Stone Butch Blues is a fiction novel written by Leslie Feinberg. It details the life of a stone butch named Jess Goldberg. Despite being fiction, it takes heavy inspiration from Feinberg's own life in 20th century New York.
Even though Stone Butch Blues is considered a heavy read noted by it's advisory warning at the beginning of the book, it is frequently discussed as an almost essential read for the LGBT community, and it "never shies away from portraying the anti-Semitism, classism, homophobia, anti-butch animus, and transphobia that protagonist Jess Goldberg faced on a daily basis—but it also shows the healing power of love and political activism."[1]
Plot
The narrative follows Jess Goldberg, who grows up in a working-class area of Buffalo, New York in the 1940s. Her parents, frustrated with Jess's gender nonconformity, eventually institutionalize Jess in a psychiatric ward for three weeks. When she reaches puberty and feels the weight of gendered difference, Jess learns of a gay bar from a coworker. There, she meets drag queens, butches, and femmes. She is taught about lesbian roles and culture, before the bar is raided by cops. Jess later drops out of school after being sexually assaulted by the football team.
Jess finds her place in the lesbian community of Buffalo while the cops continue to raid gay bars. At this time, Jess goes through various relationships, and comes to find that she is a stone butch after cringing away from one of her partner's attempts to touch her genitals. Later, Jess gets a factory job and gets involved in union organization, but is alienated by male coworkers. At her second job, she meets a woman and gets unofficially married to her.
Cops continue raids and retaliation increases, the crowd inspired by the Stonewall riots. Jess' wife, Theresa, attends feminist meetings where she is told that dating a butch is a betrayal of feminism. When Jess starts to question her gender, Theresa encourages her to forget about it, and later breaks up with her.
Jess starts taking testosterone and gets top surgery. Due to passing as a male, Jess begins to feel extremely alienated from lesbian spaces. She hooks up with a barista, who is unaware that Jess is transmasculine, and is horrified when said barista begins to make homophobic comments in front of her.
After years of passing as a man, Jess stops taking testosterone. She no longer passes as male and feels continually more comfortable in her gender nonconforming body. After encountering Theresa and her new partner at a grocery store, Jess decides she needs to leave Buffalo and moves to New York City. Jess forms a close friendship with her neighbor Ruth, a trans woman. While taking the subway, Jess is attacked and seriously injured by a group of teenage boys. Ruth nurses Jess back to health and they confess their love for each other on Christmas Eve.
Ruth and Jess embark on a road trip to Upstate New York to visit Ruth's family. While there, Jess visits Buffalo and reconnects with friends from her past. After returning to New York City, Jess witnesses a queer rights demonstration and decides to speak about her experiences. As the novel closes, Jess feels her life coming full circle, and she is filled with hope for her future with Ruth.
Awards
The book was a 1994 Lambda Literary Award finalist in the category of Lesbian Fiction, and shared the award in the Small Press Books category with Sojourner: Black Gay Voices in the Age of AIDS.[2] It also won the 1994 Stonewall Book Award.[3]
Reception
Laura Sackton of Book Riot named it as one of the forty best queer books of all time, describing it as "the kind of queer, trans narrative we badly need: honest, freeing, and vital."[4] The New York Public Library has listed it as one of 125 books they love,[5] marking it as the forefront of a "new movement of transgender political identity and solidarity that was taking shape in the 1990s."[6] The Guardian also listed Stone Butch Blues as one of the "top 10 transgender books."[7]
Stone Butch Blues is considered a cult classic in LGBT communities, and continues to be popular almost 30 years after its original publication.
Criticism
Within the queer community, Stone Butch Blues is occasionally criticized by lesboy exclusionists due to the protagonist being a transmasculine lesbian.[8]
Resources
Wikipedia contributors. "Stone Butch Blues." Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia. Wikipedia, The Free Encyclopedia, 30 Jun. 2024. Web. 9 Aug. 2024.
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240809121238/https://slate.com/human-interest/2014/11/leslie-feinberg-stone-butch-blues-author-transgender-pioneer-has-died.html
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20141207163701/http://www.lambdaliterary.org/winners-finalists/07/13/lambda-literary-awards-1993/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20190614095254/http://www.ala.org/rt/glbtrt/award/stonewall/honored#1994
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20210114041106/https://bookriot.com/best-queer-books/
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20201206165417/https://www.nypl.org/books-more/recommendations/125/adults
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20201113001241/https://www.nypl.org/blog/2020/03/10/hard-find-leslie-feinbergs-stone-butch-blues
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240809123432/https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/oct/21/top-10-transgender-books
- ↑ https://web.archive.org/web/20240809123832/https://www.tumblr.com/everyponie/746605673378398208/im-not-usually-one-to-reply-to-dipshits-on-this?source=share