Jeannette Howard Foster

This book, Sex Variant Woman: The Life of Jeannette Howard Foster by Joanne Passet, appeared on my desk yesterday or the day before (meaning I may have requested it, so I'm not sure it should be part of the Gay Count):

Maybe because I'm a lesbian history geek, this one completely appeals to me (I also loved reading Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, for instance ... history! So interesting!). Every page I open to makes me tear up with admiration for the subject of the book.

Jacket flap:

Jeannette Howard Foster was to lesbianism in the mid-twentieth century what authors such as Gore Vidal and James Baldwin were to gay men. The first librarian at the famed Kinsey Institute for Sex Research, Foster unapologetically blew the lid off Cold War sexual repression in 1956 with her Sex Variant Women in Literature — the first-ever study of homosexuals, bisexuals, and cross-dressing characters appearing in more than 300 works, from ancient times to the present. ... Now Joanne Passet offers a captivating, entertaining biography of this singular woman whose life defined the history of lesbianism in the twentieth century.

Also? Foster lived in Kansas City for a time. My foremother! (When I head to visit the fam this weekend, I'll try to make a pilgrimage to the house and post pix.)

Book: $27.50 at Powell's (linked above), pubbed by Da Capo Press. Joanne Passet, the author, is a prof at Indiana University East. Go, Midwest!