Stone Butch Blues
Stone Butch Blues is a novel by Leslie Feinberg published in 1993. The book is set in the USA in the 1970s . The main character is Jess Goldberg, who has a very masculine demeanor.
content
As a child, Jess was often asked if she was a boy or a girl. Her parents force her to wear women's clothing. She is raped at school and eventually flees from her parents' home. As a teenager, Jess finds herself in the local butch and femme scene, which is based in a bar. There she meets Al, an older butch, with whom she can live for a short time. She found work in the industry and eventually joined a union , where she stood up for the interests of her Butch colleagues. The bar, which will now be her second home, is repeatedly subjected to brutal raids by the police, including rape.
Jess's friends are mostly professional prostitutes. However, she meets Theresa while working in the industry.
Due to an economic crisis, the situation for Jess and her friends comes to a head. Jess decides to take testosterone in order to have a manly demeanor from now on. The reasons for this are their own physical safety and the possibility of getting a job. Theresa leaves her because of this decision. Jess changes her place of residence and soon finds a job where she works for several years. After meeting a union member from her "previous life", he outed her to all colleagues as a "woman". She quits, changes her place of residence and moves to New York City . There she keeps herself afloat with smaller jobs and eventually drops off the testosterone. Nevertheless, she is still perceived as a man by the outside world. Most suspect that she is gay.
After the house where her apartment was burned down, Jess moves again. Your new neighbor is from the local LGBT scene and they become friends after some initial difficulties.
Together they visit the neighbor's parents. Jess makes a detour to her old city. She visits old friends and also Al, who has suffered such trauma as a result of a brutal rape that she no longer speaks and lives in a nursing home.
The book ends with Jess back in New York City with the prospect of reconnecting with the local LGBT community and returning to work in a union.
Stone Butch Blues received both a Lambda Literary Award and a Stonewall Book Award in 1994.
German edition
- Stone Butch Blues. Dreams in the awakening morning . Novel. Translated by Claudia Brusdeylins. Krug & Schadenberg, 5th edition 2008, ISBN 978-3930041350