Items

• Autobiography in search of a father. Mother bound
  Jill Johnston (1929-2010) was a critic, journalist, feminist and leader of the lesbian-separatist movement in the 1970s. Before publishing perhaps her best-known work, ‘Lesbian Nation - The Feminist Solution’ in 1973, Johnston wrote on dance for the ‘Village Voice’ newspaper, and was the first of its columnists to come out in print. ‘Mother Bound’ details her complicated family relationships and narrates her life up to 1965. Characterised as “readably rambling, pseudo-psychological ponderings” by one somewhat withering reviewer, though notably less experimental in form than her later criticism, ‘Mother Bound’ was followed by a second volume of autobiography, ‘Paper Daughter’, in 1985.
• Feminism in the 80's : facing down the right
  A Defend Gay’s the Word briefing document about the seized titles lists a book called ‘Feminism in the 80s’ but with no other identifying features. It is possible, but not certain, that the title is that of a series including two works authored by Charlotte Bunch (1944-) and published in the years preceding the ‘Operation Tiger’ raids – ‘Facing Down the Right’ (1981), shown here, and ‘Going Public With our Vision’ (1983). These pamphlet publications are based on speeches given by Bunch who was a member of the Washington-based lesbian feminist group The Furies. Bunch was also a writer, journal editor, and active in education, and is now a professor at Rutgers University, focussing on feminism, women’s rights and violence against women.
• Look me in the eye : old women, aging, and ageism
  This book focusses on women and ageing via several essays previously published in journals such as ‘Broomstick’ and ‘Sinister Wisdom’. Barbara Macdonald (1913-2000) and Cynthia Rich (1933-), the sister of poet Adrienne Rich, who were a couple and active in the women’s rights movement, write from different stages in the ageing process. Macdonald uses her introduction to reflect on the repressive environment she encountered growing up, which forced lesbians to become “other”, an otherness she now equates with being an older woman. The copy displayed here is the 1985 reprint edition. The first edition, and likely the one seized during the raids, was published by Spinsters Ink, a feminist press founded in 1979 in New York by Judith McDaniel and Maureen Brady.
• The winged dancer
  A “grown-up lesbian adventure story”, according to New Zealand’s feminist magazine ‘Broadsheet’. Part murder mystery, part tale of psychological development, part love story, it describes lesbian feminist Kat Rogan’s journey from Chicago to the fictional Latin American country of Marigua. Rogan spends time in prison, solves the case and also comes to terms with the dominant and submissive sides of her personality. The book was criticised by some reviewers for exoticising South America and failing to engage with the politics of the region. Camarin Grae (1941-), author of ‘Paz’ (1984) and ‘Soul Snatcher’ (1985), among other works, was the owner of Blazon Books – this was their first title.
• True to life adventure stories. Vol. 1
  Judy Grahn (1940-) is a poet, lesbian feminist and advocate of women’s spirituality. She also wrote 1984’s ‘Another Mother Tongue’, a mythic queer history. In response to Grahn’s question, “what is a woman’s adventure story?”, this book presents stories by twenty writers which relate women’s direct experiences. Writing by working-class women is a strong feature of the collection, with an emphasis on maintaining the authors’ unedited natural language and spelling. The book was published by Diana Press, a feminist printing and publishing house founded in 1972 by Coletta Reid and Casey Czarnik. The cover illustration is by Karen Sjöholm, who also worked at the Press. The Press was vandalised in 1977, with damage to plates, paste-ups, books and machines. It closed in 1979.
• Witches heal : lesbian herbal self-sufficiency
  Billie Potts (1940-2013) was one third of Elf and Dragons, self-described “lesbian witches”, who were a Woodstock-based women’s land collective, a publisher, distributor of herbs and part of a wider feminist spirituality movement. Women’s rural collectives were common in the USA at this time. Potts’s book is a guide to herbalism and an “access tool”, promoting self-sufficiency and encouraging lesbian women to reclaim their role as healers. The book proved controversial as its publication coincided with an acrimonious split within Elf and Dragons. Susun R. Weed accused Potts of using her work uncredited and asked feminist bookshops not to stock the book. The ‘Operation Tiger’ raids were not, therefore, the first attempts to restrict this book.