Content area
Full Text
Book Reivew: Lesbians in Canada. Edited by Sharon Dale Stone. Between the Lines Press, Toronto, 1990, 233 pp., $18.95 (Cdn.) Lesbians in Canada. Edited by Sharon Dale Stone. Between the Lines Press, Toronto, 1990, 233 pp., $18.95 (Cdn.).
This is an anthology that examines motherhood, oppression, organizing, andwork. The articles are largely written from an experiential perspective, but some contributors also provide the results of small sample interviews. Published in 1990, many of its pieces explore the reality of lesbians in the 1970s and 1980s, clearly locating itself in a historical context somewhat different from today's.10 This makes some of the articles outdated, but also provides an interesting look at lesbians living, organizing, and struggling in this recent, but unique context. For example, in her introduction, Stone discusses the anthology's inclusion of articles on motherhood: "This may surprise some readers, since it is commonly assumed that lesbians do not reproduce" (p. 14). This is an example of one area in which lesbian, gay, and bisexual people have struggled to create change in the last decade. This is not to say that queer families no longer experience oppression, but certainly today's reading audience, many of them lesbians, would not be surprised that lesbians reproduce.
Nonetheless, many of the pieces reflect a reality still relevant today. Of note in the first section of the anthology are Auger's piece "Lesbians and Aging," Day's "Lesbian/Mother," Doucette's "Redefining Difference: Disabled Lesbians Resist," and Silvera's "Man Royals and Sodomites." These essays speak to the experience of...