Many of the books promoted harmful stereotypes, such as the predatory lesbian trope, and oversexualized lesbian relationships for the benefit of a male audience. Forrest presents a rich survey of the best of the pulps, including work by Ann Bannon, Vin Packer, Marion Zimmer Bradley (writing as Miriam Gardner), Brigid Brophy, and many others.While lesbian pulp fiction provided some LGBTQ+ folks with much-needed representation at the time of publication and has been reclaimed by many since, it's flaws - which are representative of the attitudes of the cultural moment in which these materials were published and continue to influence the community today - can't be ignored. Grande dame of lesbian literature Katherine V. Some – especially those written by lesbians – offered sympathetic and realistic depictions of "life in the shadows," while others (no less fun to read now) were smutty, sensational tales of innocent girls led astray. In the over-heated prose typical of the genre, these books document the emergence of a lesbian subculture in postwar America. For women leading straight lives, here was their confirmation that they were not alone and that darkly glamorous, "gay" places like Greenwich Village existed.
These were the books that small-town lesbians and prurient men bought by the millions – cheap, easy to find in drugstores, and immediately recognizable by their lurid covers: often a hard-looking brunette standing over a scantily-clad blonde or a man gazing in tormented lust at a lovely, unobtainable lesbian. In 1950, Fawcett founded their Gold Medal imprint, inaugurating the reign of lesbian pulp fiction. Step into the twilight world of lesbian pulps. Someone moves toward you, snapping a lighter open. Through the darkness, you can see figures gathered in twos and threes – the glowing tip of a cigarette, a close-manicured hand draped over a shoulder, heads turning to study the new arrival.
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