Hello and Happy Hanukkah to everyone celebrating.
In the event that you’re feeling as generally stressed as I am right now and also missed out on this same news item in 2015, here’s one thing that made me happy this week:
More recently, the Mayor of Flavortown himself also raised over $21.5 million to assist unemployed restaurant workers during the pandemic. We are now Guy Fieri fans in this house!
Anyway, here’s a book rec.
— Becca
Rubyfruit Jungle by Rita Mae Brown
Fiction, 1973
It would be impossible to write a review that is not skewed by how genuinely thrilled I was to read a novel that begins in my tiny hometown of York, Pennsylvania. Equally exciting (for me, personally) is that the narrator later moves to South Florida, where my girlfriend happens to be from, and then to NYC, where we both live now.
I realize that most of this has no bearing on how interesting the book will be to anyone else, but it was truly delightful to pick this up expecting only to relate to the queerness and discover all of these lil geographical connections.
Anyway, aside from being about some places with personal significance to me, the book follows Molly Bolt as she grows up and grows into her sexuality in the 50s and 60s. And I say “grows into” rather than “comes to terms with” because this is the rare book where the protagonist doesn’t struggle with the fact that she’s queer.
She just is. And she’s cool with it. That’s a fairly uncommon occurrence even for young characters in contemporary lit, so props to Rita Mae for giving us one almost 50 years ago.
And Molly is written to be easy to root for. She’s smart, she’s strong-willed, and she stands up to homophobia and sexism without batting an eye. She’s also strikingly empathetic and able to understand and forgive characters who are objectively awful to her at times, all of which makes her generally very likeable.
But there are several what the fuck moments in here, most notably related to Molly’s cavalier attitude towards incest(!?). Given that this is understood to be an autobiographical novel, I’m concerned about what this says of Rita Mae’s own views.
There’s also a ton of racism and antisemitism throughout. Most of this comes from characters who are also sexist, homophobic, and all-around antagonistic bigots that Molly stands up to. But some comes from members of her family, who I think we’re supposed to see as ignorant but still lovable, so that’s... not great.
What I’m saying is that there are some serious flaws, and that the book hasn’t aged that well since its initial publication in 1973.
Still, it’s pretty fucking cool that Molly existed for readers in the early 70s, and I’d argue that some of her beliefs are still pretty radical. She’s a woman who’s comfortable in her own sexuality, disinterested in anyone else’s ideas of “purity,” and sees capitalist patriarchy for the trap that it is.
Plus, I think I’d have a soft spot for anyone who moves to NYC simply because she knows “there are so many queers in New York that one more wouldn’t rock the boat.”
Queer points:
+4 points for Molly describing sex with women as “dynamite,” which is absolutely insane but made me laugh, so... sure
+9 for a cat named Gertrude Stein
Buy it from Philly AIDS Thrift @ Giovanni’s Room