David Bergman chats with the author of The Child

By coincidence, this issue of the G&LR spotlights two topics with which Martin Duberman is closely associated: the life and times of Lincoln Kirstein and the application of various therapies to change the sexual orientation of gay people.

WHEN REVIEWING a recent book for The New York Review of Books, writer Larry McMurtry opened by indulging in the old thought experiment of deciding what one author’s works he would take with him to the proverbial desert island. His choice was none other than Gore Vidal. Noting that Vidal’s oeuvre encompasses 46 books that cover the gamut from historical novels to satirical plays and screenplays, literary essays, and political memoirs, McMurtry explained that Vidal has “a prose style that should be the envy of the dwindling few who realize that prose style matters.”

AFTER SEVENTEEN YEARS as an activist for the American Civil Liberties Union in San Francisco, Marcia Gallo started graduate school at the City University of New York, working with Martin Duberman and other luminaries at the center for lesbian and gay studies. Ten years later, at the age of 55, Marcia has published the results of her research, Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement.

The DOB was the first lesbian organization in the U.S., founded by Phyllis Lyon and Del Martin in San Francisco in 1955. Taking its name from the lesbian-themed “Songs of Bilitis” by French poet Pierre Louÿs, the DOB would soon start publishing a monthly magazine, The Ladder, which helped organize a national lesbian readership and eventually a political movement. Gallo’s book, which is the first full-length history of the DOB, is based on the author’s intensive archival research and interviews with surviving members of the group.

I conducted this interview with Marcia in my apartment in Manhattan in November 2006. – Sarah Schulman

A longtime activist for GLBT senior issues, Adelman is the editor of Lesbian Passages: True Stories Told by Women over 40 (1996), and of Midlife Lesbian Relationships: Friends, Lovers, Children, and Parents (2000). This interview was conducted last November via a combination of tape-recorded phone conversations and e-mail exchanges.