#beacon press

[garadinervi]

Charlotte Delbo, (1965), None of Us Will Return, [Auschwitz and After], Translated by John Githens, Beacon Press, Boston, MA, 1978, pp. 18-19

[uwmspeccoll]

Steamy Saturday

We hold a considerable collection of pre-1970s romance pulp fiction, including queer romances and nurse romances. So, over the next several weeks we will be highlighting some of these titles with their suggestive covers and provocative blurbs.

For Pride Month, we begin the series with March Hasting's Three Women published by Beacon Books, an imprint of Universal Publishing and Distributing Corp., in 1958. The storyline is classic 1950s lesbian romance fiction: a young woman (Paula Temple) meets mister right (Phil Carson), but soon falls for Phil's wealthy aunt Bryne, an artist who lives in Greenwich Village, who herself is in a relationship with another artist, Greta. So many entanglements, you need a flow chart to keep track!

Here, the cover art offers stereotypical 1950s butch/femme imagery, while sensationalist language entices the reader: "An intimate picture of women in love -- with each other!"; "A courageous excursion into a forbidden world."; "Phil Carson strove with all his strength and virility to rescue Paula from unnatural desire." In the end (spoiler!), tragedy befalls both Bryne and Greta, while Paula, not surprisingly, returns to Phil. This is not the ending Hastings, one of the pseudonyms for lesbian pulp fiction writer Sally Singer (b. 1930), wanted for her story, as it did not reflect her own lived experience. Wikipedia quotes Singer as saying,

I really had no choice in the matter. . . . We all know the publishing climate in those days: same sex affection is out of the mainstream loop in this country, therefore, give it to us overtly for fun and games (hetero titillation) but make sure you tack on an ending of misery, punishment, sadness—that was the commercial voice, loud and distinct.

When Naiad Press republished Three Women in the late 1980s, Singer rewrote the optimistic ending for her characters that she always intended. "I don't believe in sadness," Singer said.

View other pulp fiction posts.

[expendablemudge]

MEMES TO MOVEMENTS: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power, slightly dated but very trenchant

MEMES TO MOVEMENTS: How the World's Most Viral Media Is Changing Social Protest and Power AN XIAO MINA Beacon Press $24.95 hardcover, a

[basicallyanotherwitchesthing]

Margot Adler - Drawing Down the Moon - Beacon Press - 1986

[universitybookstore]

New from Beacon Press, A Black Women’s History of the United States, by Daina Ramey and Kali Nicole Gross. The book  reaches far beyond a single narrative to showcase Black women’s lives in all their fraught complexities. Berry and Gross prioritize many voices: enslaved women, freedwomen, religious leaders, artists, queer women, activists, and women who lived outside the law. The result is a starting point for exploring Black women’s history and a testament to the beauty, richness, rhythm, tragedy, heartbreak, rage, and enduring love that abounds in the spirit of Black women in communities throughout the nation. (Listen to an interview here.)

[poetsandwriters]

Michael Torres, author of An Incomplete List of Names (Beacon Press, 2020), on feeling writer’s block in Writers Recommend.

[2021ya]

THE REBELLIOUS LIFE OF MRS. ROSA PARKS

ReVisioning History for Young People #3

by Jeanne Theoharis & Brandy Colbert

(Beacon Press, 2/2/21)

9780807067574

Add to Goodreads

Purchase from Bookshop

This definitive biography of Rosa Parks accessibly examines her six decades of activism, challenging young readers perceptions of her as an accidental actor in the civil rights movement. Presenting a corrective to the popular notion of Rosa Parks as the quiet seamstress performed a single act that sparked the Montgomery Bus Boycott and birthed the modern civil rights movement, Jeanne Theoharis provides a revealing window into Parks' politics and decades of activism. She shows readers how the movement radically sought--for more than a half a century--to expose and eradicate the American racial-caste system in jobs, schools, public services, and criminal justice and how Rosa Parks was a key player throughout. The original text is fully adapted by the award-winning young adult author Brandy Colbert, for middle-grade and young adult readers to include archival images and personal papers of Rosa Parks, and to provide the necessary historical context to bring the multi-faceted, decades long civil rights movement to life. Colbert creates an engaging and comprehensive narrative centered on Parks' life of activism, to encourage readers not only to question where and who their history comes, but to search for histories beyond the dominant narratives.

[bostonpoetryslam]

I know a lot of fancy words. I tear them from my heart and my tongue. Then I pray.

Mary Oliver, “Six Recognitions of the Lord,” from Thirst