Author’s Foreword

Emergence of Green

Copyright © 1997 by Katherine V. Forrest

Bella Books, Inc.
P.O. Box 10543
Tallahassee, FL 32302

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper

Originally published by Naiad Press 1986

Harrington Park Press/Alice Street Editions 1995

First Bella Books edition 2010

Cover Design: Judith Fellows

ISBN-13: 978-1-59493-217-5

About the Author

Katherine V. Forrest’s 15 works of fiction are in translation worldwide and include her eight-volume Kate Delafield mystery series, the lesbian classics Curious Wine, Daughters of a Coral Dawn and An Emergence of Green. Her stories, articles and reviews have appeared in national and international publications. Awards and honors include four Lambda Literary Awards, the Bill Whitehead Lifetime Achievement from the Publishing Triangle, and the Lambda Literary Foundation’s Pioneer Award. Senior editor at Naiad Press for a decade, she is currently supervising editor at Spinsters Ink and editor-at-large for Bella Books. During her almost three decades of editing she has worked with many LGBT authors, and she has edited or co-edited numerous anthologies. She lives in San Francisco with her partner of almost two decades and their two personality-plus cats.

Author’s Foreword

From the perspective gained during a two-decade writing career, it’s easy to track the trajectory of my growth as a novelist: it forms a direct parallel to the jagged upward line charting the struggles and growth of the LGBT community. The novel you hold in your hands signals a distinct departure in topic and tone from the three books I wrote previous to it, just as it marks an extending horizon line in the advance of LGBT civil rights.

Curious Wine (1983), my first novel, is a classic coming-out story reflective of much of the literature of the day—discovering and coming to terms with our sexual identity. My second book, Daughters of a Coral Dawn (1984), dramatized a lesbian ideal while it explored some of our politics: the kind of world women might build when they seize the freedom to create it. My first mystery novel, Amateur City (1984), fell somewhat within these same realms in its portrayal of a police detective deeply closeted because she perceives this as necessity. Kate Delafield begins her fictional life insulated from virtually any exposure to her wider community.

The third novel, An Emergence of Green extends most directly from Curious Wine in its candid scenes of sexual discovery between the two female characters; but it departs from that novel and other coming-out stories in the immediate identification by all three major characters of what is happening among them. The quandary for Carolyn Blake and Val Hunter is not to search for the essential nature of their desire nor to flounder over acquiring the language of their attraction; it instead lies in defining its dimension, power, ramifications, and the parameters of their own needs and courage. Nor is there much mystery for husband Paul Blake. From the moment Val Hunter enters his life he clearly understands what is at stake—that the assertive woman who has moved in next door represents the gravest possible threat not just to his marriage but to his entire concept of power-centered masculinity.

As the strands of characterization in this novel were coming together, I was determined not to portray Paul Blake as the standard male villain extant in most lesbian fiction. In fulfilling this vow I introduced his point of view into the novel: I inhabited his mind. He in turn took up residence in my own. He stubbornly resides there still.

Certainly the world and its view of our LGBT community have changed since the time of An Emergence of Green in 1984 Los Angeles. Were I to begin writing this novel now, and set it in 2004, it would convey society’s greater awareness and grudgingly eroding prejudice, but Carolyn and Val would not be much different in how their encounter transforms them nor in their internal conflicts over what it will essentially mean for them. Paul Blake would be not one iota different. Nothing about who, why, or what he is about has changed in our contemporary context. He is the quintessential American male, the successful, upwardly mobile, self-made achiever—an American cultural ideal.

Here then: the 1984, yet very today, story of Carolyn, Val, and Paul.

Date: 2015-02-03; view: 818