Pulp friction
Girls Gone Wild—the novel.
Paperback fiction occupied a unique niche in the 1940s and ’50s. The subjects shunned by mainstream media (like sex, drug use and crime) became the paper backbone of the soft-cover genre. The only place Americans could find descriptions of explicit sex, gay and lesbian relationships or anything else deemed too “deviant” for the Donna Reed crowd was in dime-store pulp novels. As such, revisiting these works provides an undeniable link to the under-acknowledged pastimes of our past. Susan Stryker, author of Queer Pulp: Perverted Passions from the Golden Age of the Paperback, will speak about the taboo trail left by the pulp novelists of the baby boom era. Ann Bannon, the “Queen of Lesbian Pulp,” will discuss her own experience penning tales of Sapphic sorority girls and Greenwich Village lesbians for the pulp press. Story hour begins at 7 p.m. on Saturday. Admission is free. Come on down to the aptly titled Lavender Library, Archives and Cultural Exchange of Sacramento, 1414 21st St. History buffs should arrive early to check out the LLACE collection of books, periodicals and GLBT memorabilia. Call (530) 752-0931 for more information.
