"Eat me, drink me, love me;"
On a queer canon, with: "Goblin Market," a dual portrait (Gluck), a dual reading (Audre Lorde/Pat Parker), 3 writers from outside the English language; Cita team news; more!
Today marks the 55th anniversary of the start of the Stonewall uprising. While Cita celebrates the queer history of feminist art and literature every month, we’ll close out Pride 2024 with a focus on a few significant cultural objects and figures from the last ~200 years that have shaped culture, defied norms and oppression, and built a canon from which future generations can draw inspiration.
1859: “Goblin Market” by Christina Rossetti
This narrative poem has inspired endless debate and interpretation —scholarly, critical, artistic—since its initial publication in 1862 (a few years after Rossetti wrote it). While some refuse to classify the poem as directly homoerotic, the tale of two “sisters” tempted by forbidden fruits is undoubtedly sensual:
Come and kiss me. Never mind my bruises, Hug me, kiss me, suck my juices Squeez’d from goblin fruits for you, Goblin pulp and goblin dew. Eat me, drink me, love me; Laura, make much of me;
Explore various published illustrated editions (including from a 1973 “Ribald Classics” feature in Playboy) via this open access exhibit from COVE. “Goblin Market” is in the public domain and therefore freely available for further creative play and adaptation!
1936: Medallion by Gluck
Medallion is a dual portrait of Gluck and the artist’s lover, playwright Nesta Obermer. Gluck called the work a “YouWe painting” due to its depiction of the couple’s essential unity, which Gluck defined in the roles of husband (Gluck) and wife (Obermer) in letters. After creating it, Gluck wrote to Obermer: “Now it is out, and to the rest of the Universe I call Beware! Beware! We are not to be trifled with.” Medallion was exhibited at a “one-man show” of Gluck’s work at the Fine Arts Society in London in 1937—less than a decade after Radclyffe Hall’s groundbreaking lesbian novel The Well of Loneliness was declared obscene in court. When reprinting The Well of Loneliness in 1982, Virago Press chose Medallion for the cover.
1986: Pat Parker and Audre Lorde reading in San Francisco
The Poetry Center Digital Archive is a treasure trove. A person can spend days clicking through rare footage and audio recordings of events from the 1970s-1990s with Joan Didion, Maya Angelou, Louise Glück, Margaret Atwood, Gwendolyn Brooks, and more. Each entry in the collection seems to capture something magical and warm in the atmospheres of the rooms these minds gathered in. But this dual reading between Audre Lorde and Pat Parker is extra special. The two poets trade off reading their own poems while also reflecting upon each others’ work and their long friendship throughout. Both women died from cancer just a few years later. It is amazing to have access to this too-brief moment of connection and collaboration at our fingertips.
Cita Canon Spotlight
This month’s canon entries highlight three pioneering, hugely influential queer writers from outside the US/English whose work we hope gets wider recognition (and translation).1 Track the canon here.
Wu Zao (吳藻; 1799–1862) was one of the most popular writers of lyrics (cí) during the Qing dynasty in China. She wrote a play, literary criticism, and many verses of desire and sorrow—including erotic poems addressed to courtesans. In Women Poets of China (1982), translator Kenneth Rexroth describes her as “one of the great Lesbian poets of all time, perhaps not as great as Sappho, but certainly greater than any modern ones.” [“Wu Zao” for The Legacy Project]
The “mother of Philippine women’s literature” Leona Florentino (1849-1884) wrote poetry and manifestos in Spanish and Ilocano. Forced to marry at fourteen and then bear five children, she was later separated from her family (supposedly by her tuberculosis, though it’s suspected she was exiled for her feminist ideas). In the years since her death she’s been celebrated for her contributions—though often in ways that gloss over her lesbianism. In 2018, artist Emiliana Kampilan published a comic situating Florentino’s anti-colonial La Mujer Filipina in her queerness. [“Leona Florentino: Mother of Filipina poetry,” Ruth Elynia Mabanglo for Philippines Graphic]
Though it was so famous in Japan it inspired new genres, the fiction of Nobuko Yoshiya (吉屋 信子; 1896-1973) has barely been translated into English. Yoshiya wrote about romantic friendships and sexual desire between young women in a slightly veiled way that allowed for immense commercial success. She lived with her partner, math teacher Monma Chiyo, in a house they co-designed and that now serves as a museum and cultural center for feminist events. [“Nobuko Yoshiya, Pioneer of Japanese Lesbian Literature,” Clémence Leleu for Pen [ペン]]
Cita News
We welcomed a new member to the Cita team this month: Designer bex ya yolk! bex is a graphic designer, book artist, and arts professor based in Chicago, IL. They are the founder of independent artists' book publishing initiative THUNGRY.
Cita founder and Design Director Juliana Castro Varón has joined the A.I. Initiatives team at The New York Times. Juli created Cita as a student project in 2018, and then grew us from an all-volunteer initiative to a funded and staffed press. Many thanks to Juli for her vision, leadership, and contagious enthusiasm for all things books and design! She’ll continue to guide our team as an advisor.
Summer is here, and that means it’s time to shield your eyes and face with a Book Friend cap! Caps are on sale now at shop.citapress.org.
What Else?
For more Pride-relevant literary history exploration, here’s a brief round up of some of our recent and past social media posts, etc.
5 free queer books from Cita’s catalog (June 2022 —you can now add An Immortal Book to this list!)
“Queer Acts of Reading and Writing” (June 2023 Cita Press Bulletin)
Queer literary icons from Ancient Greece to today (June 2024)
The link between the legendary Stonewall Inn and Mary Casal’s 1930 autobiography (June 2024)
5 queer works from the public domain (June 2024)
“Close Friends & Companions:” On couple Sarah Orne Jewett and Annie Fields; Willa Cather and Edith Lewis
9 pieces of queer literature in the public domain (June 2022)
“For the Courtesan Qing-Lin”
Your collarbones gleam like coral. You are a celestial lover descended from the Jade City, it seems. When we met – one smile, and I forgot how to speak. Tenderly you picked flowers, rested against bamboo stalks, and the dew grew cool upon your emerald sleeves. Inside that hollow valley, I came face to face with your internal mystery. While the orchid lantern flickered low, we drank wine, read poetry. Then you sang me a heartbreaking tune of yearning in Jiangnan. You are a specimen of artistry – feminine and intellectual. I’m driven crazy, yes I want to bear this, if my jade lady’s heart consents. Just now misty springtime fog rises over Five Lakes. I’ll buy a red boat, I’ll carry you away. -By Wu Zao, Qing dynasty; translated from Chinese by Grace Zhang, 2022 (see illustrated version and translator's notes here; see another recent translation by Ella Dorn here)
Find further reading, sources, and more on our Bulletin Are.na channel; follow us on Instagram for regular content about feminist literature and art!
As with many figures of the past—no matter how many love letters, diaries, and published works exist—there has been debate around whether or not these writers were themselves queer. (The same applies to Christina Rossetti.) But the work itself is part of a queer canon.