A Sturdy Yes of a People - Selected Writing by Joan Nestle

Author(s): Joan Nestle

LGBTI & Queer Studies | 2023 Top 30

For over fifty years, Joan Nestle has been chronicling lesbian and queer life boldly with guts, heart, and moral suasion. A Sturdy Yes of a People gathers Nestle’s most influential writing into a single volume presenting her persistent involvement in liberation movements, LGBTQ histories, erotic writing, and archives that document gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer lives. Embedded in tales of lesbian desire are Nestle's concerns with the power of class and race in America to exile bodies.


A bold and original thinker, deeply connected with her communities, with an abiding willingness to reexamine and reimagine queer lives by integrating new ideas, challenges, and experiences, Nestle dazzles as a powerful thinker, writer, and theorist. This new collection features an introduction by scholar Carolyn D’Cruz, a foreword by Yeva Johnson, and an afterword by Susie Bright. This new volume provides a vibrant context for contemporary readers to engage with Joan Nestle’s historically significant and dynamic work.

December 2022

$30.00 AUD

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Vital new collection of iconic essays by writer, activist, and community herstorian Joan Nestle.

Reading Joan Nestle’s prose astonishes me and reminds me of how much I always drew myself to her brilliant analysis of history and lesbians in it. Joan’s language is beautiful. Her analysis—of sexual history, life in the West Village, the Barnard conference, her struggle against lesbian sexual orthodoxy, and her struggle to defeat cancer—is brilliant. Joan Nestle is a warrior. Yes. - Cheryl Clarke, poet, essayist, scholar

Joan Nestle is working-class, Jewish lesbian, writer, editor, teacher, activist, and co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in New York City. She is the author of A Restricted Country, winner of an American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award, and A Fragile Union, a Lambda Literary Award recipient. She edited over a dozen award-winning collections. She lives in Australia with her lover, Di Otto.

General Fields

  • : 9781944981525
  • : Sinister Wisdom
  • : Sinister Wisdom
  • : 01 December 2022
  • : 01 December 2022
  • : books

Special Fields

  • : 416
  • : English
  • : Paperback
  • : Joan Nestle