“My Butch Career A Memoir”

Esther Newton talks with Emmy Winner Charlotte Robinson host of OUTTAKE VOICES™ about her book “My Butch Career A Memoir” that addresses her gender identity and exploration during a particularly intense time of homophobic persecution in the twentieth century. Newton’s story is compelling, disarming and at times carnal as she struggles to write, teach and find love. From being molested as a child to her failed attempts to live a “normal” straight life in high school and college she became an influential figure in the LGBTQ history movement and a powerful reminder of just how recently it has been possible to be an openly queer academic. With humor and grace she describes her introduction to middle-class lesbian life and her love affairs including one with a well-known abstract painter and another with a French academic she encountered in Mexico and traveled with throughout France and Switzerland. Newton's narrative ends in her forties when she begins to achieve personal and scholarly stability in the company of the first politicized generation of out lesbian and gay scholars with whom she helped create gender and sexuality studies. We talked to Esther about her inspiration for writing “My Butch Career A Memoir” and give us her spin on our LGBTQ issues.

Esther Newton is a founder of and leading scholar in LGBTQ studies. She received her BA at the University of Michigan in history before starting graduate work in anthropology at the University of Chicago. In 1968 her courageous PhD dissertation entitled “The Drag Queens: A Study in Urban Anthropology” examined the experiences, social interactions and culture of drag queens of mostly gay men that was later published under the title “Mother Camp” in 1972. Her second book “Cherry Grove, Fire Island: Sixty Years in America's First Gay and Lesbian Town” was published in 1993. Newton was active in Second Wave Feminism, Gay Liberation and the Lesbian/Feminist movements. Her work has been translated into French, Spanish, Hebrew, Polish and Slovak. Currently Newton is the subject of a documentary of her life story and contributing to a book of photography with acclaimed photographer Eva Weiss.
For More Info: esther-newton.com

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