On Lill Street

by Lynn Kanter

The year: 1976. Political correctness among lesbian-feminists was new, important, and exciting. Margaret was 24. Living in Chicago and working part-time in a bookstore and part-time for a radical women's newspaper, she was young then, and so was the women's movement. Margaret's parents had disowned her at 21 when she announced she was a lesbian. During her year on Lill Street, Margaret began to form a new kind of family. The glow of living in the same house with Deborah and Arden, with their deep and enduring ties to one another, shaped Margaret's perspective of how the world works. They were comfortable with their lives, their politics, and each other: a comfort that Margaret both distrusted and craved. With wry humor and 1990s perspective, On Lill Street follow Margaret through evolution from city-dwelling absolutely politically-corrent lesbian feminist separatist to a suburban mixed-gender household in which mutual infatuation leads to love with a (formerly?) straight woman, all the