Books
Click cover images to enlarge.
Are Girls Necessary? Lesbian Writing and Modern Histories.
In this analysis of twentieth-century lesbian writing, Julie Abraham offers new readings of pulp novelists alongside high modernists-authors as various as Gertrude Stein, Willa Cather, Mary Renault, and Virginia Woolf-to examine how these writers created new lesbian narratives.
"Anyone with a poignant interest in lesbian writing-its history and ramifications in the literary world-will welcome the challenge presented in Abraham's studies."
"Valuable both for the perspicacity of the brilliant nuggets that turn up in Abraham's excavation of her subject and for the clear, liberating distinction she makes between 'lesbian novels' and 'lesbian writing.'"
"Contributes significantly to our understandings not only of the particular writers discussed but of literary modernism and lesbian writing more generally. Abraham's book breaks new ground in its teasing out of the meanings and functions of 'history' in lesbian writing. It's a must-read for scholars in the field-and not just because it has such a great title."
"The discussions of individual writers in Are Girls Necessary? are uniformly astute and provocative in company with one another."
"Abraham's book enters an ongoing debate about what constitutes a lesbian text or lesbian writing and offers a fascinating solution, with important insights into the uses of history by modernist lesbian writers. These insights warrant close attention."
"Carefully argued, intelligently written."
"Forceful and original. An important contribution to lesbian studies."
Metropolitan Lovers: The Homosexuality of Cities
From the destruction of Sodom to the selling of Gay Street and from Tales of the City to The L Word, urban life and homosexuality have been made inseparable in Western culture. In this sweeping work, Julie Abraham investigates the evolution of this symbiotic relationship over the past two centuries, tracing how homosexuals have simultaneously become model citizens of the modern city and avatars of the urban.
Exploring the lives of prominent gay men and women, literary depictions of gay city life, classic works of urban theory, and the rhetoric of political reformers, Abraham challenges conventional thinking about what it means to be metropolitan and what it means to be queer. She provocatively juxtaposes works from writers such as Balzac and Baudelaire, Henry James and James Baldwin, Walter Benjamin and Jane Jacobs to redefine such familiar urban types as the flaneur, the prostitute, and the drag queen. From Paris, London, and Manchester, to Los Angeles, Chicago, New York, and San Francisco, Abraham deftly maps the connections, the exchanges of meaning, and the transfers of value that inform ideas of homosexuality and the city, ideas that have shaped modern life. Bringing this history to bear on the present, she argues against the commodification of gay urbanites as contemporary signs of city life.
While the city and homosexuality have long been associated, Abraham analyzes their convergence with unprecedented insight. In the process, she shows us how the urban and homosexuality have been intertwined and the inescapable consequences-both positive and negative-of this union.
"Metropolitan Lovers grabbed my attention immediately and held it to the final page. The argument of the book is powerful, compelling, and original; the breadth of what Abraham covers is impressive; and individual insights are stunning. She made me understand the deep connections between cities and sexuality in dramatically new ways."