A Woman Like That

The act of "coming out" has the power to transform every aspect of a woman´s life: family, friendships, career, sexuality, spirituality. An essential element of self-realization, it is the unabashed acceptance of one´s "outlaw" standing in a predominantly heterosexual world. These accounts -- sometimes heart-wrenching, often exhilarating -- encompass a wide breadth of backgrounds and experiences. From a teenager institutionalized for her passion for women to the mother who must come out to her young sons at the risk of losing them -- from the cautious academic to the raucous liberated femme -- each woman represented here tells of forging a unique path toward the difficult but emancipating recognition of herself. Extending from the 1940s to the present day, these intensely personal stories in turn reflect a unique history of the changing social mores that affected each woman´s ability to determine the shape of her own life. Together they form an ornate tapestry of lesbian and bisexual experience in the United States over the past half-century.