Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger
Cogswell is a strong woman activist and journalist dedicated to equal rights and justice. In her memoir she recalls her alternative-culture days in the East Village in the early 1990s, her disastrous coming-out to her mom, and her experiences in her mid-twenties photographing NOW’s 1989 March on Washington, D.C. It was there that she met her future partner at the first meeting that she attended of Lesbian Avengers, a direct action group demonstrating for lesbian equality. Throughout her unique coverage of Avengers history and personal memories and reflections, Cogswell is compelling, her writing rich in sensate focus. She remembers endless rains in Paris, “dark when we got up, dark when we went to bed . . . dark pavement streaked with water though puddles reflected . . . the yellow, steaming windows of bistros.” Turning to less poetic matters, she writes disparagingly of George W. Bush’s controversial 2000 election, “the law of the land, even imperfect, held the promise of justice . . . you could see it rip as the Florida election was rushed to the Supreme Court. They decided it was more important to hand over power on schedule than to respect each American voice.” An energetic and outspoken memoir. --Whitney Scott