Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community

Abstract

Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy, Madeline D. Davis, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold: The History of a Lesbian Community (1993). New York: Routledge, 2014.

This review highlights the importance of Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold, twenty years after its publication. The volume both collects and preserves stories of butches and femmes of the 1940s and 1950s, and clarifies the social role of butch-femme community as a vehicle of pre-political resistance. The review also outlines the relevance of analytical frameworks shaped by queer and transgender studies in the field of historical research on non-normative identities like butch and femme.