Reviewed by Sarah Evans
“Here come the feminists! We are your worst nightmare.”
Writer Judith Barrington fondly remembers chanting these statements as she marched down London streets in the late 1960s and early 1970s, her arms linked with “women who refused to live in dead-end jobs, pornographic films, or dull or abusive marriages.”
“Our public presence refuted the nonsense of the bitter lesbian so often revealed at the end of novels to be the traitor or the poison pen letter writer,” Barrington recalls in one of 14 linked essays in her latest book, Virginia’s Apple: Collected Memoirs (Oregon State University Press; October 2024).
Barrington gives readers an up-close, inside look at England’s second-wave feminist movement, complete with hand-mimeographed newsletters, public demonstrations, and houses filled with defiant women, many of whom were lesbians.
But that identity — lesbian — was not one that Barrington always embraced, even after she’d had several love affairs with other women and come to realize that she preferred them over men. She was exploring her sexuality during a time few gay people let their preferences show publicly out of fear of violence. Barrington describes her first forays into relationships with women, and her longtime grappling with how to embrace her sexual identity, in several stories in this book.
Barrington was much more comfortable sharing her identity after she met her longtime partner, Ruth, and the couple settled in Portland, Oregon, in 1976. Barrington brought her feminist fervor with her to the Pacific Northwest, where she taught women’s studies at a local university, continued to organize marches, and contributed her feminist writings to many magazines and newspapers.
Barrington was a poet before she became a memoirist, and it shows in the lyrical ways she describes her experiences, the people she meets along the way, and the landscapes around her. Whether describing a broken-down house crowded with a gaggle of young feminists, an apple tree in the backyard of Virginia Wolfe, or a late night sharing drinks and stories with Adrienne Rich, Barrington treats each moment with delicate care, wide-eyed wonder, and endearing humility.
“In the seventies and early eighties,” Barrington writes, “poetry was at the heart of the women’s movement, haunted by Muriel Rukeyser’s famous lines: ‘What would happen if one woman told the truth about her life? / The world would split open.’”
Thankfully, Barrington is now comfortable telling her own truths — and, along the way, she inspires other women to add their voices to the joyous chorus.
Sarah Evans is an Oregon writer and social justice activist who tries to raise marginalized voices by reviewing books written by and about people of color, women, and those who identify as LGBTQ+. She has an MFA in nonfiction writing from Pacific University.
