Two Books

Two online book recommendations worked out well overall.

Martha Shelley is a lesbian activist and writer. After audio issues delayed things, she gave an interview talking about her life and her new autobiography, We Set The Night On Fire.  It is an easy reading (young adults should enjoy it too) book of about two hundred pages with some pictures.  She stops in the late 1970s with a lot more life to live.

One group she was involved in was the old lesbian activist group, the Daughters of Bilitis.  She eventually became associated with more radical groups.  Shelley (a pen name arising from the poetry she wrote to a woman she liked) does not explain how the group eventually disbanded around 1970.  The book is not meant to be comprehensive.  It's a good book overall.  

Near the end of the account, she notes that she eventually wrote a trilogy based on Jezebel in the Old Testament (she is Jewish).  I once read a not great book that was basically a revisionist take on her life.  But, we simply don't know the "real" Jezebel, and basically, I would not try to glorify her.  She very well might have used her power to steal some property.  Such is what those with power did.  David had a man killed to sleep with his wife.

I think the basic problem the authors of the account have with her is that she does not have the right religion. She was denounced since she helped to lead astray the "Jewish" (or whatever religion they had at the time) king.  I don't know how good her trilogy is though the website she linked has them at $5 a piece, which is surely a good price.

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Erik Loomis, who led me to a few books over the years, referenced David Blight's  A Slave No More: Two Men Who Escaped to Freedom, Including Their Own Narratives of Emancipation in one of his grave posts.  Blight got his hand on two such narratives involving slaves who escaped during the Civil War.  Loomis should get more attention for those things.

The book consists of two narratives (about 100 pages), background material on their lives, and some general information on emancipation (around 150 pages).  The last part could have been edited a bit.  Blight rambled on some and it got tedious.  The first narrative also is more polished though the second has a lot more grit (it was easy for one to escape; the other had five brutal attempts).  Cinematic potential here.

Overall, it was a worthwhile effort, and we get some pictures.