Crybaby Butch [Paperback]

Judith Frank (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 1, 2004

Drawing on her experience as an adult literacy tutor, Judith Frank's first novel traces the difficult and sometimes hilarious connection between two butches of different generations - a middle-class, thirty-something adult literacy teacher and her older, working-class student. With a disparate group of adult learners as the backdrop, Frank examines, with warmth and wit, the relationship between education and gender, class, and racial identity.

With Crybaby Butch, Judith Frank creates a deeply human, bravely unsentimental story while at the same time investigating the meaning of butch identity as it reinvents itself from one generation to the next. ~ Carol Anshaw

Fearless and unflinching, Crybaby Butch rigorously explores butch/femme dynamics over two generations. Judy Frank's debut novel is searing and memorable. ~ Claire Messud

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Judith Frank is a winner of the Astraea Foundation's Emerging Lesbian Writer's Fund prize in fiction. A professor of English at Amherst College, she lives and writes in western Massachusetts.

Product Details

• Paperback: 416 pages
• Publisher: Firebrand Books (November 1, 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1563411431
• ISBN-13: 978-1563411434
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.7 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.4 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #557,935 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Completely absorbing, January 21, 2005

By 

Anne Laughlin (Chicago) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crybaby Butch (Paperback)

Once I moved beyond Chapter One, written in the second person, I found this book completely absorbing. I fretted over the characters when I had to leave the book to go to work (how annoying - work, I mean). I found the exploration of butch culture fascinating, and the difficulty of the older butch's life almost unbearable to read about. It's hard to imagine what life would be like looking like a stone butch in a society that scorned (scorns) that identity, coupled with the unbelievable alienation of being illiterate in our society. My partner and I talked about the book for hours. She read it after I did and I kept interrupting her to ask "what's happening now?" Beautifully written. As much as I worried about Chris and Anna, I also found the book wonderfully entertaining, filled with rich characters, lots of humor, wonderful insights. I feel fortunate to have read it.

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars a gorgeous, moving, steamy novel, January 10, 2005

By 

happykins (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Crybaby Butch (Paperback)

I couldn't put this book down. For one thing, I fell completely in love with the two main characters. For another, the writing is breathtaking. There are so many sentences I had to read twice because they were just so beautiful. Or oddly perfect. Or completely hilarious. Also, don't let the description fool you. Yes, it's about "adult literacy"-and poignantly, brilliantly so-but it's no chaste school-marm treatise. It's about lush, real life-and real sex, the blush-worthy kind. I loved it. I loved it so much, in fact, that I'm reading it a second time!

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars horrible femmes, November 8, 2007

By 

Melissa K. Heckman "femme book lovah" (Portland, ME) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Crybaby Butch (Paperback)

I have read this book three times, and i cannot get past how horrible the femmes characters are! I want to like this book, but i find Anna to be wimpy and whiney and kind of annoying, and the femmes- THE FEMMES!! Chris's partner is so mean and horrible about Chris, and Anna blames her sexual shyness on her ex-girlfriend (a femme who is apparently less helpful about Anna's need to be thrown down than Star, the non femme Anna starts dating). Gladys is never developed past being this nurturing femme who cares for the butches in her life and gave up her dreams because she loved butches... possibly and interesting story, but left without development, because Gladys really has no purpose in this book beyond her nurturing. Right. Anna's femme friend has potential, but she's so wishy washy- i really just wanted her to tell Anna to shut up. At first i thought maybe there was going to be some commentary about the ways that femmes are viewed in butch/femme communities, or the stereotypes tha butches and femmes can have about one another. But instead the butches get to be broadened into fully rounded characters, and the femmes remain one demensional. And vile.

i really wanted to get into the relationship betwen the young overeducated white brianiac butch and the older working class butch who's trying to learn to read, and there are times in the book where i really was involved in the differences between these two characters. I liked that Chris was not particularly sympathetic, but i couldn't help being drawn to her as she struggles with how vulnerable she feels in learning to read and being stuck with her mean bitch of a girlfriend. I had a really hard time liking Anna though, maybe because the author uses her to try to discuss the issues of race and class that a white middle class adult education teacher would face in a classroom of working class people who are mostly of color. Anna struggles a lot in this book, and to be fair, it's hard to write about these personal struggles and not come up with a character who is whiney.

But, after all of my complaining, i think that this book is worth reading, if only because it is one of the few butch/femme books that i have read that attempts to deal with the divide between generations of butch and femme, which is think is real and palpable in our communities. Just be aware, as you read, of the ways that femmes are characterized in this book, and Please! remember that most of us are not so horrid and boring- at least not all of the time!