Arts
Chronicling Lesbian Lives
Chronicling Lesbian Lives
Author Lesléa Newman returns to the Queen City with a
new collection of lesbian romance.
There’s something about Lesléa Newman’s recent collection of short stories that feels so familiar. Wait, wait, I’ve got it, it’s because I can see myself or my friends in them. It’s as if she were transcribing a video of our lives, as if she’s been privy to our conversations about childbearing, getting in tune with a previously undiscovered butch sense of self, fantasizing about that incredible professor.
If you read for adventure or to escape the realities of your life, She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not might not be your book. But if you want to see your life from someone else’s perspective, then baby, this book is for you.
Newman is an unabashed femme with an immense respect for the butch-femme dynamic. At the same time, she’s not necessarily proselytizing. It’s okay not to identify either way. Whatever works for you is yours. But you can check out this prolific (Girls Will Be Girls, Heather Has Two Mommies, Out of the Closet and Nothing to Wear, Letter to Harvey Milk, among the nearly 40 books shehas written and published) and funny author yourself this month when the UVM alumna – class of ’77 – returns to the Queen City for a reading.
Newman was born in 1955 in Brooklyn Jewish Hospital via cesarean section; her umbilical cord was wrapped around her neck. That was also her first “near-death experience.” She still can’t stand to wear anything close around her neck. She had so much hair that the nurses constantly oohed and ahhed over her and sent her home with a ponytail tied with a pink ribbon. These are, she said in a recent interview, the only autobiographical details that are in She Loves Me. She was the first girl, an eventual middle child between two brothers.
She lives now in what a popular mainstream magazine once called “Lesbianville USA,” Northampton, Massachusetts. She writes, she said with a laugh, “because I have a desire to eat. No actually, I’m just not happy unless I’m writing. I can be inspired by almost anything: an experience, something I imagine, almost anything.”
She insists that this collection is “less autobiographical” than previous work. She wanted, she said, to stretch herself and write about things that had never happened to her. “I’ve never had a breast cancer scare [“Keeping A Breast”], but it’s present in my life as a fear. ÎWhat if’ is a writer’s best friend.”
She likes, she said, “to write about things that are taboo in the lesbian community: a teacher-student relationship, a butch-butch relationship, or femme-femme. I like to push my own comfort zones and learn about new things.”
Seven of the 11 stories in She Loves Me are in the first person. “I always start with voice. I never change voice. First person lets you get inside the character more deeply,” Newman said.A high percentage of her output is short stories. “I don’t usually plan – I let the work dictate the form. When I have three or four short stories, I realize I’m writing a book of short stories.” I can almost see a shrug of the shoulders in the tone of her voice. “Beginning a novel is like getting married; a short story is like having a fling, something I can get in and out of fairly quickly. It’s a snapshot, something you step in and out of and you are changed. Actually, a novel is more like a journey.”
Newman has been known in the past for her outspokenness on the issue of society’s fat-phobia and its oppressive body-image standards for women. Asked whether the issue is passé, she said no. “I read the other day about an actress whose dress size was zero! That’s just ridiculous, to want to be nothing. It’s very important to me still to have characters who are large women – zaftig, heavy, plump – and who are in positive sexual relationships.”
She has a pile of stories scheduled for publication, six of them children’s books. Runaway Dreidel – a story in verse to rival ’Twas the Night Before Christmas – will be released by Holt in August. Dogs, Dogs, Dogs is being published in June by Simon & Schuster, followed next year by Pigs, Pigs, Pigs. Felicia’s Favorite Story – about a girl adopted by a lesbian couple – is forthcoming from Two Lives Publishing. A Fire Engine for Ruthie – a story that will appeal to every dyke who was a tomboy fighting off well-meaning adults giving dolls – has no date yet, but has been claimed by Clarion Books. Daddy’s Song is a lullaby from father to child to be published by Holt.
Despite this evidence of productivity, Newman said, “Picture books are difficult to write. You have to establish plot, theme, setting, everything that goes into a novel – create a whole world in a thousand words.”
There’s also a novel in the drawer, she said. “Jailbait is the psychological landscape of a girl involved with a much older man. I’m not sure the world is ready for this story. But all of the other adults in her life have abandoned her, and as her creator, I will not abandon her.” She’ll keep trying to find the right publisher, the one who can see the value, the truth in Lesléa Newman’s portrait of a life
Lesléa Newman will read from She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not at Barnes & Noble in South Burlington on Wednesday, May 22 at 7 p.m.
“Keeping A Breast”
An excerpt from She Loves Me, She Loves Me Not.
Alyson Books, 2001.
You are lying on your back, in bed, your hands behind your head, your lover moving over you softly like a warm summer breeze. She plants little kisses along your jaw, under your chin, in the carved out hollow where your shoulder meets your neck. You sigh, shift, watch her out of half-closed eyes, think, not for the first time, how lucky you are. Your lover moves to your breasts with her hands and her mouth. Your nipples stand at attention, eager for her to begin. You have been together long enough for her to know just how to please you, but not so long that the thrill has disappeared.Your lover knowsevery inch of your body, every hair, every wrinkle, every pore. You sigh again, your whole being reduced to a helpless puddle of pleasure. You could do this forever and you know she could, too. So when your lover stops what she is doing, you think she is teasing, and play along. “Don't. Stop. Don't. Stop. Don't stop.” But your lover has stopped. She studies you, her forehead furrowed in three crooked horizontal lines. You want to write I love you on those three little lines, and lift a finger to start tracing the letters, but then your lover speaks, and you stop before you begin. “What's this?” she asks, her voice not curious, but concerned. You are not worried. What can it be, a beauty mark, a pimple, a mole? Your lover takes your hand and moves it to the outside of your right breast, which has fallen back into your armpit as it always does when you're lying on your back. “Feel that?” she asks. You shake your head, and she presses your hand harder until you can no longer deny what she has found: a lump. A lump that presses against the flesh of your fingers like a small irritating pebble in the bottom of your shoe. Talk about killing the moment.
© 2001 Lesléa Newman; reprinted with permission of the author