December 12–19, 1996

book quarterly

The Wild Good: Lesbian Photographs & Writings on Love

Edited by Beatrix Gates, Anchor, 270 p., $19.95

Gay and lesbian book buyers, beware! Now that mainstream publishers have finally seen fit to recognize us as a cohesive community of readers with easily identifiable shared interests (read: easily exploitable niche market), they seem to feel that the best way to attract our disposable income is to release a seemingly endless stream of anthologies centered on a variety of surefire themes: love, sex, coming-out, butch/femme, sports, the great outdoors, you name it.

Of course, many of these anthologies provide a service to gay and lesbian belles lettres by providing a forum for up-and-coming writers to present their work, often alongside more established writers whose names, prominently displayed on the bookjackets, help move these tomes off the shelves and onto the nightstands of queer America. But too often these anthologies are merely recycled, repackaged, pared-down versions of stories, poems, memoirs, and novels we've all read before. And, too often, distracted by the seductive covers and slick graphics of these retread compilations, we don't realize this until we settle down to read them at home, when we are suddenly overcome with a feeling of deja vu (or, more appropriately, deja lu, the uncanny feeling that you've read this all before). The best way to avoid falling into this trap is to open that tempting little anthology, while still in the store, and check its pedigree. Does the publisher acknowledge the copyrights of one or two republished pieces? Or does the list go on and on? If it does, you know you've probably read some of the selections before; in fact, a few of them are probably sitting on your bookshelf .

The Wild Good is a perfect case in point. A glossy collection of "lesbian photographs and writings on love," printed on satisfyingly thick and shiny paper and capped off with Vita Shapiro's sexy cover photo of two fit, white, young lesbians making love in a tumultuous stream, this volume seems perfectly timed to spend the holiday season perched next to the cash register in your local gay and lesbian bookstore. Once, however, you get past the sexy cover, past the impressive table of contents (featuring big names like Pat Califia, Adrienne Rich, Muriel Rukeyser, Kate Rushin, Chrystos and Audre Lorde), past the images and text on all kinds of love, romantic to familial, to the six-page "Acknowledgments of Copyright," you realize that the selections in this book have gotten around: dressed up one way or another, these promiscuous little vixens have spent the night on almost everyone's bedside table!

Of course, there's nothing wrong with that in principle: from sex to surgery, most of us would much rather find ourselves in the skillful hands of an experienced practitioner than the trembling fingers of a neophyte. The problem here is that many of the selections featured in The Wild Good lack originality in both senses of the word. For the most part, Gates' anthology projects a composite portrait of lesbian culture and lesbian love that was already growing stale a decade ago: politically correct, predominantly lesbian-feminist, largely passionless, and diverse to the point of dogmatism. Thus, we have the usual assortment of images representing Lesbian Diversity: lesbian senior citizens, fat lesbians, proud lesbians, protesting lesbians, lesbian body parts (hands, eyes, breasts), and lesbian landscapes. There are precious few pictures depicting lesbian sex with any specificity.

Ironically, despite the anthology's determined attempts at diversity, most of the text exudes the same homogeneous granola sensibility that many of the photographs do. There is a telling moment in Donna Allegra's "The Birthday Presence" when one of the main characters opens a series of gifts that could have been mail-ordered from a 1980s lesbian incarnation of QVC: a copy of Audre Lorde's Sister Outsider, a bulky hand-knit sweater, a gift certificate to Eve's Garden, and several issues of On Our Backs . Most of the lesbians depicted in this volume — womyn-loving-womyn who seem to spend more time meditating, processing, nurturing, and communing with nature than they do having sex — would have been right at home at that party, dutifully bearing gifts of labrys necklaces and rainbow flags, no doubt.

The numbing sameness that characterizes most of this volume makes the few truly innovative contributions all the more exciting. Founding member of the Obie-award-winning performance troupe the Five Lesbian Brothers, Lisa Kron's unexpectedly touching tongue-in-cheek riff on her brother's wedding is a delight; Marilyn Hacker's insightful, heartfelt poem to her former mother-in-law is exquisite; and the excerpt from Philadelphia native Chea Villanueva's "Girlfriends" provides a humorous glimpse into the wonderful world of lesbian gossip. Too bad these fresh voices are delivered in such a stale package.

— Jeannine DeLombard