Book dossier

Sappho Was a Right-On Woman

by Sidney Abbott, Barbara Love

"This is the first account written by women--by Lesbians--about themselves and their struggle. For Lesbians, as for most women today, the present is experience as a collision between the past and future. The first part of Sappho Was a Right-on Woman, "What It Was Like," deals with the past: the guilt, the shame, the duplicity, that are part of living in a society that condemns Lesbians--when it cannot ignore them. Temporary sanctuaries (bars, gay ghettos, vacation spots) and "bizarre" behavior are part of the past for some Lesbians, and still very much part of the present for many. The second part of the book, "Living the Future," reflects profound change taking place within society, the women's movement, and most important, within Lesbians themselves--change that make it possible for them to stop making unnecessary apologies and start function as whole people. Defying the present is still not easy, the authors say, but it is infinitely preferable to the self-degradation society has gone to such pains to teach the Lesbian. Sappho Was a Right-on Woman speaks clearly, honestly, openly, to those women and men, homosexual and heterosexual, oppressing and oppressed, who are still living in the past. It invites them to "come out"--Out of their closets, out of their unexamined prejudice and unresolved confusion--and live into the future with "an appreciation of both the differences and the common humanity" necessary for constructive change"--Publisher's description on book jacket.