#rubyfruit jungle

[365daysoflesbians]

Lesbian author Rita Mae Brown with her cat, Sneaky Pie Brown.

[queereads-bracket]

Older Queer Works Book Bracket: Round 1C

Choose a book:

Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) by Rita Mae Brown

Chloe Plus Olivia: Anthology of Lesbian Lit from the 17thC to the Present (1994)

Voting ended onNov 29, 2025

Book summaries below:

Rubyfruit Jungle (1973) by Rita Mae Brown

A landmark coming-of-age novel that launched the career of one of this country’s most distinctive voices, Rubyfruit Jungle remains a transformative work since its original publication almost fifty years ago.

In bawdy, moving prose, Rita Mae Brown tells the story of Molly Bolt, the adoptive daughter of a dirt-poor Southern couple who boldly forges her own path in America. With her startling beauty and crackling wit, Molly finds that women are drawn to her wherever she goes—and she refuses to apologize for loving them back.

This literary milestone continues to resonate with its message about being true to yourself and, against the odds, living happily ever after.

Classics, coming of age

Chloe Plus Olivia: An Anthology of Lesbian Literature from the Seventeenth Century to the Present (1994), ed. by Lillian Faderman

In Chloe Plus Olivia Lillian Faderman seeks no less than to radically redefine four centuries of lesbian literature, filling a need that has long been neglected: a literary anthology of lesbian writers over the past four centuries, with each piece set in historical and literary context. This landmark work of scholarship offers an enlightening review of the shifting concept of "lesbian literature," followed by examples of six different genres: Romantic Friendship, Sexual Inversion, Exotic and Evil Lesbians, Lesbian Encoding, Lesbian Feminism, and Post-Lesbian Feminism.

Faderman examines works as diverse as Willa Cather's My Antonia and Virginia Woolf's Orlando; poetry by Gertrude Stein and Amy Lowell; fiction by Carson McCullers, Helen Hull, and Alice Walker. In addition, Chloe Plus Olivia contains writing by men who focused on women's relationships. These writings are included in the early section of the book and were, in various ways, important to the development of lesbian literature, since men were far more likely than women to achieve publication in other centuries.

It would be impossible to identify a single "great tradition" of lesbian writing, since it is in constant metamorphosis, reflecting changing social attitudes and women's voices. Chloe Plus Olivia, with its historical scope enhanced by Faderman's own personal search for a definition of lesbian literature, makes this the first book of its kind; it is certain to become the point of reference from which all subsequent studies of lesbian literature will begin.

Anthology, literary criticism

[drumshoww]

i can do this.

Estée Lauder / "Change" - Taylor Swift / Rubyfruit Jungle, Rita Mae Brown / Stephen Hawking / Tate from American Horror Story: Season 1 / Margaret Thatcher

[butcharium]

Present from my father which he got for me in the states!

[leehallfae]

“in school they told us that the president was the best man in the whole country but i knew my father was the best man in the whole country; the country didn’t know it, that’s all.”

— rita mae brown, rubyfruit jungle

[armeniuslaurant]

[macybay947]

Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown // Untitled by Zarina Situmorang // peeled pomelo fruit by Charles Deluvio // Untitled by Zarina Situmorang // Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown

[beebooks]

pelt a guy with grapefruit until he creams for a hundred bucks sure why not. why shouldn't that be the next course of action