Lambda Literary Awards Finalist, 2010.

 

Arousing, inspiring, and bold, this Seal Press anthology reveals a new awareness of female sexuality.

Kicking things off, Dr. Lisa Diamond's foreword states, "These women have bravely explored every edge of the supposed boundary dividing the queer from the straight, before from after, truth from falsehood, self from façade, and girl from woman....In the end, each of these women makes her own peace with identity, desire, kinship, community, partnership, and self, sometimes with a lover by her side, sometimes alone."

27 essays follow, by smart, hilarious, and heroically honest writers, who, like Cynthia Nixon, Portia de Rossi, and Wanda Sykes, left heterosexual lives behind to pursue relationships with women.

Activist and author Jennifer Baumgardner closes the book with this grace note: "...the dominant power in this book is love. You read the word over and over on these pages. These stories are not just about finding that perfect person to love, but finding yourself and loving her. It’s being connected to something between women; feeling that you are on the side of all of the women who ever wanted something more and who wanted to be bigger or different than the narrow silhouette of traditional womanhood. It’s chafing against the idea that women could only love or be loved in a certain way and proving that assumption dead wrong."

Dear John, I Love Jane is a timely, candid exploration of female sexuality and personal choice.