Book Review - A Woman Like That: Lesbian and Bisexual Writers Tell Their Coming Out Stories

Although A Woman Like That is full of brave and often wrenching coming-out stories, with the expected emphasis on overcoming social and familial pressure (more than one of these writers describes involuntary stays in mental hospitals), the combined effect of these wonderful memoirs is more erotic than political--and more funny than erotic. In "Picture This," Cecilia Tan describes her suburban mother snapping up copies of Penthouse to send to friends and relatives because it contained Tan's first nationally published fiction. In "What Comes First," Holly Hughes refers in passing to a gay-bashing incident at her college cafeteria--someone threw a fruit cocktail at her--and goes on to recount her difficulty at attracting a lesbian lover. "It had been so easy with men," she recalls, "All you had to do was bend over at the bowling alley and something would happen." Judith Katz remembers a game called "Tom and Tom" that she used to play with two little boys on her street: "Tom and Tom ... were human cartoon characters who ran around together and got their genitalia caught up in all kinds of elastic knots and snags." For some, Desert Hearts; for others, Road Runner. --Regina Marler