An Interview With Joan Nestle
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On a uncharacteristically cool summer day in July, Joan Nestle,
co-founder of the
Lesbian Herstory Archives and author and editor of such books as A
Fragile Union,
The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader, and
Best Lesbian Erotica,
spoke to PlanetOut from her Upper West Side apartment in New York. She
mused over her lesbian roots, the creation of the Lesbian Herstory
Archives, and her vision of the
Archives' future.
PlanetOut: When did you come out, and what was that time like?
Joan Nestle: I came into public lesbian life in 1958. I came to
my erotic self-knowledge
during the McCarthy period, when I was taught how to be a lesbian from
the butch and
femme women of [Greenwich] Village. Those women were a great
inspiration to me. I
was 18; they were in their 50s. What we shared in those Greenwich
Village bars was
both courage and fear. That community fueled my whole life. I feel
lucky to have
had my roots in the bars and grassroots organizations, because in the
late 60s and early
70s, I became part of the lesbian feminist liberation movement.
PlanetOut: What inspired you to start the Archives?
Joan Nestle: I was experiencing an ahistoricism, where lesbian
feminists thought that
they had started history. I began the Archives to honor the community
of women who
went to the bars, who labeled themselves "butch" and "femme" and not
"women-identified-women." I started the Archives because of the courage
and
community of those women who had been judged unacceptable. I started
the Archives to
commemorate my lost community. Also, my first lover died of cancer when
she was 24,
so I also began the Archives to commemorate a woman I loved.
PlanetOut: Where were the Archives originally housed?
Joan Nestle: They started in a little room -- the pantry of my
apartment to be exact. For
about 20 years they lived in my apartment. You live this way when
you're trying
to transform shame and depravation into community and hope.
PlanetOut: What was Deb Edel, your co-founder's, role in the
making of the Archives?
Joan Nestle: We were lovers. When we started the Archives in
1973, there was no such thing
as a queer history movement. So we needed to convince people that we
were creating a
social history of a people.
PlanetOut: How did you spread the word, so to speak?
Joan Nestle: We spoke in living rooms and churches. And when we
went places, we put stuff
in shopping bags and there would always be women waiting for us with
photo albums. I
would say the first ten years was about building trust. We did a slide
show, which
was an amazing way to spread the word, but word of mouth and visitors
was really how
we survived.
PlanetOut: What was your biggest challenge back then?
Joan Nestle: The biggest challenge was to get rid of the sense
of deprivation that older
women had. We wanted to give them a sense of entitlement of their
memories, their
history. So many older women had burned their love letters or their
lesbian pulp
novels because they were ashamed. And then some women didn't want to
give us things
because they weren't famous. But we're about the artifacts, the
memories, and the multi-facetedness of everyday life.
PlanetOut: How did you know that what you were doing was
affecting lesbian lives,
especially older lesbians?
Joan Nestle: I always knew we were doing the right thing whenever
a woman from the bar days
would come in and weep over the collection. She would often say, "I
never knew we
had this much to say."
PlanetOut: What do you think the Archives' biggest challenge is
now that they're moving
into the 21st century?
Joan Nestle: To make a bridge between younger and older
lesbians. That's one of our
biggest challenges. I think in the future it's going to have to be
through
inspiration that young women get involved. The use of the Internet will
attract
younger people, but with all the competing forces of information, I
think we'll get
women who see it as a passion.
We also need an endowment plan. And eventually we will need a larger,
more open
space. But I always want the Archives to be a home, because it's as much
a place for
women to gather strength from and meet each other in as it is a place to
plan a
book. I've also always dreamt of having a theater connected to the
Archives -- because everything there is a story.
PlanetOut: Your connection to the Archives is incredibly
personal, so it's probably
hard to answer this question, but what is your favorite collection in
the Archives?
Joan Nestle: I see lines of incredible courage and resistance
throughout the collection.
But because I came from the 50s, I'm very drawn to our collection that
commemorates
that time. For me the combination of the hard-hat and the pasties [in
the
clothing collection] are incredible. The hard-hat is from a woman who
used to work
in the Buffalo Steel Mills. We have that hat as a memory to women who
did manual
labor throughout the century. And the pasties, well -- while I was
doing the slide show
in L.A., a woman came up to me after the show and said, "I am a lesbian
and I work as a stripper. Would you like my pasties?" And I said,
"absolutely!"
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