11/14/2023 0 Comments Judy nelson rita mae brownIn these heady days of (fairly) free expression of sexuality, it is difficult to realize just what a bombshell Brown dropped onto a world in which the most famous lesbian novel was The Well of Loneliness and lesbians in other fiction almost always recanted, threw themselves into a purifying orgy of self-sacrifice or-more frequently-committed suicide in despair. She is not an experimental writer in the style of Monique Wittig or Jeanette Winterson she is not a stream of consciousness/coming out writer like Verena Stefan or early Michelle Roberts but her lasting fame among lesbian readers rests primarily on her first novel Rubyfruit Jungle which charted hilariously the coming-out process of a young Southerner called Molly Bolt-a joke untranslatable outside of American carpentry circles-and her consequent discovery and assertion that a) it was cool to be queer, b) the only problem is other people's reactions, and c) the rest of the world had better just get used to it. At the most basic level, her novels celebrate a particular image of the southern United States of America they are funny, sassy, full of geographically specific language-expletives in particular seem to be strictly of the South rather than the North-and populated with hosts of astonishingly colorful characters.īrown's writing is so particular to its location that her novels Bingo and especially High Hearts have led to her being accused of falling into the trap of depicting the South as "wrong but romantic" and the North as "right but repulsive." This did not preclude her from being tipped seriously for the commission to write the sequel to Gone with the Wind in fact, it was probably a main factor in the (ultimately unfounded) rumor that she would write it.Ĭonsidering the great success of her southern novels, it may be surprising to discover that her real claim to popular adulation is her parallel and entwined career as foremother of the modern lesbian novel. New York, Bantam Books, 2000.įor a writer whose novels appear to be exclusively comic southern fiction, Rita Mae Brown has, in fact, produced a varied body of work. Pawing through the Past, with Sneaky Pie Brown. New York, BantamBooks, 1998.Ĭat on the Scent, with Sneaky Pie Brown. Murder on the Prowl, with Sneaky Pie Brown. Murder, She Meowed, with Sneaky Pie Brown. Pay Dirt, or, Adventures at Ash Lawn, with Sneaky Pie Brown. ![]() Murder at Monticello or, Old Sins, with Sneaky Pie Brown. New York, Bantam, 1992.ĭolley: A Novel of Dolley Madison in Love and War. Wish You Were Here, with Sneaky Pie Brown. New York, Harper, 1982 London, SevernHouse, 1983. Plainfield, Vermont, Daughters, 1973 London, Corgi, 1978.
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