(Part 3) Top products from r/actuallesbians

ok I'm here again!

I've read retellings:

Dark Wife

- about persephone and hades

- if you wish me to tell you the warnings i can, i wish books put warnings in it so people can skip it

Seafarer's Kiss

- its a siren story(like little mermaid) in viking version, if i'm not wrong

- i love how the writer portrayed loki in this XD

Promises, Promises

- i linked the review

- its funny XD

Some other fairytales, not exactly retellings

Santa Olivia

- not a retelling, its about a boxer girl, it has a sequel too

- its a nice story and funny

When Women Were Warriors

- this is set in kinda medieval times

Dragonoak

- first of a trilogy, fantasy medieval

- the world building is nice as well as the characters

Second Mango

- its a story about a princess turned queen that searches for love of a girl

- its a sweet and cute story and hehehe its funny

Villains Don't Date Heroes

- there is a lot of monologuing here, because she's a villain, all that monologuing lol XP

- its funny

Iron & Velvet

- supernatural

- dissing twilight here and there lol XP

- monologuing too, coz she's a detective, after i realized that i got over the monologuing lol XP

lol i just basically listed all i've read for the past half year or so lol XP \>.\< i'm so sorry \>.\< and its not even historical

My ex-husband and I just went through this, this summer. Fortunately, we don't have kids so that made life easier. However, I don't have a job so we've had to live together while I finish my master's degree. (I mean, he could have kicked me out but he's my best friend and I'm his.) Like you, he was incredibly supportive. I found this book super helpful (though I did not have an affair. It just has a lot on guilt and shame and internalized homophobia. There's a huge list of resources in the back of the book. Other books to read, the author's forum, etc. It's great! The author of that book is a psychologist who also realized she was gay later in life (married with children) though she had an affair. So extra guilt. She created a forum and even responds to posts sometimes. It's a little "free therapy" in a way. :)

I found therapy with a queer therapist SUPER helpful.

Knowing that he wasn't angry was also helpful. Knowing that he didn't feel like he wasted time with me was great.

Mostly, internalized homophobia is hard and reading books about why women come out later in life (sometimes) really helped me a lot.

Hi friend!

I'm having a lot of the same feelings but fortunately, my H and I don't have kids. I haven't told him yet. I'm going to go to therapy first to really dive deep into this to understand it myself before I tell him. I want to have exactly what I need to say to him down before I approach it.

Have you read Living Two Lives: Married to a Man & In Love with a Woman by Joanne Fleisher? I found it super helpful and validating. She's a therapist who was in your situation. Except, she was having an affair with a woman. She also has a forum for married women who are lesbians to post on. https://askjoanne.forums.net/

Good luck on your journey!

Her behavior is abusive, and you are clearly suffering from it. Leaving her and cutting her out of your life will be hard, but in the long run you will be so much better off. I recommend you check out what resources there are for abused women in your area, as having someone to listen, or maybe even going to a support group, could help you immensely and even help you make new friends. I would also recommend reading a book like It's My Life Now to help you through the healing process. I wish you all the best!

For YA Fiction -

Libba Bray's Beauty Queens has a variety of well-developed LBTQ characters. It's also an absolutely hilarious, super feminist satire that was generally a delight to read.

Sara Farizan's If You Could Be Mine is about a lesbian relationship and the trans community in Iran. It's much more serious, but also well done.

My friend raved about The Miseducation of Cameron Post. I wanted to like it far more than I did - I didn't find the main character that engaging, I guess. But teen lesbians in late-80s/early-90s Montana.

I lovvee YA books, so my current to-read list is basically Lambda Literary's annual YA LGBT fiction winners. You have to go through year by year, but you can see all the nominees and winners.

Also - this list! And this one too!

Though the majority of it is straight material, The Sleeping Beauty Trilogy isn't bad. There are a few good lesbian scenes sprinkled throughout the series to keep us interested, but far more straight and gay male scenes. I will not lie and tell you that during the straight scenes - most, not all - I looked at each situation through the eyes of the dommes, be they male or female, and didn't just associate with the female lead. It's VERY deep into the BDSM lifestyle, involving a great deal of humiliation and public degradation - which I'm not into; our BDSM stays private, intimate, a subtle rippling just below the surface meant to produce an almost secret response, something that is only noted by your instincts, we're reduced to animals sensing pheromones and reacting to those - so take that with a grain of salt.

I'm still looking for a good lesbian domme/sub story that actually piques my interest and is something with which I can relate; maybe I'll just write my own, until then I'll keep you updated if I find anything worthwhile :)

Do you have an LGBT center near you? The nearest might be in a nearby city. If they do, see if there are any lesbian group sessions. It can be eye-opening to meet, hear and see other women who have gone through similar situations and survived: what went right, what went not-right and what they'd do differently if they had it to do all over again.

Here are a few books that I tend to recommend about your situation. They're written by women in your situation:
Dear John, I love Jane.
Living Two Lives.
Married Women Who Love Women.

They come in Kindle editions, so you could read them on your phone without worrying about leaving them laying around the house.

Ash and Huntress by Malinda Lo are nice books with lesbian characters, and the best part is, it's pretty normally treated. One of my favorite books of all time though is Written on the Body, by Jeanette Winterson. It has some really beautiful prose. To be honest for that one, it's not explicitly lesbian and the gender of the narrator is never revealed, but I'm always like 99.999% sure it was intended to another woman. Santa Olivia by Jacqueline Carey has a lesbian relationship that is completely normal as well. It's a bit weird sci-fi kind of novel though. If you've read other things by Jacqueline Carey and are not looking for a lesbian-centric relationship, in her Kushiel series, the main character and the main antagonist have a lot of sexual tension (real, not imagined!).

The two classics of the lesbian bildungsroman, IMO, are Oranges are Not the Only Fruit and The Color Purple. Both have TV/film adaptations.


The Well of Loneliness is kinda depressing I think (also suffers from the period confusion between gender identity and sexual orientation).


I have more that I will think about, but if you want physical journeys Oranges is a very good bet, while Color Purple is more internal. There's also Woolf's Orlando which is less explicitly 'lesbian' but has become a queer classic and involves a badass immortal genderbending protagonist.


If these walls could talk discusses lesbian experience over time, as does The Hours (but god that's a long movie!).


Marilyn Hacker wrote a beautiful sonnet series about the progress of a lesbian affair over time (including international travel) called Love, Death and the Changing of Seasons.


I'm going to go downstairs and check my bookshelves for any more that pop to mind. Let me know where you are struggling and I will specify the search. Jeanette Winterson (of Oranges) also has a ton of other novels/short stories that discuss lesbian experience and journeys.

1. I was 27 years old when I worked it out. I was so scared of it that questioning was a long, painful time. But when I finally accepted myself, I didn't even think twice.
   
   
2. The best responses have been from my long-term friend, and my sister. They both expressed how happy they were that I'd worked things out, and had the confidence not to 'take the easy path' for a quiet life. They also thanked me for confiding in them. The worst responses have been from my parents. They haven't been overtly negative, but not positive either. They still nag me about not being 'feminine enough'. They use 'he or she' when describing future partners and say things like 'whoever you choose to be with'. I appreciate the sentiment, but it feels awful, like I'm not being taken seriously.
   
   
3. ^ same as above
   
   
4. I recently bought a few books to give to my family, but I haven't got around to reading them yet: book 1, book 2, book 3
   
   
5. > Right now we're in the position of wondering if she is in fact homosexual, or if this was an instance of experimenting with a friend, and the changing hormones in her body are making her feel something that may or may not last.
   
   

• This is a quite negative way to view things. For one, trust what she's telling you. It doesn't matter if she changes her mind in the future. Support who she is right now. And in NO WAY make reference to any future with men, even as a joke, or even use neutral pronouns unless she expresses otherwise. It seems trivial, but it will hurt her SO MUCH to feel you aren't taking her at her word. Also as parents, don't get your hopes up about a future where she decides it was a "phase" and marries a man and has 2.4 children.

Notes on Love and Courage is really just a collection of quotes from Hugh Prather's journal over the years. The book that quoted that book (I guess my citation could have been more specific) is called Living Two Lives: Married to a Man & In Love With a Woman. You might or might not find it useful.

I second all of the above heavily.

More movies:
Out List
Outrage

Also a few books I loved:

Gay L.A.
Gay Revolution
Making Gay History

I found it here -

Lesbian Pride Flag - Orange and... https://www.amazon.com/dp/B07SGL48C4?ref=ppx_pop_mob_ap_share

It's the only one I found on Amazon so idk where else I can get it.

Have you read The Wolf Girls of Vassar ?

It's a neat oral history of lesbians at your school. http://www.amazon.com/gp/aw/cr/0312089236/ref=aw_d_cr_books

Girl Walking Backwards. It's kind of a teen fiction, I guess...but I remember really liking it when I read it in high school.

http://www.amazon.com/Girl-Walking-Backwards-Bett-Williams/dp/0312194560

George Chauncey

Here's the book we were required to read for his class http://www.amazon.com/Gay-New-York-Culture-1890-1940/dp/0465026214

Nice guy. Didn't make students buy his books if the bookstore was selling it at a ridiculous price.

The course text book https://www.amazon.com/Lesbian-Sex-Secrets-Men-Making/dp/0452281334

Biological Exuberance

Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg

https://www.amazon.com/Fried-Green-Tomatoes-Whistle-Stop/dp/042528655X/ref=tmm_pap_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=

If you're into YA, I've been keeping a list of the ones with queer female protagonists:

--The Tiger’s Daughter by K. Arsenault Rivera

--Of Fire and Stars and Of Ice and Shadows by Audrey Coulthurst

--Inkmistress by Audrey Coulthurst

--Labyrinth Lost by Zoraida Córdova

--The Defiant Heir by Melissa Caruso

-- Daughter of Fire: Conspiracy of the Dark by Karen Frost

--Girls Made of Snow and Glass by Melissa Bashardoust

--Ash and Huntress by Malinda Lo

--Breaking Legacies by Zoe Reed

--Reign of the Fallen and Song of the Dead by Sarah Glenn Marsh

--Castle on the River Vistula by Michelle Tea

--The Afterward, by E.K. Johnston

--Crier's War by Nina Varela

--The Seafarer's Kiss by Julia Ember

--The books in Shira Glassman's Mangoverse

--Ship of Smoke and Steel by Django Wexler

--The Raven and the Reindeer by T. Kingfisher

--The Cursed Queen by Sarah Fine

--Robbergirl by S.T. Gibson

--Sam Farren's Dragonoak series

--Starless by Jacqueline Carey

--The Nobles of Sperath by Siera Maley

--Girls of Paper and Fire by Natasha Ngan