Eating Fire

By Kelly J. Cogswell,

Book cover of Eating Fire: My Life as a Lesbian Avenger

Book description


When Kelly Cogswell plunged into New York's East Village in 1992, she had just come out. An ex-Southern Baptist born in Kentucky, she was camping in an Avenue B loft, scribbling poems, and playing in an underground band, trying to figure out her next move. A couple of months later…

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Why read it?

1 author picked Eating Fire as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

This book is a feminist memoir about being in a groundbreaking organization that proclaimed to the world that lesbians exist, refusing to be erased.

They used street theatre to draw attention (the "fire eating" to which the book title refers). The participants faced a lot of litmus testing, such as being targeted as racially offensive for using the phrase "freedom ride" for non-race centric activity; and the author testifies to both misogyny and homophobia in the left in the US,  Paris, and Cuba. 

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