Lesbian Love Story

December 1, 2022

In Why Fathers Cry at Night, Newbery Medalist and New York Times best-selling author Alexander (Swing) blends memoir and love poems, recalling his parent and his first years of marriage and fatherhood as he ponders learning to love (50,000-copy first printing). After abandoning her marriage as the wrong path, Biggs looked at women from Mary Wollstonecraft to Zora Neale Hurston to Elena Ferrante as she considered how to find A Life of One's Own. A celebrated New York-based carpenter (e.g., his iconic Sky House was named best apartment of the decade by Interior Design), self-described serial dropout Ellison recounts how he found his path to Building. Shot five times at age 19 by a Pittsburgh police officer (a case of mistaken identity that amounted to racial profiling), Ford awoke paralyzed from the waist down and learned he was a new father; a decade later, he recounts his path to social activism and An Unspeakable Hope for himself and his son. From the first Black American female designer to win a CFDA Award, Wildflower takes James from high school dropout to designer of a sustainable fashion line showcasing traditional African design to founder of the booming social justice nonprofit Fifteen Percent Pledge (businesses pledge to dedicate 15 percent of their shelf space to Black-owned brands). Minka's fans will proclaim Tell Me Everything when they pick up her hand-to-mouth-to Hollywood memoir (30,000-copy first printing). In Whistles from the Graveyard, which aims to capture the experience of confused young millennials in the U.S. Marines, Lagoze recalls serving as a combat cameraman in the Afghan War and witnessing both bonding with locals against the Taliban and brutality toward innocent people by young men too practiced in violence. To cement ties with his eldest son, star of Netflix's hit Dead to Me, veteran actor and New York Times best-selling author McCarthy found himself Walking with Sam along Spain's 500-mile Camino de Santiago. A first-generation Chinese American with a seafaring father and a seamstress mother, Pen/Faulkner Award finalist Ng (Bone) recounts being raised in San Francisco's Chinatown by the community's Orphan Bachelors, older men without wives or children owing to the infamous Exclusion Act. Thought-provoking novelist Pittard (Reunion) turns to nonfiction with We Are Too Many, an expansion of her attention-getting Sewanee Review essay about her husband's affair with her best friend (80,000-copy first printing). Delighted by all the queer stories she encountered when she moved to Brooklyn, book publicist Possanza uses Lesbian Love Story to recover the personal histories of lesbians in the 20th century and muse about replacing contemporary misogynistic society with something markedly lesbian. In Uncle of the Year, Tony, Drama Desk, and Critics Choice Award nominee Rannells wonders at age 40 what success means and whether he wants a husband and family; 19 original essays and one published in the New York Times. Describing himself as Uneducated (he was tossed out of high school and never went to college), Zara ended up as senior editor at Fast Company, among other leading journalist stints; here's how he did it (30,000 copy first printing.)

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Starred review from March 27, 2023
In her impressive debut, Possanza stitches together personal memoir, painstaking research, and fictional imaginings with a fluid style and a sure hand. Lesbians, Possanza asserts, “invent their own systems of love”—romantic, family, friend—“even when they are at risk of losing everything,” yet remain largely ignored by history. So Possanza, determined to restore her own curdling concept of love, became a “collector of lesbians,” exhuming hidden histories to see what she and other cynics might learn from their lesbian forebears. She tracked down Mary Casal’s 1930 lesbian memoir, The Stone Wall, and learned it was written by Ruth White Fuller, who shielded her identity with a pen name. Subsequent chapters highlight Mabel Hampton, cofounder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, athlete Babe Didrikson Zaharias, ancient Greek singer Sappho (“the patron saint of today’s lesbians”), male impersonator Rusty Brown, Chicana feminist Gloria Anzaldúa, and writer Amy Hoffman. Possanza’s sensuous prose also introduces fictive elements: in Hampton’s first encounter with her lover Lillian, Possanza imagines the two meeting “on a downtown sidewalk thatched with leaves turned gold by the alchemy of the season.” Throughout, she weaves the threads beautifully. This is an outstanding work of literary scholarship that also delivers a vulnerable, intimate portrait of its author. Agent: Sarah Levitt, Aevitas Creative Management.

Starred review from April 1, 2023
An archive of queer love and community by a talented storyteller. "Mostly grown and living in New York City, I still rarely spotted other lesbians," writes book publicist Possanza in her debut. "I joined a queer swim team, but it was full of gay men who didn't recognize me." As such, she "resolved to become a collector of lesbians." Part personal memoir, part archival research, the book expertly weaves together stories of lesbians across time with a historian's precision and a novelist's pacing. Bringing together seven epic love stories across eras, ranging from the classical Greek poet Sappho and her lover Anactoria to lesbian caretakers in the AIDS crisis extending beyond romantic boundaries, Possanza cultivates a worthy collection of lesbian love stories. "I chose them because their stories are singular," writes the author, "each a match struck against the grain of their eras until their lives burned bright, and yet they also represent the broader history of lesbians at each moment in time." The author's meticulous research reveals an exciting historical tapestry, encompassing Coney Island drag kings of the mid-20th century, Black lesbians in Harlem during the Great Depression, and one of the earliest female Olympians. Showing us a pantheon of role models, community organizers, and champions of progressive causes, Possanza effectively shows how lesbians are united by more than just a shared sexual identity; "they are also bound together by their ability to create safe havens in even the most hostile circumstances, buried projects that were a direct response to the systems that tried to trap and trade women." These women filled gaps and imagined radical ways of living outside of a heteronormative system, and the author highlights their stories in full, sensual detail. In addition to chronicling the past and present, Possanza seeks a future that goes beyond "simple stereotypes" into "private intimacy and public recognition." Throughout, the prose is warm, personal, and accessible. Detailed and immensely readable, this is a generous history of lesbian love.

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