Boots of leather, slippers of gold
Subtitle: the history of a lesbian community
By: Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis
Contributors: Davis, Madeline D., 1940- author
Edition: 20th anniversary edition.
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014
Language: eng
Number of pages: 434
ISBN-13: 9781138785847; 9781138785854; 9781315767611
Subjects: Social conditions; Working class; Women's studies; Lesbians; History
Other titles: History of a lesbian community
Description: Traces the evolution of the lesbian community in Buffalo, New York from the mid-1930s up to the early 1960s. This 20th anniversary edition includes a new preface in which the authors reflect on where the last 20 years have taken them, and reminisce about the process of creating the original book. For anyone interested in lesbian life during the 1950s, or in the dynamics of butch-fem culture, this study remains the one that set the highest standard for all oral histories and ethnographies of lesbian communities anywhere..
Notes: Includes bibliographical references and indexes.
Table of contents: title: 1. "To cover up the truth would be a waste of time": Introduction; title: 2. "I could hardly wait to get back to that bar": lesbian bar culture in the 1930s and 1940s; title: 3. "A weekend wasn't a weekend if there wasn't a fight": the tough bar lesbians of the 1950s; title: 4. "Maybe 'cause things were harder...you had to be more friendly": race and class in the lesbian community of the 1950s; title: 5. "We're going to be legends, just like Columbus is": the butch-fem image and the lesbian fight for public space; title: 6. "Now you get this spot right here": butch-fem sexuality during the 1940s and 1950s; title: 7. "Nothing is forever": serial monogamy in the lesbian community of the 1940s and 1950s; title: 8. "It can't be a one-way street": committed butch-fem relationships; title: 9. "In everybody's life there has to be a gym teacher": the formation of lesbian identities and the reproduction of butch-fem roles; title: 10. Conclusion.