A non fiction book reflecting on the 'spaces' lesbian and bi sexual women have devopled; bars, feminist bookstores and more across the USA. An academic lesbian & bi feminist academic type of presentation.

A fascinating, well written social history of the ways in which queer women found themselves and their community in six places, lesbian bars, feminist bookshops, feminist sex shops, lesbian land, softball diamonds and holiday destinations. Most of the locations featured are American, although the author is English, so she will bring in UK venues as appropriate and brings an outsider perspective. An important book to understand our history and how many queer women came out, made friends and found lovers and/or partners. A good book for remembering, reflecting and then discussing in your queer book group!

With thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an ARC in exchange for an honest review.

I can’t say how much I loved this! June Thomas moves with dexterity between six historically important sapphic spaces and, with incredible wit and compassion, reveals the women who both shaped and inhabited them.

I love how the spaces she chooses, from rural communes to bars, bookshops, and sex-toy boutiques, all depict a cultural footprint which is specific to queer women. Though bars are often the first queer spaces to spring to mind, Thomas emphasises the factors which have historically pushed women away from finding refuge there. Compounding their restricted economic autonomy, women have also risked their jobs and custody of their children by going to lesbian bars. Not only this but, as the nightlife promoter Maggie Collier said: “Women tend to go out seeking a partner. When they find one, I don’t see them for two years. Then all of a sudden, they break up. You see them at every single party until they find the next [girlfriend], and then they disappear, and the pattern continues.”

Of course, we are all aware that our spaces are continually being shuttered - I’ve only been to a lesbian bar once and experienced as though it was already gone – but what I love about Thomas’ account is that it is not the usual lament for their decline but a clear reasoning which allows us to understand our history and imagine new spaces.

But who should be included in these spaces? If we insist on separatism, how can we resist fuelling a transphobic culture war? There’s an example in the book which I like a lot and has informed the way I think about this.

In the 1970s, the New York based bar ‘Bonnie & Clyde’ was continually invaded by a frat house across the street and, as it was illegal to refuse entry to someone who was both sober and of age, bar owner Elaine Romagnoli, had to resort to alternate ways of keeping the boys out. Her first attempt, a strict dress-code of a shirt and tie for men, was only a minor deterrent so, instead, she decided to make the bar look as unappealing as possible, allowing rubbish to pile up outside. On their 1978 Christmas card, the bar acknowledged its unconventional appearance with a picture of smiling server outside a trash-strewn shopfront, reading “Thank you for not judging us by our cover.” Rather than hiding the bar or barring entrance, Romagnoli had managed to advertise only to her intended clientele simply by insisting on a scruffy appearance.

I hope we can now do away with the rubbish while we continue to build new, wonderful places of our own.

I love some queer non-fiction and this was an insightful, interesting addition to all I've read. It was lovely to see a focus on queer women (lesbians, bi women & other sapphics) since homosexual men can be the forefront of many queer history books (largely due to laws often targeting queer men but not women, leaving more sources behind). I also really enjoyed Thomas' personal connection to some the organisations she wrote about, there was a great and deeply authentic voice to the writing. I found the selected topics really interesting from softball to sex toys. My only criticism was sometimes the topic jumped quite abruptly between paragraphs but that may be a matter of the formatting of the eARC e.g. maybe there's a slightly bigger break or the related paragraphs have an indent instead in the final product. Regardless, this was a really interesting read and I enjoyed learning about the many lesbian businesses, communes, softball teams, holidays and bars that held up the community in the latter part of the 20th century.

I think if I ever wrote a non-fiction book, I would want it to be something like this. Mixing history, community, queerness, culture, politics and much more into six easily digestible sections, this book brings to life the various flavours of lesbian life in the US in the 70s, 80s and 90s (with some nods towards the present). I love that this book is written by someone who was around at the time but also isn't originally from the US, so they could provide insights into what similar spaces looked like in the UK and elsewhere. My favourite part was about the Redbird collective in Vermont in the 70s, where the women would draw names out of a hat every few months as a way of picking a sexual partner for the coming season. Can you even imagine?

This book is a place for queer women; and I absolutely loved it. Thomas explores queer history through six iconic locations that have been home to queer women, places of gathering, protest and celebration and coming together in a shared experience.

It brings a blend of well researched archive documents and interviews that capture history, lore, and culture along with deeply personable writing and Thomas’ own thoughts and experience’s to make something very easy to read and utterly moreish.

Exploring the sanctity of women’s spaces and queer spaces, we visit lesbian bars, boutique sex shops, feminist bookstores and rural lesbian communities — all places for women to exist safely and completely themselves for those precious moments. It explores race, sex, class, politics and how these different aspects affect the queer experience. But this book doesn’t want us to hide away in our gay spaces, just appreciates that having space to relate and be amongst people who share your experiences is important. I definitely learned a few things along the way about queer history and 20th century feminism -

An important walk down memory lane and a must-read on the queer bookshelf.

This is an important book and something I’d love to see a tour on. I love the way it’s written and hope that “mainstream” booksellers champion it (not just LGBT stores). 10/10- something different and i highly recommend.

“A Place of Our Own’, is one of those books that provides so much grounding for queer history and culture and these types of works feel more important than ever. For me I did not have so much exposure to queer history and it’s been incredible to learn from Thomas’ research and personal vantage point of these hubs and support systems across America. I really enjoyed the chapters that focused on book shops especially as I am a writer and avid reader myself.
This book did make me a little sad that the nostalgia and comradery of these shops and clubs has changed in recent history, but it also makes me hopeful that queer people will always find their tribe and that no matter the political or social pressures, they will thrive and evolve as they always have.
I appreciated how Thomas kept her journalistic integrity and did not gloss over the negative sides or inequalities that resided even in the marginalized queer spaces. This read so prominently to me because of the treatment of trans and non binary people today and I think it is an incredibly important read for all of us in the queer community but also for our allies. It is a document full of humor and joy in finding your family as your grow and find yourself out in the world.

Journalist June Thomas combines personal experience with social and cultural history, exploring the spaces that were formative for lesbians and lesbian communities from the 1950s onwards, shaping aspects of queer culture today. Thomas picks out six key spaces – mostly American but Thomas grew up in England so there are overlaps with similar places there – these are lesbian bars, feminist bookshops, feminist sex-toy boutiques, holiday destinations, rural separatist communities and softball diamond – have to admit had to look that last one up! She pays tribute to the people who founded these spaces, fostering a sense of belonging and safety, often during eras when lesbian life could only be lived out in secret. She examines the ways in which such spaces operated as support networks, activist hubs, meeting places, where queer people could encounter others like them – sometimes for the first time. There’s an inevitably elegiac air to Thomas’s study now that so many of these places are closed or closing down: gentrification, property prices, competition with online services all contributing to their loss. But this is also a celebration, a rich reclaiming of hidden or scattered histories drawn from a range of sources including interviews with key figures; equally Thomas doesn’t try to airbrush anything here, some of these spaces were, for example, exclusively white, others catered only to the comparatively wealthy. Thomas is a fluid, thoughtful writer, although this is meticulously researched and factual, it’s far from dry. Overall, it’s a labour of love, a lively, highly informative, often compelling read.

A really interesting and enlightening book about spaces queer women built and frequented throughout mainly the 70s and 80s in America. June Thomas constructs an accessible and compelling story of this history with a book separated into six sections to focus on six spaces. This includes, bars, bookshops, the softball field, rural communes, sex toy shops, and vacation spaces. Thomas mixes historical information, interviews and personal anecdotes together seamlessly in a way that makes a very well-rounded archive of these spaces and of the people involved in them. There are some images included throughout too, though, as others have said, more would have been welcomed!

The parts that interested me the most were the sections on bookstores and bars, just because of personal interest and my own history in research/writing about queer spaces, but learning about the land communities was also very interesting (if not a little frustrating as you watched the different places make similar mistakes and fall apart one after the other). In the climate that we’re in now (which sounds like a stupid way to say we’re in a time of a hugely damaging purposely manipulated misinformation filled moral panic about trans people where hatred, hurt and exclusion is rife and uncalled for) I’m glad Thomas made her views clear on that and they were strongly geared toward inclusion rather than not. I found the way she navigated the differing view points related to trans and non-binary people in “women’s” spaces from today and 50 years ago refreshing and nuanced.

I’ll never be able to think about Amazon the same after reading this and I’m so glad I now know this piece of history around its inception. It is interesting to read a book like this that felt very focussed on the business side of things, not that the impact of these businesses wasn’t considered, because it definitely was, but it was a new experience for me to have so much of the focus be on the people who ran the businesses and the exploration on how they started, their highs, lows and endings, rather than the expected focus on interviews with patrons about what the spaces did for them. It’s different and interesting and I feel like I learnt a lot about just the general running of a business as well as what these spaces meant and stood for.

I'll definitely be recommending this book to people and dreaming of reading/writing one focussed on UK history in the same way.
(longer review on goodreads soon!)

"A Place of Our Own", with a title that ties to queer icon Virginia Woolf's feminist work, is undoubtedly a piece that packs a punch. In a lot of ways, I felt reminded of the book "Homintern: How Gay Culture Liberated the Modern World", which aimed to give an in-depth history lesson about the way queer people shaped all kinds of culture movements and the cultural arts.

Thomas starts from a very personal place of exploration, her own curiosity and research for safe spaces for queer women is what led her to discover their history, their pioneers and the way history seems to have conveniently forgotten their presence. Spaces meant for queer women were slowly washed away together with other spaces that offered a sense of community, and that were free at that. This realisation comes with knowing that the world is becoming less friendly and less open to community-based and free spaces, in the name of capitalism.
Queer bookstores were once a spot to learn about sexuality and identity, where one could meet people that shared the same feelings and ideas. Online retailers of all kinds took over these businesses, and online communities replaced the "old" ones.
To me, "A Place of Our Own" is a rallying cry to turn to each other and create, develop and support queer spaces. This doesn't necessarily mean that their focus should be alcohol and sex, but that they provide that sense of community and education that we have lost.

Extremely informative and well written book about the spaces and communities built by queer women. I had no idea about all this golden information about our communities history, a really interesting read with a lot of insight. From bars to bookshops, softball fields, landdykes, sex shops and vacation destinations, I’m glad I got the chance to read this piece of queer history and have learned so much from it. I highly recommend if you’re looking to broaden your understanding of the spaces queer women created throughout the years.

This book gives the story of safe spaces for lesbians and how they have built their own communities. I loved the feeling of togetherness the author described, and although the author was born British this book had a very American focus - nevertheless, it was still inspiring and engaging.

This was a great read to be able to explore the journey of being a lesbian and the places that exist for lesbians but sadness for what has been lost along the way.