so a while ago now i read the massively underread and underrated jo sinclair's novel wasteland (1946), which is about a young american jewish man trying to work out his place in the world, and which features (my reason for reading it, tbh) his lesbian sister, debby. Though debby’s role in the novel is quite a small one, what I loved about it was its bold, matter of fact and uncomplicated presentation of her: the novel accepts her and is in no way coy or prurient about her sexuality; she is the most sorted of all the characters in the novel, if I remember correctly.
i made a mental note to read some more of sinclair's writing, but it was only the other week that i was prompted to do so. i was reading cherrie moraga and barbara smith's conversation, 'lesbian literature: a third world feminist perspective' (first publ. in lesbian studies in 1982, republ. in new lesbian studies in 1996). in it, moraga and smith talk about the courses on lesbian literature that they've taught, and how they were trying to do something that wasn't so 'white and middle class', which wasn't dominated by 'rich white women'; the courses they describe trying to set up are guided by inclusivity, thinking carefully not only gender and sexuality but also issues of race and class. and one of the texts that smith talks about including is jo sinclair's the changelings. here's smith:
although jo sinclair never publicly identified herself as a Lesbian, the book was written from a Lesbian and feminist perspective, and it talks about issues of race from the perspective of a Jewish woman...It was Lesbian literature in that it focused upon a friendship between a Jewish girl and a Black girl. People really got into the book seriously, and most of them felt they had never read a book like that - and of course most people will never read it beccause it's out of print. Some feminist publisher should seriously reconsider reprinting Sinclair's work.
The feminist press did reprint the changelings in 1985, but sinclair is, i think, still hardly read. but that neglect is unwarranted, because the changelings, as smith suggests, is a really interesting book.
it's set in a midwestern city which is seized with anxieties about race, with the tensions between different ethnic minorities who feel themselves to be precarious and under attack. that precarity is also bound up with class: the families depicted here are all struggling to get by, one way or another. what the novel is interested in, though, is looking at how children come to understand themselves as they grow up in an environment which is shaped by the explicit prejudices of their parents, and by an inherited understanding culture which may vary family to family, and by family dynamics, and by broader socio-economic circumstances. nellie mckay puts it better than i can: the novel, she says in the afterword to the feminist press edition, 'explor[es] the dilemma of the human condition at the intersection of race fear, class consciousness, and ethnic bias, which turns 'good' people into racists and bigots'.
the novel focuses on the way that four children, in particular, are 'changelings' - that is, how they don't seem to fit in the families into which they are born: the tomboys, vincent and clara; dave, a good-hearted boy struggling to work out what growing up into a man should mean (and who ends up coping, frequently, by taking ice-cream to friends to which he is trying to show affection); and jules, a dying teen poet. but while we see these characters close up, and these are explicitly identified (or identify themselves as) changelings, the novel's implication is that all its characters are potentially changelings: all of them are in tension with the expectations that their families seem to have of them, and that, the novel suggests, is a good thing: that is where hope for the future comes from, because if they can break free from those expectations, they can, perhaps, forge a better, more integrated, tolerant world.
the novel feels sort of bildungsroman-y, but rather than explore a period of years, the novel focuses on a fairly brief window of time - the significant, concentrated life changing events of just a few months. and the absolute heart of the novel is the developing friendship between vincent and clara: the instant attraction between them, and their shared longing to know more about each other; the way in which they feel more connected to each other than to almost anyone else they've ever known; their initial fears about being seen anywhere together and their decision not to worry about that any more, or to hide their friendship; and the steps they take to find a place in a community - of friends and family - which understands them (and for which dave brings ice cream). as smith suggests, then, this focuses on a friendship rather than anything more between the two girls, but the possibility for something more is an undeniable undercurrent.
and it ends on a real moment of uplift and possibility, with vincent feeling as if she is in a dream:
there was somebody running with her, at her side, as fast as she and as graceful, somebody whose face she was not sure she had seen yet; but the laughter was there, the free elated sound of it, and the direction was there - shearing clean through the curtain of snow, as if marked out for her in the dream.
she felt the whole world opening in front of her as she ran. in a moment, she could touch it.
anyway, this is a great book. it's completely absurd that sinclair isn't better known and that her books have been allowed to be forgotten about.
I randomly found Jo in Union Sq a few years back. Dont normally stop people and ask them to shoot with me. I should make it a point to do that more often.
