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cosmolinguistI don't think much of the analysis in A Queer History of the United States (a book by someone called Michael Bronski), but it's packed with enchanting primary sources, telling of early Europeans shocked by a woman dressed as a man, leading Native American groups and having four wives of her own, to a comic poem about vaudeville actors who impersonated the opposite sex ("Our language is so dexterous, let us call them ambi-sexterous...").
I'm charmed by this letter one (middle class African-American in the mid-19th C.) sent to another woman: "My head is better Last night it pain me very hard O My Dear dear Rebecca when you press me to your dear bosom...happy I was, last night I gave anything if I could only layed my poor aching head on your bosom".... That letter travelled the distance from Maryland to Connecticut, and as someone who's too often been that far or farther from someone I want to cuddle up with when I have a headache, I can't help but smile in recognition.
I'm charmed by this letter one (middle class African-American in the mid-19th C.) sent to another woman: "My head is better Last night it pain me very hard O My Dear dear Rebecca when you press me to your dear bosom...happy I was, last night I gave anything if I could only layed my poor aching head on your bosom".... That letter travelled the distance from Maryland to Connecticut, and as someone who's too often been that far or farther from someone I want to cuddle up with when I have a headache, I can't help but smile in recognition.