“No pride for some of us without liberation for all of us.” Marsha P. Johnson
A selection of rare books by queer artists and authors are currently on exhibit in the James F. Holly Rare Books Room from June 23 to September 6, 2024.
The selected titles span eight decades and a variety of formats, including photography books, artists books, poetry chapbooks, and zines. The earliest title is “The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings” by American artist, illustrator, journalist, and writer Djuna Barnes. Evergreen owns an unsanctioned 1948 reprint of this scandalous poetry chapbook that was originally published in 1915 and sold for fifteen cents.
Also on display is a custom-printed roll of toilet paper that was created for an installation in a women’s bathroom by the queer women’s artist collective fierce pussy.
In the book “Are You a Boy or a Girl,” author Amy Ryken shares conversations they had with elementary school students regarding gender, and how children learn about sameness and differences in our current society.
You can read more about the 23 books on display and explore additional informational links below.
Please visit our beautiful rare books room and spend some time with these diverse offerings from the James F Holly Rare Book Collection.
For open hours and additional information about the James F. Holly Rare Books Room, visit https://libguides.evergreen.edu/rarebooks/home
Full List of Exhibit Titles and Links
Barnes, Djuna, and David Zeitsoff. The Book of Repulsive Women: 8 Rhythms and 5 Drawings. Alicat Bookshop Press, 1948.
https://www.alb-neckar-schwarzwald.de/dbarnes/repulsive.html
This unsanctioned edition is one of 1000 copies prepared for Alicat Book Shop in October 1948 by the Lincoln Press of Yonkers NY.
Excerpts from Andrew Field's biography Djuna, The Life and Times of Djuna Barnes (G. P. Putnam's Sons, New York 1983) which concern The Book of Repulsive Women:
"The first book by Djuna Barnes, really more a booklet with eight poems and five drawings, The Book of Repulsive Women, appeared as Number 20, Special Series, of the Chap Books in November 1915. It sold for fifteen cents at first, but its price was very quickly raised to fifty cents when it became clear that the chapbook was enjoying notoriety. ...
The atmosphere of Barnes' eight "rhythms" is quite in keeping with the book's title. We must remember that while this was a period in which the forces of European Decadence were still being very much felt, no less in the United States than in Scandinavia, Italy, Poland and Russia, there was certainly in all the English-speaking countries as late as 1915 an extraordinary reticence on sexual themes in literature. Oscar Wilde did not write his homosexuality; he merely practised it. The Book of Repulsive Women, a full decade before Radclyffe Hall's Well of Loneliness, was the first modern literary work in English to bring the theme of woman's "bitter secret" (it is never named) to the misty fore.
The Book of Repulsive Women remained an underground work. It was to be more than half a century before it was even mentioned in print." - Johannes Beilharz
Campbell, Anna. Ever Your Friend. First edition, September 2014; Issue Press, 2014.
https://annacampbell.net/Ever-Your-Friend-1
A collection of images abstracted from the photo collection of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn, NY. Compiled during a month in residence at the Archive, these images have been modified, isolating only hands, bare arms, and any objects they may hold. This selective editing prompts the viewer to fill in the gaps not only of the physical image itself but also in the narratives of everyday lesbian life they depict.
The title of this volume is borrowed from the back of a portrait photograph that was inscribed “Ever Your Friend, Ida.” The subtlety of that line and all that it might imply aligns with the desiring charge of this project: to re-image profound embodiments, affiliations, and passions through the sparest of gestures.
Anna Campbell’s sculptures, installations, and ephemera mine history and queer desire, repurposing otherwise stable signifiers of gender and heteronormativity. - Anna Campbell
Instagram: @_anna_campbell
Carpetmuncher, Drag King, Dyke, Deviant, Dickchopper, Diesel Dyke, Eager Beaver, Femme, Feminist, Fierce Pussy, Girlfriend, Gymteacher, Homo, I, Invert, Jersey Girl, Jock Killer, Labialicker, Lezzie, Lawnmower, Lesbian, Mannish, Muffdiver, Maricona, Nun, Nasty Girls, Other, Pata, Pervert, Queer, Recruiter, Rebel, Radical, Sister, Sapphist, Slam Piece, Stone Butch, Sugar Mama, Tomboy, Top, Tribadist, Terrorist, Unnatural, Vagina Dentata, Vampire, Witch, Woman, x’s, You, Zealot. Fierce Pussy, 1994.
https://fiercepussy.org/projects
A site-specific installation in the women’s bathroom made as part of the exhibition “Outhouses” at the New York Lesbian and Gay Community Services Center, incorporating a billboard-sized poster, messages etched on mirrors inside the stalls and an edition of custom-printed toilet paper.
fierce pussy is a collective of queer women artists. Formed in New York City in 1991 through our immersion in AIDS activism during a decade of increasing political mobilization around gay rights, fierce pussy brought lesbian identity and visibility directly into the streets.
Low-tech and low budget, the collective responded to the urgency of those years, using readily available resources: old typewriters, found photographs, our own baby pictures, and the printing supplies and equipment accessible in our day jobs.
fierce pussy projects included wheat pasting posters on the street, renaming New York City streets after prominent lesbian heroines, re-designing the restroom at the LGBT community center, printing and distributing stickers and t-shirts, a greeting card campaign, a video PSA and more recently, various installations and exhibitions in galleries and museums.
Originally fierce pussy was composed of a fluid and often shifting cadre of dykes including Pam Brandt, Jean Carlomusto, Donna Evans, Alison Froling, and Suzanne Wright. Many other women came to an occasional meeting, and joined in to wheat paste, stencil and sticker. Four of the original core members—Nancy Brooks Brody, Joy Episalla, Zoe Leonard, and Carrie Yamaoka—continue to work together. -fierce pussy
Cheung, Jeffrey. Drawings. Endless Editions, 2019.
https://www.hashimotocontemporary.com/artists/44-jeffrey-cheung/
The playfulness and low-brow style of Oakland-based Jeffrey Cheung’s contorted nude figures has quickly gained traction within the Bay Area’s ever-changing art scene. Cheung’s humor translates well across his many paintings, prints, collages, drawings and even murals. Alongside his visual artwork, Cheung launched Unity Skateboarding, a queer skating collective. He also plays music in local punk bands Meat Market and Unity. Cheung currently lives and works in Oakland, CA. -Hashimoto Contemporary
Instagram: @jeffcheung1
Galindo, Devyn, and Alma Rosa Rivera. We Are Still Here. First edition., Devyn Galindo, 2017.
https://devyngalindo.com/story/we-are-still-here#8018
“We Are Still Here combats a reductive and colonialist white-American slant on womxn of Mexican heritage with intricately designed graphic features and refined photographic portraiture. Following a commanding foreword by Alma Rosa Rivera (in which she expertly describes the pluralism implicit within the Chicanismx identity), Devyn Galindo depicts femme and female-bodied Chicanx in strong, situated positions – exuding power and authority. Photography is employed in We Are Still Here to dismantle abstract but heavily adhered-to notions of silence or timidity within marginalized communities across the Mexican-American border.” - Printed Matter
Galindo, Devyn, and Hope Steinman-lacullo. Van Dykes. Devyn Galindo, 2017.
Van Dykes Journal is a travelogue journal of 3 months on the road in a 1978 VW van. Inspired by a caravan of lesbians who called themselves the Van Dykes roaming the US and Mexico in the 1970’s. This project hopes to dismantle the unending of the great American road trip that focuses on the ability of whiteness to camouflage itself against the American landscape. As we move through these spaces we hope to identify stories of survival against an America that seeks to erase LGBTQIA + QTPOC narratives. - vandykesproject.com
This is volume 1 in a series.
Instagram: @devyngalindo and @hopeiacullo
García Lorca, Federico, et al. Tree of Song. Translated by Alan Brilliant, Unicorn Press, 1971.
https://c250.columbia.edu/c250_celebrates/remarkable_columbians/federico_lorca.html
“Federico García Lorca is one of Spain's greatest literary figures, and after Miguel de Cervantes perhaps the most widely recognized Spanish writer in the English-speaking world. Known above all for his poetry and plays, Lorca also produced novels, short stories, paintings, drawings, and musical compositions in his brief lifetime. In the 1920s, Lorca devoted himself to poetry and associated himself with a group of artists that included Salvador Dali and Luis Buñuel. In August 1936, shortly after the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War, Lorca was executed by a Falangist firing squad for his suspected left-wing sympathies; his books were burned publicly, and his name forbidden by the Franco government. Lorca's death made him a martyr and an international symbol of political repression, adding to his legend.” - c250.columbia.edu
González-Torres, Félix, et al. A Selection of Snapshots Taken by Felix Gonzalez-Torres. A.R.T. Press, 2010.
https://www.felixgonzalez-torresfoundation.org/
https://www.artresourcestransfer.org/press/felix-gonzalez-torres-snapshots
This book presents a selection of snapshots and accompanying inscriptions sent by Felix Gonzalez-Torres to Doug Ashford, Julie Ault, Bill Bartman, Susan Cahan, Amada Cruz, David Deitcher, Suzanne Ghez, Ann Goldstein, Claudio González, Jim Hodges, Susan Morgan, Robert Nickas, Mario Nuñez, and Christopher Williams between 1990–1995.
The snapshots are quick poetic communiqués, a visual report on Felix's outlook at particular moments in time, small gestures of hope, pleasure, and desire. They give evidence to some of his multiple fascinations: pets, furniture, collectible dolls, politics, art, friendship, beauty, love and optimism. - artresourcestransfer.org
Green, Ethan James. Young New York. First edition., Aperture, 2019.
https://ethanjamesgreen.com/publications/young-new-york
Young New York, Ethan James Green’s first monograph, presents a selection of striking portraits of New York’s millennial scene-makers, a gloriously diverse cast of models, artists, nightlife icons, queer youth, and gender binary–flouting muses of the fashion world and beyond. Under the mentorship of the late David Armstrong, Green developed a sensitive and confident style and an intense connection with his subjects; his luminous black-and-white portraits, many taken in Corlears Hook Park on the Lower East Side, bring to mind Diane Arbus’s midcentury studies of gender nonconformists. Although he often shoots on commission for fashion brands and magazines, for Young New York, Green photographed his close friends and community for more than three years, and his humanist approach transcends the trends of the moment. Young New York promises to announce a bright young talent who is redefining beauty and identity for a new generation. In the words of the model and actress Hari Nef, one of Green’s frequent subjects, “In Ethan’s world, the kids who inspire him ought to be (and are) the subjects of his work. Ethan is an artist among so-called image makers.” - aperture.org
Instagram: @ethanjamesgreen
Heft, Caren. Ah Death : A Melotragedy. Arcadian Press, 1991.
http://www.vampandtramp.com/finepress/a/arcadianpress.html
"Colophon 14-27, 12 November 1991, It is a raw, rainy day in Wisconsin, the drizzle threatening to become snow, a fitting day to finish this book, 3 years in the making. Magic Johnson announced his infection with HIV this week, underscoring that which many of us knew, that AIDS, like the Black Plague, is a disease which knows no boundaries. There are 27 copies of the book, set in Spectrum, printed on early Root River Mill papers. Perhaps now I can put aside the memories of the boy he was, the man he became, and let him rest. - Unsigned.” - University of Wisconsin-Madison Library
İlkin, Gözde. [ID card = N.C.]. Gözde İlkin, 2011.
https://www.paris-b.com/artist/gozde-ilkin/
ID CARD/ N.C. is a printed copy of needlework on fabric work. Each person born in Turkey is given an identity card (Nüfus Cüzdani). Women's are pink and men's are blue. Featured on the NC is information on the person's religion, marital status, state register, and gender. It is a document that confirms a person's official record and existence. The NC in its original size sewn onto cloth includes all information on both woman and man; it completes the official division and content information. It questions the sharp boundaries regarding gender, citizenship rights and choices that exist within the state. NC is presented as a print, together with a text: It can be read with an introductory booklet found on the NC that questions the intention and workings of the personal, mandatory areas on the card. -The artist, via Printed Matter
Instagram: @gozilk
Leonard, Michael, and Edward Lucie-Smith. Changing: 50 Drawings. Gay Men’s, 1983.
https://www.michaelleonardartist.com/
“This book features images of fifty black and white drawings by the British artist, Michael Leonard (b.1933), the majority dating from the late 1970's and early 1980's. The nude, particularly the male nude, has been a recurring theme in the artists' work. Figures are usually on the move or in a state of transition but even when they are at rest, dynamism is provided by the design of the picture.” - Karen Jacobson Art and Design Books
Instagram: @michaelleonardartist @edwardluciesmith
Morales, Nelson. Musas Muxe. Primera edición = First edition., Inframundo, 2018.
https://nelsonmorales.mx/index.html
This book addresses the Muxes in an exploration of the cultural, sexual and personal identity of the author and of this community in Oaxaca, México. Since pre-Hispanic times the Zapotec culture accepts homosexuality, gives it an active role and an open position within society, much more relevant than anywhere else in Latin America. The Muxes are organically integrated into the social and economic net of the community, commenting on the duality as a deeply rooted feature in this country.
Nelson Morales has developed this project for almost eight years, in which he has photographed in his own community on the Isthmus of Oaxaca. Muses Muxe, as in a movie, is built from the process of creating the work in itself. Throughout the time, Nelson Morales tackles the subject, the photographic medium and the way of relating to the Muxes in different ways, creating and recreating the imaginary of the portrayed ones and the author himself from changing perspectives that go deeper and deeper into the multiple layers of the Zapotec culture. Sexuality, identity, and gender as key issues in society.
Musas Muxe is the author’s quest to glimpse the complexity of the Muxes in the transit of the search for their own identity, confronting themselves in the sensual space, overflowing and disturbing, the Muxe space. -Inframundo
Instagram: @nelsonmoralesmx
Oakley, Be. Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance. GenderFail, 2018.
https://genderfailproject.square.site/
“The book features five written works from Be Oakley, Lora Mathis, Alexis Ruiseco-Lombera, Noah LeBien and Kimi Hanauer on how the statement "Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance" resonates with their practice. Oakley states “In this, “Radical Softness as a Boundless Form of Resistance” is not a utopian idea but rather one that tries to grapple with the unique realities we face. It signals and celebrates how we each come to resistance by allowing us to define these terms for ourselves.” - Genderfail
Porter, Richard, editor. A Queer Anthology of Sickness. Pilot Press, 2019.
https://www.pilotpress.co.uk/about
The latest anthology from Pilot Press—following a trilogy dealing with loneliness, joy, and rage; a collection of essays, testimonies, pictures, poems, that are spirited, intense, sometimes loud, sometimes fragile; queer and proud. Featuring Tai Shani, David Wojnarowicz, Paul P., G.B. Jones, Mary Manning, D. Mortimer, Derek Jarman and many many more.
-After 8 Books
Pilot Press is the imprint of artist Richard Porter, started in 2017 to help retrieve a philosophy of publishing lost to AIDS and capitalism.
Initially a project distributed among friends, its titles are now stocked by independent bookshops worldwide, and are held in several academic libraries and special collections for Printed Matter.
Roysdon, Emily, et al. West Street. Printed Matter, Inc., 2010.
With this handsomely printed accordion book, Every Ocean Hughes (formerly Emily Roysdon) insinuates her own recent photographic work into a collection of black and white images taken by Alvin Baltrop in the 1970s and 80s. The setting for both sets of photographs is the deteriorating industrial architecture of New York’s Hudson River piers, where intrepid young gay men and women would come after dark to explore, create public artworks, and have sex within its abandoned office and warehouse spaces.
[Every Ocean Hughes] views this book as part of her ongoing interest in the cultural history of the piers and an opportunity to reflect on Baltrop’s spectacular, and unheralded oeuvre of photographs. Along with the collection of folding images, the book contains a text by Roysdon as an extended meditation on these ideas that reverberate through the photographic pairing and the historic context of the Baltrop works. - Printed Matter
Instagram: @every_eoh
Ryken, Amy E. (Amy Elizabeth). Are You a Boy or a Girl?: Conversations about Gender in Elementary Classrooms. [Amy E. Ryken], 2011.
https://www.pugetsound.edu/amy-ryken-recent-publications
In this book Amy Ryken, a former schoolteacher and current professor of education, writes about her conversations with elementary school children about her gender and their questions. Ryken's aims with this book were to “foster dialogue about gender expression” and “sponsor conversations about gender and how adults might engage young children in dialogue about sameness and difference.” - 23 Sandy
Scharf, Amanda. Dog Dykes. 1st edition, Mixedgreens, 2019.
“dog dykes is a zine collaboration and open call for submission. in celebration of our love for canines (and LGBTQIA+ humans), mixedgreens is compiling a photo collection of dykes and their dogs. it’s time to queer the history of man’s best friend!” - dogdykes.com
Smith, Sable Elyse, et al. C.R.E.A.M. First edition, Wendy’s Subway, 2018.
https://www.thehighline.org/art/projects/cream-event/
Sable Elyse Smith’s C.R.E.A.M. locates the intersection of a specific fantasy of racial exclusion and containment in the mutual investments of real estate development and the prison system. Hollywoodland—the segregated community founded in 1923 and once advertised by the original version of the now iconic sign that sits atop the hills of Los Angeles—and Ironwood State Prison, come together in the imaginary of IRONWOODLAND, a sign Smith installed on the High Line in New York in 2018. Mining personal archives, research materials, and pop cultural references (with the book’s title a homage to Wu-Tang Clan’s 1993 eponymous song), Smith’s Cash Rules Everything Around Me spins out to consider the constant threat of police violence against Black and queer bodies, the prison system and its attendant procedures and regulations, and the interior, emotional landscape of personal trauma and memory.
Sable Elyse Smith is an interdisciplinary artist, writer, and educator based in New York and Richmond, Virginia. Using video, sculpture, photography, and text, she points to the carceral, the personal, the political, and the quotidian to speak about a violence that is largely unseen, and potentially imperceptible. - Wendy’s Subway
Instagram: @sable_elyse
Taxman, Emilee. Genderless. Blue Rose Press at UW Madison, 2023.
A documentation of the artist's personal journey with gender and transition.
I believe in the power of words, and I find that their power is more effective when connected with a multi-sensorial experience... The form of the book itself reflects my conceptual framework: it is both time-based and interactive. Reading a book is an intimate experience, a connection made between the piece and the viewer as they flip from page to page. To truly experience the book demands lingering and the touch of a hand.” - emileetaxman.com
Instagram: @blue_rose_press
Taxman, Emilee. Patchwork Voices. Blue Rose Press, 2023.
“An interview with 18 transgender people, recording their answers to the question: What was a defining moment of your transition? Each interviewee is also documented with a print of an original portrait of them drawn in ink and colored pencil by the book artist. This book was made at UW Madison. Bound in pink cloth boards with blue spine and white silkscreened title and gender symbol to front board. A drumleaf binding printed digitally with elements in color.” - kelmscottbookshop.com
Instagram: @blue_rose_press
Williams, Jonathan, et al. (April 19) Lexington Nocturne : A Poem. Keith Smith, 1983.
Jonathan Williams was the founder of the Jargon Society and publisher of Jargon Press. A photographer and graphic artist associated with the Black Mountain poets, Williams was inspired by the visual arts, music, and the natural world; he experimented with found poetry and at times illustrated his work. His interests included civil rights, Appalachia and the Appalachian Trail, folk arts, and avant-garde poetry. - poetryfoundation.org/
Lexington Nocturne is a book of homoerotic poetry with explicit illustrations that was printed in an edition of 300. 50 copies of the limited edition were signed, numbered, and hand bound at the Visual Studies Workshop Press with printing assistance from artist Joan Lyons and binding from renowned bookbinder Keith Smith.
Yactayo Sono, Juan. Coto de caza. 1a. edición, Setiembre 2017., AECID, 2017.
https://www.juanyactayosono.com
Coto de Caza (Hunting Reserve) by artist Juan Yactayo Sono is an intimate look into illegal cruising spots in Lima, Peru. Cruising is a term used to describe the activity of searching for anonymous, often queer, public sex. Through 61 photographs, captured expeditiously on a cellphone, documentation of internet conversations in English, and writing by the artist in Spanish, the viewer is immersed into a world of “pleasure, darkness, fear, tension and loneliness.” A sensitive glimpse through the eyes of a young man exploring his sexuality, Yactayo Sono presents a nuanced picture of both freedom and marginalization.
Coto de Caza is published by Peruvian publisher Pequeño Pato Salvaje Editorial in 2018. Juan Yactayo Sono is an artist based in Lima, Peru working in photography and film whose work addresses masculinity, queer identity, and sexuality. - Printed Matter
Instagram: @jyactayosono
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