My Autobiography of Carson McCullers by Jenn Shapland

Author:Jenn Shapland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Tin House Books
Published: 2019-12-12T16:00:00+00:00

Semantics

It has dawned on me, through researching how Carson lived in the ’40s, ’50s, and ’60s, and through living as a lesbian every day, that each time a woman in the twentieth century is referred to by the epithets “widowed” or “unmarried,” or when she is described as married but living away from her husband for a portion of the year—e.g., Georgia O’Keeffe—she is likely a lesbian to some degree or in some capacity.

Can it work this way, I wonder? Can a woman be part lesbian? So often the mainstream narrative gives us a straight woman who has the occasional wild affair or fling with a woman. Or one who went with women when she was young, in college perhaps. Or she has bisexual tendencies, say. “Ambivalences.” Of Carson, they flag her “obsessive” crushes on various women and leave it at that. But I prefer the idea that we are all part lesbian, that we are lesbian to one degree or another. Is this semantics? To say that some part of every human being is a woman, and that part loves women, or has the capacity to do so. Jill Johnston: “All women are lesbians.”

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