Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women

I first became familiar with Leila J. Rupp's work when I was gathering source material for my MA thesis. Her book Worlds of Women: The Making of an International Women's Movement was one of the most important secondary sources I used, and one of the most interesting, too! I had always intended to read more of her books, but after finishing my thesis somehow I just didn't. Then I found out about her latest book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women. As I'm participating into this year's GLBT Challenge and had not read any nonfiction that would qualify for the challenge, I thought Sapphistries would be the perfect candidate for my nonfiction GLBT read. I did start the book with the intention of reading it for the nonfiction minichallenge, but did not quite manage that. 

I must say I had very high hopes for Sapphistries. I had read Worlds of Women with great interest and hoped that Sapphistries would be a great nonfiction read. I must say that partly, even for the most part, it was. My problem was with the first few chapters of the book. Rupp's book tries to cover a huge time period from 40 000 BC to the present. The chapters covering the earlier historical periods really frustrated me. There really is hardly any sources about love between women from those earlier times and that lead into lots of speculation and little hard facts. I felt that Rupp should just have acknowledged the lack of sources and moved on instead of trying to overexplain the little info there is. 

When Rupp got into later time periods (1600->) the book became truly interesting. Also, throughout the book Rupp tries to be really global and uses source materials from different cultures f. ex. from China, Japan, India, and various African cultures in addition to Europe and the Americas. The book includes some amazing stories of amazing individuals: persons who passed as men all their lives and were found out to be anatomically female only after they died, biological women disguised as men, who fled from Europe to the New World and got married to women who sometimes seemed to have no idea that their husbands were in fact biological women, love between Chinese co-wives, sworn virgins of Albania etc. 

There is an interesting chapter about finding a name for love between women, and also a fair amout of information about romantic friendships between women. The notion of a romantic friendship has always interested me and Rupp's book provided new information about romantic friendships between women in different cultures.

Despite the, I think, rather inevitable problems with the earlier chapters of the book Sapphistries: A Global History of Love between Women was an interesting and informative read. It is also written in an engaging way and for me it was one of those nonfiction books that read almost like a novel. I do recommend it to anyone interested in women's history or GLBT history.

I conclude this post with a song quoted in Sapphistries on pp. 161-162. It is a song sung in certain Berlin clubs in the 1920s. Knowing what came later makes this heartbreaking. What if the steps towards openness and freedom found then would have continued without the terrible interruption of the Nazi regime and the war?

"We're not afraid to be queer and diff'rent
if that means hell - well hell we'll take the chance
they march in lockstep, we prefer to dance
We see a world of romance and of pleasure
all they can see is sheer banality
Lavender nights are our greatest treasure
where we can be just who we want to be

Round us all up, send us away
that's what you'd really like to do
But we're too strong proud unafraid
in fact we almost pity you
You act from fear, why sould that be
what is it that you are frightened of

the way that we dress
the way that we meet
the fact that you cannot destroy our love
We're going to win our rights
to lavender days and nights."

There will be a little pause here at A Book Blog of One's Own, as I will not be able to post anything next week. I'll be back posting after the 15th. Have a great week everyone!