Out There: The Lesbian in Literature

Abstract

Amy Gall discusses how she exited a closet (both metaphorically and physically), opening up to the possibility of a complex self-education through porn, Internet sci-fi fan fiction, adult science fiction, and eventually queer/mainstream fiction. Gall reminds us that we all look to stories to reflect and inform who we are. Though never actually providing a reflection of her own self, the texts she encountered inspired her, nonetheless, to think about and craft an identity through writing. Gall explores how delimiting literary depictions of lesbians shaped her sense of who she was and what she could be: in porn collections and Internet sci-fi fan fiction, lesbians were defined only by their sexuality; in adult sci-fi, specifically Samuel Delany’s Dhalgren, lesbians were desexualized and so peripheral that they were almost nonexistent. In queer/mainstream fiction lesbians didn’t hide their sexuality, nor were they defined by it. All these types of lesbians helped Gall to understand that identity is complicated and incomplete, and that only through the act of writing can she fully identify herself.