Awards

• Short-listed for Lambda Literary Awards (Women's Memoir/Biography) 1999
• Winner of Stonewall Book Award (Nonfiction) 2000

Overview

Winner of the American Library Association GLBT Book Award Finalist for the Lambda Literary Award

Full Product Details

9781555972929

Table of Contents

Reviews

In My Lesbian Husband, Barrie Jean Borich asks a fascinating question: do the names we give our relationships change their meanings? Each chapter entertains an aspect of this question with prose that is spirited, artful, anything but pat. Here is an author who takes neither love nor the power of language for granted, and her book is as provocative and lively as the love it evokes. An extraordinary performance by a writer who renews our wonder at the complexity of human connection. --Bernard Cooper <br> Barrie Jean Borich wins my respect with her ingenious and original description of feelings which, for many, need translating into a familiar language. She writes about her lover and their life together with a rare deftness, clarity, and antic sense of humor, never strident or defensive, rather self-confident and as if she herself were curious to discover what she is thinking about their relationship. --Rosellen Brown <br> In language as charged as the air between lovers, Barrie Jean Borich offers us a gorgeous and tender aria to marriage. She tells of discovering with astonishment, through twelve years of devotion to the same sturdy woman, how much she delights in fidelity. She tells of slowly weaving her unsanctioned love into the fabric of her family, in among brothers and sisters-in-law, among nieces and nephews and wary parents. She describes the alchemy of turning a house into a home. Through it all, she writes like a woman possessed-- enraptured by the sensual pleasures of words, by the power of stories, by the gravity of neighborhood. She reminds us that marriage is made not by the joining of bodies shaped a certain way, but by the joining of two lives, careers, and histories inone place, in one embrace. --Scott Russell Sanders<br>

A passionate, intricately composed memoir of the author's long-term love relationship, set against the backdrop of their Minneapolis neighborhood and complicated family ties. With colorful, witty, richly woven prose, Borich (Restoring the Color of Roses, not reviewed) invites the reader into a life that is at once ordinary and wholly unique. Alternating between different years in her relationship, and leading up to her actual wedding, Borich's narrative unfolds like a patchwork quilt. She offers sketches of her family, daily dog walks, city noises and urban dramas, her collection of kitschy Madonna art, and her lover's obsession with motorcycles and birdwatching. Though clearly a romantic, Borich is no fool. She acknowledges the precariousness of permanence even as her prose swirls around her and her lover's entwined feet: I doubt our lives or loves are predetermined. . . . Much of the time I get to choose, and I don't need a psychic to tell me which is the happier destiny. Today I choose to cling to this world, to Linnea's arm, as the planet where we live inches around its axis again and we breathe in and out, wondering what will happen tomorrow. Borich does skimp a bit on the nitty-gritty of tensions, problems, and arguments that must have arisen over 12 years of partnership. But if she errs on the side of bliss, she does so by staying rooted in everyday experience. She is similarly egalitarian in her portrayal of family members and the ways in which heterosexual bonding is awarded more legitimacy by her parents, aunts, and cousins. One of the moving aspects of the book is how some of these family members shift over the years toward more acceptance of Borich and her lesbian husband. Much broader than a lesbian interest title, this book will resonate with many readers, regardless of sexual orientation, bringing a nod of recognition to some, a twinge of longing to others. (Kirkus Reviews)

Author Information

Barrie Jean Borich is the winner of many literary awards and is the author of Restoring the Color of Roses (Firebrand Books), a memoir set in the Calumet region of Chicago where she grew up. Today she lives with her beloved, Linnea Stenson, in Minneapolis, Minnesota, and teaches at Hamline University and Minneapolis College of Art and Design.

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