Debbie says:
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Lani Ka’ahumanu and Loraine Hutchins published Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out in 1990. Since then, this landmark book …
has helped spark at least ten other books (many by its own contributors), was named one of Lambda Book Review’s Top 100 GLBT Books of the 20th century, … been reprinted 3 times since 1991, was translated and published in Taiwan in June 2007 and has over 40,000 copies in circulation.
The 2015 edition, e-book and print, has a new introduction and the same glorious list of contributors. In this period, when so much is written and said about lack of diversity in feminist and LGBTQ circles, the table of contents reads like a banquet of variety; if you’re young enough, this is your mother’s book of bisexuality, but your mother invited everyone to the table and made sure they all had time to speak.
Jonathan Alexander, co-author of Finding Out: An Introduction to LGBT Studies says;
To say that Bi Any Other Name is a “classic” in the field of sexuality studies is, in many ways, to miss its true importance. It was — and in many ways still is – a “classic,” but also “the only one of its kind.” While academic studies of bisexuality have slowly been making their appearances in print, Bi Any Other Name remains one of the only texts that situates bisexuals *speaking for themselves*within a rich intellectual context. It models an approach to bisexuality in particular, and sexuality in general, that has few antecedents and fewer rivals. It is, quite simply, an indispensable text.
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Lani Ka’ahumanu is not only co-editor of this book, she also appears in three of the photographs in Women En Large: Images of Fat Nudes. Here’s one of Laurie’s photos of Lani:
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Carol Queen, who has an essay in Bi Any Other Name was in Washington D.C. in September, along with other bi activists, in honor of Bisexual Awareness Week. This year was the 16th anniversary of Bisexual Awareness Week. Think we’d have it at all if Lani Ka’ahumanu and Loraine Hutchins hadn’t been around nine years earlier laying the groundwork? I don’t think so.
Buy your copy now. If you have an old copy, replace it, and give that one to a friend, or a library.
