With:<\/strong> Frank Kameny, Del Martin & Phyllis Lyon, Alma Routsong AKA Isabel Miller,
\nPartner: <\/strong>Kay Tobin Lahusen
\nAppeared on:<\/strong> the Phil Donahue Show, the David Susskind Show
\nPraise from others: <\/strong>\u201cWhat do we owe Barbara? Everything.\u201d (Matt Foreman, Executive Director of the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force)
\nMemorial Awards: <\/strong>Every year the ALA gives the Barbara Gittings Award to the best gay or lesbian novel. GLAAD gives the Barbara Gittings Award to a pioneering individual, group or community media outlet that has made a significant contribution to the development of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender media.
\nBiography<\/strong>: Barbara Gittings: Gay Pioneer <\/em>by Tracy Baim with Kay Lahusen
\nPapers At: <\/strong>The New York Public Library.
\nWe Love Her: <\/strong>Because she flunked out of Northwestern for spending all her time in the library researching homos. Because she asked the Daughters of Bilitis the question that has occurred to all of us: why give a lesbian organization such a crazy, obscure name, difficult to pronounce and spell, which references a fictional bisexual character invented by a gay Frenchman? Because a psychiatrist told her at 17 that she could be cured with treatment, and a couple decades later she told\u00a0the American Psychiatric Association that\u00a0homosexuality was not an illness.
\nConnections to other Barbaras:<\/strong> Corresponded extensively with Barbara Grier whom she preceded as editor of\u00a0The Ladder.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

Barbara Grier in 1989<\/p><\/div>\n

Barbara Grier
\n<\/strong>November 4, 1933-November 10, 2011
\nCame Out: <\/strong>At age thirteen, to her mother, after a day of research at the library.
\nMain Cause:<\/strong> Lesbian Literature
\nHung Out With: <\/strong>Jeanette Howard Foster, Jane Rule, Barbara Gittings, Katherine V. Forrest, Ann Bannon, Claire McNab. Penpals with many more.
\nGirlfriends:<\/strong> Helen Bennett and Donna McBride (whom she married when it became legal).
\nStole or Liberated (the controversy continues):<\/strong> The mailing list for The Ladder<\/em> from the Daughters of Bilitis while the organization was in decline. She turned The Ladder<\/em> into a short-lived independent publication and later used the mailing list to jumpstart Naiad Press.
\nBiography:<\/strong> See above
\nPapers At:<\/strong> The San Francisco Public Library
\nWe Love Her:<\/strong> Because she was a curmudgeonly, socially awkward, autodidact who was obsessed with one thing: books with lesbian characters. Because while writing in The Ladder<\/em> under the name Gene Damron she was responsible for some of the earliest reviews of lesbian books from a lesbian point of view. Because with Naiad Press she singlehandedly created a subgenre of lesbian literature, while also putting out reprints of The Price of Salt<\/em> and\u00a0Sarah Schulman\u2019s first novel. Because she did much of this while working a series of boring clerical jobs and managed to live as an out lesbian in Kansas City, Kansas, Bates City, Missouri, and Tallahassee, Florida.<\/p>\n

We miss you, Barbaras, and need more like you.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So I recently finished Indomitable: The Life of Barbara Grier by Joanne Passet and at last I understand why\u00a0those Naiad Press books ol’ Babs\u00a0put out had that distinctive\u00a0look. Barbara, it seems, was your classic lesbian cheapskate; she would do anything … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-635","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-books","category-lesbian","category-pulp"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=635"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":780,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/635\/revisions\/780"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=635"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=635"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/monicanolan.com\/pulppep\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=635"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}