The Feminist Spectator reviews Eating Fire: "Fascinating, insightful, and moving."

"We need to hear more stories like Cogswell’s, to remind contemporary feminist queer, trans*, and LGBTQI people that political strategies have a genealogy, a history of successes and failures worth learning from and recalling as we retool our tactics for the future."

Cogswell_Eating coverI recently finished Kelly Cogswell’s terrific memoir of lesbian feminist activism, Eating Fire, in which she narrates the history of the Lesbian Avengers.  The group was founded by, among others, Sarah Schulman and Ana Simo (Cogswell’s longtime partner), in the early 1990s, as a “direct-action group focused on issues vital to lesbian survival and visibility” (p. 9).  The history of LGBT activism in the ‘90s is often told through ACT UP and Queer Nation, which makes Cogswell’s story of this lesbian-specific group particularly important and compelling.

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Published in: The Feminist Spectator