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Book Review: Stone Butch Blues by Leslie Feinenberg


Cover
Click here to read the book.
     Stone Butch Blues can be downloaded for free by anyone with internet connection.  This is not made possible by an illegal website, but rather by the author herself.  The book’s accessibility seems to be an extension of its political purpose, for, in Leslie Feinenberg’s words, “I wrote it, not as an expression of individual ‘high’ art, but as a working-class organizer mimeographs a leaflet – a call to action.” I’m in awe of hir commitment to hir political convictions. 
     However, I have to disagree with hir assertion that Stone Butch Blues is not a work of art.  It absolutely is.  Every word of it burns with pride, shame, rage, and purpose.  The novel tells the life story of a self-identified stone butch from Buffalo named Jess, stretching from the 1940s to the 1980s.  The label stone butch, as it applies to Jess, means that she is a very masculine-presenting woman who is attracted to feminine lovers and doesn’t like to be touched sexually, preferring to give rather than receive pleasure.  (She finds that this and many other labels have different meanings to other people.)  All her life, the same question – “Is that a boy or a girl?” – follows her, issuing from strangers on the street, members of the queer community, and her own uncertain mind.  And all her life, she experiences isolation and brutal violence for how ‘different’ she appears. 
     This book is written in simple language.  Although its plot lurches from one tragedy to another, its writing style makes sentimentality impossible and scorching emotion tangible.  This style also evokes happy moments, such as when Jess eats a salad composed of nasturtiums, greens, and balsamic vinaigrette prepared for her by a friend, with bittersweet precision. 
     Each of Jess’s friends is characterized with similar simple, precise details.  Every character, from her butch brothers at the local gay bar, to her strong femme lovers, to her fellow union factory workers, has a full life with passions, fears, and flaws that loom beneath the surface of Feinenberg’s spare writing.   
Stone Butch Blues is as much a work of art as it is a call to action.  It can be read as both a masterful (albeit long) political pamphlet and a coming-of-age story about identity and alienation.  Reading it changed the way that I understand gender, sexuality, and story-telling as well.

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