The girls next door

by Lindsy Van Gelder

Drawing on more than a hundred interviews with women around the country, and on their own keen wits and eyes, Van Gelder and Brandt have composed an unprecedented portrait of how gay women today - "born" and "made," lipsticked and flannel-shirted alike - think, feel, love, and live. Three major "tribal" events - the long-running Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, "Dinah" (the annual Dinah Shore Golf Tournament and party circuit, a mecca for upwardly mobile luppies), and a cross-country trek with the activist Lesbian Avengers en route to the 1994 Stonewall commemoration - provide points of entry into an exploration of lesbian identity, social dynamics, and politics that's as entertaining as it is revealing. The result is a kaleidoscopic portrait that will resonate with lesbians themselves and reveal to their "neighbors" a world of unsuspected vibrancy and depth.