Rubyfruit Jungle: A Novel

By Rita Mae Brown

“The rare work of fiction that has changed real life . . . If you don’t yet know Molly Bolt—or Rita Mae Brown, who created her—I urge you to read and thank them both.”—Gloria Steinem
 
Winner of the Lambda Literary Pioneer Award | Winner of the Lee Lynch Classic Book Award
 
A landmark coming-of-age novel that launched the career of one of this country’s most distinctive voices, Rubyfruit Jungle remains a transformative work more than forty years after its original publication. In bawdy, moving prose, Rita Mae Brown tells the story of Molly Bolt, the adoptive daughter of a dirt-poor Southern couple who boldly forges her own path in America. With her startling beauty and crackling wit, Molly finds that women are drawn to her wherever she goes—and she refuses to apologize for loving them back. This literary milestone continues to resonate with its message about being true to yourself and, against the odds, living happily ever after.
 
Praise for Rubyfruit Jungle
 
“Groundbreaking.”—The New York Times
 
“Powerful . . . a truly incredible book . . . I found myself laughing hysterically, then sobbing uncontrollably just moments later.”—The Boston Globe
 
“You can’t fully know—or enjoy—how much the world has changed without reading this truly wonderful book.”—Andrew Tobias, author of The Best Little Boy in the World
 
“A crass and hilarious slice of growing up ‘different,’ as fun to read today as it was in 1973.”—The Rumpus
 
“Molly Bolt is a genuine descendant—genuine female descendant—of Huckleberry Finn. And Rita Mae Brown is, like Mark Twain, a serious writer who gets her messages across through laughter.”—Donna E. Shalala

“A trailblazing literary coup at publication . . . It was the right book at the right time.”—Lee Lynch, author of Beggar of Love

• Language: English
• Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
• Release date: Jun 25, 2014
• ISBN: 9780804152761

Book preview

Introduction

Where does the time go? If you find out, tell me. I’ll go get some and bring it back.

I wrote Rubyfruit Jungle more than forty years ago. Loving the English language since I first learned to speak it, I found that I loved writing it even more. My love for our language has deepened with the years, but then who wouldn’t be thrilled living in a cathedral of English?

If Rubyfruit helped you to know that you aren’t alone, good. If I made you laugh, even better.

This novel is pegged as a lesbian novel, therefore classified in the ghettos of literature. Anytime any work or any person is qualified, it’s always an insult. The message really is, This is not about people like yourself. You might enjoy it, but after all, the subject matter concerns the ‘lower orders.’

There are no lower orders. There are no lesbians or transgender people or fill in the blank. There are only people, a wild mix of energy, different abilities, colors ranging from ebony to bleached white. We’re everything and everybody. I don’t even believe in male and female, it’s a sliding scale and we are hag-ridden by a binary culture: male-female, black-white, straight-gay, rich-poor, and so it goes. The gradations are infinite and the silliest mistake of all is to define people by material possessions. It’s even worse if people define themselves by money.

When I wrote Rubyfruit Jungle in 1971 (the year I wrote it, not the year it was published), the only way to begin to understand your situation was to take the label given to you by others, a label devised centuries, if not millennia, ago for some labels, and to understand how this became hardened oppression. That work is done.

Think about it. Once you buy into a definition of yourself that has been made by others, you’re a victim. Victims draw great strength from banding together and declaring a common oppression and a common (always glorious, of course) culture. Perhaps, but you’re still a victim.

In its own simple fashion, Rubyfruit alludes to this without ever collapsing into nonfiction propaganda. This is not to rap nonfiction. I worship The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire by Edward Gibbon. Then again, it’s not propaganda.

Until we are willing to read, see, embrace any work of art by any gifted person, we are still held back. Think of this in non-artistic terms. Moses took the Jews out of Egypt. Could he take Egypt out of the Jews? Only then can one be free. Let go of your oppressor. Many people cannot and many artists cannot. Whole careers are made by those who fall into disadvantaged categories (and economically and politically, they do). And it’s not just those who are wrathful about their condition, it’s those who become lawyers and self-appointed spokespersons for the rest. You might say that oppression sells.

The most revolutionary thing you can do is be yourself, to speak your truth, to open your arms to life, including the pain. Find your passions.

The English language, horses and hounds, and the theater are mine. I wish for you something that enlarges your life, teaches you to respect all life forms, and helps you connect to other people.

If Rubyfruit Jungle helped to push you on your path to freedom, I’ve done something right.

Onward and upward,

RITA MAE BROWN

February 6, 2015

1 ƒ

1

No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won’t forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we’ll include them in our future.

I didn’t know anything about my own beginnings until I was seven years old, living in Coffee Hollow, a rural dot outside of York, Pennsylvania. A dirt road connected tarpapered houses filled with smear-faced kids and the air was always thick with the smell of coffee beans freshly ground in the small shop that gave the place its name. One of those smear-faced kids was Brockhurst Detwiler, Broccoli for short. It was through him that I learned I was a bastard. Broccoli didn’t know I was a bastard but he and I struck a bargain that cost me my ignorance.

One crisp September day Broccoli and I were on our way home from Violet Hill Elementary School.

Hey, Molly, I gotta take a leak, wanna see me?

Sure, Broc.

He stepped behind the bushes and pulled down his zipper with a flourish.

Broccoli, what’s all that skin hanging around your dick?

My mom says I haven’t had it cut up yet.

Whaddaya mean, cut up?

She says that some people get this operation and the skin comes off and it has somethin’ to do with Jesus.

Well, I’m glad no one’s gonna cut up on me.

That’s what you think. My Aunt Louise got her tit cut off.

I ain’t got tits.

You will. You’ll get big floppy ones just like my mom. They hang down below her waist and wobble when she walks.

Not me, I ain’t gonna look like that.

Oh yes you are. All girls look like that.

You shut up or I’ll knock your lips down your throat, Broccoli Detwiler.

I’ll shut up if you don’t tell anyone I showed you my thing.

What’s there to tell? All you got is a wad of pink wrinkles hangin’ around it. It’s ugly.

It is not ugly.

Ha. It looks awful. You think it’s not ugly because it’s yours. No one else has a dick like that. My cousin Leroy, Ted, no one. I bet you got the only one in the world. We oughta make some money off it.

Money? How we gonna make money off my dick?

After school we can take the kids back here and show you off, and we charge a nickel apiece.

No. I ain’t showing people my thing if they’re gonna laugh at it.

Look, Broc, money is money. What do you care if they laugh? You’ll have money then you can laugh at them. And we split it fifty-fifty.

The next day during recess I spread the news. Broccoli was keeping his mouth shut. I was afraid he’d chicken out but he came through. After school about eleven of us hurried out to the woods between school and the coffee shop and there Broc revealed himself. He was a big hit. Most of the girls had never even seen a regular dick and Broccoli’s was so disgusting they shrieked with pleasure. Broc looked a little green around the edges, but he bravely kept it hanging out until everyone had a good look. We were fifty-five cents richer.

Word spread through the other grades, and for about a week after that, Broccoli and I had a thriving business. I bought red licorice and handed it out to all my friends. Money was power. The more red licorice you had, the more friends you had. Leroy, my cousin, tried to horn in on the business by showing himself off, but he flopped because he didn’t have skin on him. To make him feel better, I gave him fifteen cents out of every day’s earnings.

Nancy Cahill came every day after school to look at Broccoli, billed as the strangest dick in the world. Once she waited until everyone else had left. Nancy was all freckles and rosary beads. She giggled every time she saw Broccoli and on that day she asked if she could touch him. Broccoli stupidly said yes. Nancy grabbed him and gave a squeal.

Okay, okay, Nancy, that’s enough. You might wear him out and we have other customers to satisfy. That took the wind out of her and she went home. Look, Broccoli, what’s the big idea of letting Nancy touch you for free? That ought to be worth at least a dime. We oughta let kids do it for a dime and Nancy can play for free when everyone goes home if you want her to.

Deal.

This new twist drew half the school into the woods. Everything was fine until Earl Stambach ratted on us to Miss Martin, the teacher. Miss Martin contacted Carrie and Broccoli’s mother and it was all over.

When I got home that night I didn’t even get through the door when Carrie yells, Molly, come in here right this minute. The tone in her voice told me I was up for getting strapped.

I’m coming, Mom.

What’s this I hear about you out in the woods playing with Brockhurst Detwiler’s peter? Don’t lie to me now, Earl told Miss Martin you’re out there every night.

Not me, Mom, I never played with him. Which was true.

Don’t lie to me, you big-mouthed brat. I know you were out there jerking that dimwit off. And in front of all the other brats in the Hollow.

No, Mom, honest, I didn’t do that. There was no use telling her what I really did. She wouldn’t have believed me. Carrie assumed all children lied.

You shamed me in front of all the neighbors, and I’ve got a good mind to throw you outa this house. You and your high and mighty ways, sailing in the house and out the house as you damn well please. You reading them books and puttin’ on airs. You’re a fine one to be snotty. Miss Ups, out there in the woods playing with his old dong. Well, I got news for you, you little shitass, you think you’re so smart. You ain’t so fine as you think you are, and you ain’t mine neither. And I don’t want you now that I know what you’re about. Wanna know who you are, smartypants? You’re Ruby Drollinger’s bastard, that’s who you are. Now let’s see you put your nose in the air.

Who’s Ruby Drollinger?

Your real mother, that’s who and she was a slut, you hear me, Miss Molly? A common, dirty slut who’d lay with a dog if it shook its ass right.

I don’t care. It makes no difference where I came from. I’m here, ain’t I?

It makes all the difference in the world. Them that’s born in wedlock are blessed by the Lord. Them that’s born out of wedlock are cursed as bastards. So there.

I don’t care.

Well, you oughta care, you horse’s ass. Just see how far all your pretty ways and books get you when you go out and people find out you’re a bastard. And you act like one. Blood’s thicker than water and yours tells. Bullheaded like Ruby and out there in the woods jerking off that Detwiler idiot. Bastard!

Carrie was red in the face and her veins were popping out of her neck. She looked like a one-woman horror movie and she was thumping the table and thumping me. She grabbed me by the shoulders and shook me like a dog shakes a rag doll. Snot-nosed, bitch of a bastard. Living in my house, under my roof. You’d be dead in that orphanage if I hadn’t gotten you out and nursed you round the clock. You come here and eat the food, keep me runnin’ after you and then go out and shame me. You better straighten up, girl, or I’ll throw you back where you came from—the gutter.

Take your hands off me. If you ain’t my real mother then you just take your Goddamned hands off me. I ran out the door and tore all the way over the wheat fields up to the woods. The sun had gone down, and there was one finger of rose left in the sky.

So what, so what I’m a bastard. I don’t care. She’s trying to scare me. She’s always trying to throw some fear in me. The hell with her and the hell with anyone else if it makes a difference to them. Goddamn Broccoli Detwiler and his ugly dick anyway. He got me in this mess and just when we’re making money this has to happen. I’m gonna get Earl Stambach and lay him out to whaleshit if it’s the last thing I do. Yeah, then Mom will rip me for that. I wonder who else knows I’m a bastard. I bet Mouth knows and if Florence the Megaphone Mouth knows, the whole world knows. I bet they’re all sittin’ on it like hens. Well, I ain’t going back into that house for them to laugh at me and look at me like I’m a freak. I’m staying out here in these woods and I’m gonna kill Earl. Shit, I wonder if ole Broc got it. He’ll tell I put him up to it and skin out. Coward. Anyone with a dick like that’s gotta be chickenshit anyway. I wonder if any of the kids know. I can face Mouth and Mom but not the gang. Well, if it makes a difference to them, the hell with them, too. I can’t see why it’s such a big deal. Who cares how you get here? I don’t care. I really don’t care. I got myself born, that’s what counts. I’m here. Boy, ole Mom was really roaring, she was ripped, just ripped. I’m not going back there. I’m not going back to where it makes a difference and she’ll throw it in my face from now on out. Look how she throws in my face how I kicked Grandma Bolt’s shins when I was five. I’m staying in these woods. I can live off nuts and berries, except I don’t like berries, they got ticks on them. I can just live off nuts, I guess. Maybe kill rabbits, yeah, but Ted told me rabbits are full of worms. Worms, yuk, I’m not eating worms. I’ll stay out here in these woods and starve, that’s what I’ll do. Then Mom will feel sorry about how she yelled at me and made a big deal out of the way I was born. And calling my real mother a slut—I wonder what my real mother looks like. Maybe I look like someone. I don’t look like anyone in our house, none of the Bolts nor Wiegenlieds, none of them. They all have extra white skin and gray eyes. German, they’re all German. And don’t Carrie make noise about that. How anyone else is bad, Wops and Jews and the rest of the entire world. That’s why she hates me. I bet my mother wasn’t German. My mother couldn’t have cared about me very much if she left me with Carrie. Did I do something wrong way back then? Why would she leave me like that? Now, maybe now she could leave me after showing off Broccoli’s dick but when I was a little baby how could I have done anything wrong? I wish I’d never heard any of this. I wish Carrie Bolt would drop down dead. That’s exactly what I wish. I’m not going back there.

Night drew around the woods and little unseen animals burrowed in the dark. There was no moon. The black filled my nostrils and the air was full of little noises, weird sounds. A chill came up off the old fishpond down by the pine trees. I couldn’t find any nuts either, it was too dark. All I found was a spider’s nest. The spider’s nest did it. I decided to go back to the house but only until I was old enough to get a job so I could leave that dump. Stumbling, I felt my way home and opened the torn screen door. No one was waiting up for me. They’d all gone to bed.

2

Leroy sat in the middle of the potato patch picking a tick off his navel. He looked like Baby Huey in the comics and he was about as smart, but Leroy was my cousin and in a dumb way I loved him. We’d been sent out there to get potato bugs, but the sun was high and we were both tired of our chores. The grown-up women were in the house, and the men were off working. That was the summer of 1956, and we were in such bad shape that we had to live with the Denmans in Shiloh. I didn’t know we were in bad shape; besides I liked being out there with Leroy, Ted, and all the animals.

Leroy was eleven, same age as me. He was the same height only fat; I was skinny. Ted, Leroy’s brother, was thirteen and his voice was changing. Ted worked down at the Esso station so Leroy and I were stuck with the potato bugs.

Molly, I don’t wanna pick bugs no more. We got two jars full, let’s go on down to Mrs. Hershener’s and get a soda.

Okay, but we got to go down by the gully where Ted wrecked the tractor or my mom will see us and make us get back to work. We crawled through the gully, past the rusty tractor and out the drainpipe to the other side of the dirt road. Then we ran all the way down to Mrs. Hershener’s tiny store, which had a faded Nehi soda sign with a thermometer on it tacked to the door.

Well, it’s Leroy and Molly. You children been helping your mothers up there on the hill?

Oh yes, Mrs. Hershener, Leroy droned, we spent this whole day picking potato bugs so the potatoes will grow right.

Now aren’t you just sweet. Here, how about a chocolate Tastycake for each of you.

Thank you, Mrs. Hershener—in unison.

Can I get a scoop of raspberry ice cream for a nickel? I grabbed my ice cream and walked out into the June sunshine. Leroy strolled out with a fudge ripple and we sat on the worn, flat wood planks of the porch. I spied an empty Sunmaid raisin box, nearly perfect except the top was torn, lying there in the irridescent tarpaper shavings in front of the store.

What you want that for?

I got plans for this, you wait and see.

Come on, Moll, tell me and I’ll help you.

Can’t tell you now, here comes Barbara Spangenthau and you know how she is.

Yeah, right, gotta be a secret.

Hi, Barbara, whatchu doin’?

Barbara mumbled something about a loaf of bread and disappeared inside. Barbara was Jewish and Carrie was forever telling Leroy and me to keep away from her. She needn’t have bothered. No one wanted to go near Barbara Spangenthau because she always had her hand in her pants playing with herself and worse, she stank. Until I was fifteen I thought that being Jewish meant you walked around with your hand in your pants.

Barbara rolled out of the store. She was even fatter than Leroy; her arms full of Fishel’s bread, she started down the footpath with all the honeysuckles.

Hey Barbara, you seen Earl Stambach today?

He was down by the pond. Why?

" ’Cause I

Reviews for Rubyfruit Jungle

[barnesbookshelf · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This has been on my TBR for a while because of it's status within the queer community as a landmark. I was super excited to read it, but it wasn't exactly what I thought it would be. I love how unapologetic Molly is in her sexuality. Each of her relationships are so unique. The ending made me kinda sad, though I do find it's probably the most realistic way it could have ended.

[greeniezona · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I had been meaning to read this book FOREVER. So I finally picked it up for Sapphic September, and I am very sorry to say that I just did not vibe with this novel.

Molly is what, this matter-of-fact, hard-scrabble kid, raised in poverty with a not-great adoptive mother and somehow has no hangups about sex or something. And is also queer. Okay, great. But one of the whole themes in this story is how time and time again Molly is turned away from some vestige of security or some opportunity she has won becasue of other people's irrational prejudices about her relationships with women, but our dear Molly seems to never have a thought about her own prejudices, or any interest in community building or solidarity, she is just her one-woman island iconoclast whatever. And I get that her experiences would be very isolating, and it's not that she is ever really woe-is-me about her own situation, but she doesn't ever seem to acknowledge that anyone has it worse than her, either.

I can appreciate that this was groundbreaking in its time, and also why it might be important to a lot of people, but I personally found it ultimately frustrating.

[trayceebee · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I'm so shocked that I'd never read this book before, especially when I came out as bisexual and was first beginning to spend a lot of time with gays and lesbians. I was an avid reader then--I'd have thought at least ONE of my lesbian friends would've given me a copy or something. Whatever. I'm glad I read it now. I'm in lust with Molly Bolt! She's the woman we all want to be--even the straight women do. Not for the lesbianism, but for the fact that she takes no shit from anyone and she decides to actually do what SHE wants to do, not what everyone tells her she "has" to do. Man, this was an amazing book!!! Loved it!!!

[angelreadsthings · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

While this novel has some profound moments and several thoughtful reflections on gender, sexuality, class, and family, these positives were often overshadowed by a plot that, especially in the beginning, felt like a series of small car accidents I couldn't turn from rather than a fascinating progression of story and a protagonist who felt too superior, uncritically examined, and fundamentally unchanged by the end of the book. I do understand why this unabashedly lesbian novel has been life-changing for some, and I'm glad that I took the time to read this book for myself. That being said, I don't expect to recommend this book to any young lesbians I meet anytime soon.

[caedocyon · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This one was slow to start-- some bits of her childhood made me a bit nauseous. I read it in a few days, and I think I liked it fine at the time, but now I'm kind of hard-pressed to remember anything about it. I'd like to give it about 2 1/2 stars, I suppose.

[dreesie-1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

An original from 1973--Molly Bolt, the adopted daughter of poor parents in PA who move to Florida, forges her own path. As she works to sort out her sexuality and choose a career, she makes it to NY and film school. She is strong, she is her own person, and she goes her own way.

This book was fine reading it now, the audio was good. But I wonder how much of a stir this book caused when it first came out--a lesbian main character, a smart-as-a-whip adopted daughter, a young woman choosing to chase her dreams rather than cave to family/social/departmental pressure and games. I feel like the experience of reading this 50 years after publication is just not the same as it would have been at the time. Groundbreaking?

[jscape2000 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I’m always a sucker for a bildungsroman and this does not disappoint. The second half moves a little quickly, with a progression of interchangeable New York friends rejecting Molly for her lesbianism. But as a story of self making, it is easily above average. Doesn’t quite crack the top tier with Oranges are Not the Only Fruit or Funhome or Good Morning Midnight because it’s ambitions never quite graduate to the universal and it’s language doesn’t quite reach the same poetry. But that’s elite company and not a knock.

[bibliophageoncoffee · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Rita Mae Brown wrote a lesbian cult classic and then pivoted into writing cozy mysteries featuring cats and foxes. Fascinating.

[tommi180744 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

At its time a ground-breaking novel of Lesbian/Female Empowerment: the literary quality varies with the candid nature of the scenarios covered by the story. Nonetheless, a thoroughly entertaining romp through the Gay Lifestyle of the early 60s-70s: I'm led to believe it opened the eyes & sensuality of a fair number of its female readership: good for them!

[akblanchard_1 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

A bratty little girl grows up to be an insufferable woman in this lesbian coming of age novel of the 1970s. The humor was too broad for my taste.

[andre perez · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

First of all, I love Molly. I don't have words to describe what this pure work of art made me feel: happiness, anger, hate, resentment, pleasure. These are the closest concepts I can use to try to put into words the literary catharsis that can be generated by immersing oneself in the life of Molly Bolt, the best character I have ever read. (Translated from Spanish)

[emeraldreverie · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I really enjoyed this book. It was visceral and true to character in a way I rarely experience. Quintessential sapphic reading.

[itchyfeetreader · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Never shies away from tough topics, poverty, systemic homophobia and sexism but is lifted from a potentially depressing story by the wit and humour of the sometimes frustrating but nearly always hilarious protagonist Molly.

“Oh great, you too. So now I wear this label ‘Queer’ emblazoned across my chest. Or I could always carve a scarlet ‘L’ on my forehead. Why does everyone have to put you in a box and nail the lid on it? I don’t know what I am – polymorphous and perverse. Shit. I don’t even know if I’m white. I’m me. That’s all I am and all I want to be. Do I have to be something?”

Thoughts
There is probably much to criticise in this novel – it’s certainly not high literature in terms of style or language, there’s more than a couple of scatological references that I could have done without and there is not a huge amount of character growth from anyone.

Viewed with a modern eye it has in many ways not aged well, some of the language is dated and there are, I understand many criticisms that Brown is negative about motherhood as well Butch culture at the time.

However, and it is a huge however, Molly is a an absolute pleasure to read. From an early age Molly recognises that she is different from her family in ways that are outside of her emerging sexuality. She is smart, ambitious, incredibly driven and self-aware which leads to more than a couple of laugh out loud scenes in the first half of the book. The children’s nativity scene in particular is one I would love to see on film. Life continues to throw all sorts of difficult situations on her but her self-belief and self - reliance continues to shine through in a way that I found cheerful and positive even despite the slightly ambiguous ending.

[nagly-4 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

One of the 'must-reads' if you are wanting to know the history of LGBTQ fiction. Don't remember being enamored of the book itself, but know it's a seminal point in our history. Need to read it again with a more critical eye.

[heart77 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

I loved the main character for her ambition. Far too many books portray romance as the goal of womankind. This book was different, not because the main character loved women, but because she kind of didn't give a fuck about anything except furthering her career. She was observant about classism, sexism, racism, etc. I liked that she was written as a redneck who still had the sensitivity to care. She was an outcast in her film class. Everyone else was doing ridiculous gonzo pieces with no heart, but she chose to do a documentary on her mother. I thought that was really cool, and a fitting tribute to feminism, which is what this book was.

[cheryl_in_cc_nv · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

This must have been amazing when it was first published. Judy Blume for grown-up women? It was fun for me even though I wasn't at all shocked.

[blackrabbit89 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

For as long as I can remember (in the ten years that I’ve been an out lesbian), Rubyfruit Jungle has appeared and been mentioned in countless places. Websites, books, magazines, and word-of-mouth all tout this unorthodox coming-of-age novel as The One Lesbian Novel You Must Read. I suspect that, in the ’70s when it was published, this was probably true. Reading it today, I found it to be, in a word, heavy-handed.

Rather than a carefully crafted story, Rubyfruit Jungle reads a bit like a piece of propaganda. It is as though the author is using this story to cover an essay of thinly veiled criticism of patriarchy and heteronormativity. Molly, the main character, is kicked out of college for being a lesbian and faces discrimination at work and school for being a woman. However, she never really seems to be emotionally or psychologically affected by this prejudice; she simply maintains a critical attitude. (In other words, Molly sounds like the author commenting on the misfortune that befalls her rather undeveloped character).

One thing I found interesting was Molly’s dislike of the butch/femme dynamic, and the butch way of presenting. In asserting her belief that lesbians should not emulate heterosexual relationship roles, Molly comes off as butch-phobic. I can understand where she’s coming from, but I also think that her opinion discounts the entirely acceptable masculine-of-center way of being. Again, though, my perspective is shaped by the 2010s, whereas Molly’s (and Brown’s) is a product of the 1970s. It’s interesting how LGBT culture has so drastically changed over the years.

There was one final aspect of this story that bothered me to no end: all of Molly’s lovers were “straight” until she met them! This is something that so rarely happens in real life that it just seemed ridiculous and unbelievable coincidental in the book. Every woman in whom Molly took an interest turned out to be down with girl-on-girl action. Ah, if only real life were like that.

I’m glad I read Rubyfruit Jungle for herstory’s sake, and for my own edification, and to better understand lesbian life in the ’70s. But it’s time we update our category of must-read lesbian novel. Let Rubyfruit remain part of the lesbian canon, but not as a story that is applicable to lesbian culture these days. Society has changed too much for that.

[memccauley6 · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

I’m sure this book was earth-shaking and socially significant when it was published, but…. I thought it was boring, with a very unlikable protagonist.

Molly Bolt is supposed to be smart and sassy, but she comes across as cruel and condescending. The entire book is about her sexual (mis)adventures, not her accomplishments or personal growth.

[poetontheone · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I often lament the scarcity of queer bildungsroman, but among its canonical examples this title is perhaps the one that is mentioned most frequently. This is about a young lesbian growing up in the South and then roughing it in NYC. It touches in an oblique way on racism, women's rights, and sixties counterculture, all of which were still hot button topics when this book was released in the early seventies. The writing is good, not great, but good. Characterization is a it of a problem, Aside from the brash and uncompromising Molly and her family who feature stroongly in the first part of the novel, the other characters that comprise Moly's love interests and friends seem to go through a revolving door and never have enough breathing room to become entirely fleshed out. Just when we're comfortable with one or two of them, Molly inevitably has a falling out with them having to do with something surrounding her sexuality, and the process repeats over and over again until it gets tired. This is a significant book in that it dealt with a controversial subject during a turbulent time, but in hindsight it leaves much to be desired in terms of its style and its perspective.

[jamie_cawley-1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

One of the first books I ever read in this genre. The writing is clear, unique and absolutely hilarious!

[schatzi_5 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Molly Bolt is a feisty, headstrong girl who knows what she wants in life. Born on the wrong side of the blanket and raised on the wrong side of the tracks, she wants to escape the poverty that surrounds her.

I liked this book, and I can see why it would be such a breakthrough title when it was originally published. Molly is unashamedly a lesbian, and she makes no apologies for that fact, even though she loses some "friends" and family members (sort of) because of it. And she really doesn't allow anyone to put her down, even though her dreams of being a film maker are ultimately delayed, at least, because of her gender, and it's hard not to root for her as a character.

But I did find the book to be rather dated, and I think that there are better books out there for the modern teenaged lesbian who is struggling to find her way in the world. Fortunately, society has progressed since this book's setting and publication, and some of the hardships Molly faced are much less insurmountable now (although I'm not saying that they are completely gone in all cases).

Still, it's a good book to read, and it made me thankful that I was born a few generations after the main character was.

[grheault_2 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

I give this book and Rita Mae Brown credit for pioneering explicit homosexuality forty years ago. It must have been shocking and offensive to polite people back then to read this story of a poor white girl with incredible sexual self-knowledge, chutzpah, brains, and dramatic abilities who acts on her sexual curiosities.

I found this to be a period piece about the 60's, presented by an outlier character, who has the courage to come out, to be out, and to thrive in a gay community while the majority of her gay contemporaries resigned themselves to lives, half hidden and half lived, in small towns, in unhappy heterosexual marriages, in spinster/bachelor professions.

With more emphasis on sex than on love, this book probably shocked its readers when it was first published in 1973. Today it seems dated, and a little shallow in not quite touching on the the true tragedy of denying even the hope of intimacy and honesty to same-sex oriented people in their given lives. But pioneers have to start somewhere and I'm betting this book got things rocking and rolling.

[tinav95 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

I may be the last lesbian on the planet to have read this classic novel, but it has been on my shelf for at least 10 years waiting its turn. Again with the self-imposed reminder to read some of what I already OWN, I came across this one when I was packing for a long weekend trip.

In a nutshell -- Rubyfruit Jungle is the story of Molly who grows up knowing she is different and not what everyone expects her to be. She is smart, stubborn, and sassy. All characteristics that don't go over very well for a young girl in the south in the time of this novel (early 1950s). Molly finds out early on that she is adopted (a bastard is the word her mother calls her) and that all that she has known of her life is in question. She also begins to realize that she likes girls, not boys the way everyone else does.

The story follows Molly throughout childhood, into a stormy adolescence filled with sexual experimentation with girls and boys (including the boy who she thought was her cousin, but turns out is now just a best friend... so I still felt the cousin-ish sex was weird. Sue me for being a prude).

Molly has an extremely hard life and this is not a feel good story. It's pretty honest about what life must have been like in the 50's and 60's for anyone who was different -- gender, sexuality, race, etc. The language and racial slurs were hard for me to read, but made sense from the perspective she was writing to show opposition to Molly's progressive views of life.

I quite enjoyed this, even though it was not light-hearted with a happily ever after ending. I've read other works of Brown (some of her mysteries) and this was indeed a different turn. The notes at the end of my version indicate that some of the events that occur in Molly's story are taken from Brown's actual experiences, which made the novel even more interesting to me when I read that nugget of information!

[sumariotter · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

This is one of the first lesbian novels I ever read and as such was very exciting to me though I've forgotten the details.

[lycomayflower · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

An important book, I think, for the frank way it illustrates the coming-of-age of a lesbian in the fifties and sixties, but one which I enjoyed somewhat less than I expected to. The voice of the narrator, Molly Bolt, is compelling and real, and the story ends up someplace interesting, affirming, and earned, but some of the scenes are lacking in the detail that would make them work best (a lot of dialogue goes on without any contextualizing gestures, actions, observations, or interiority). I was constantly fighting with myself to accept the style of the book as written and finally decided that the style really wasn't working quite right. I also found myself a bit turned off by Molly's attitude. She is deeply and instantly offended by anyone who finds her love of women odd or repulsive (and rightly so), but also seems quite judgmental of other people's (especially heterosexual people's) sexual eccentricities and kinks. This attitude knocked the book out of four-or-more-star territory for me more than my issues with the writing style. I was expecting the book to be fairly YKINMK, and it was unsettling (and not usefully so) to discover that it was not.

[booksandwine · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Decent book about the sexual awakening of a lesbian. It opened my eyes to the lesbian experience. Also, lots of feminist undercurrent. Molly, the main character, grows up during the time where women wore dresses and aspired to secretarial positions, but Molly wants to break the glass ceiling. There are lots of sexual exploits and that's it. Don't read this if you are prude.

[elana0rlc · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

I read this book because a friend recommended it and the only reason I continued to read it because it was so short. The main character goes through hardship as any character in any book needs to to have the book's plot move forward, but she responded the same in each situation and each time it was unrealistic. The characters responded in two ways: "who cares" and "gross gay". There was no depth to any of the characters. The book was too short for the amount of time that passed and all that happened. The author seemed to feel it was more important to proceed with the telling of the events then giving the characters or the setting details that would have allowed the reader to become engrossed in the book.

[truth_of_spirit · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

While I read it, I was seriously wondering why there are sooo very diverging reviews of it. I actually liked it all the way through, however, the end was a little too open (or was it exactely not?), but then, on the whole, the depiction of the main character doesn't seem too caricaturized to me (agreed, there are some rather short bits which read like a comically-sad version of what it should be, but then again, it's art :-) )So, all in all, I liked it :-)

[yooperprof · Rating: 2 out of 5 stars]

While it was a "breakthrough lesbian novel" for its time (1973), "Rubyfruit Jungle" now seems very dated. The plot seems crude and mechanical, and the narrator ultimately comes across as a bore because she can't seem to locate a single human being who lives up to her high standards and expectations. For me, reading "Rubyfruit" was much less pleasurable and "fun" than the comparable Ann Bannon "lesbian pulps" of the 1950s. [close]

[squeakychu · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

Curiosity got the better of me when I chose to read Rubyfruit Jungle. I knew the story was about a lesbian and also knew that it had been written in the 1970’s. Since reading fiction about homosexuality is pretty mainstream now, I was interested in what was written about it over 35 years ago.

As a story, I wasn’t all that interested in it. It follows the life of Molly Bolt, a lesbian who grew up with her adoptive parents in Pennsylvania, then later moved with them to Florida. Molly was a very tomboyish and outspoken woman. She was never afraid of recognizing her own identity as a lesbian and often teased other women about their own sexual identity. From a young age, Molly knew she’d never marry. Her greatest difficulties developed after her father died and her mother, learning of Molly’s lesbianism, threw her out of the house.

What amazed me most about this quick read was the frankness of the author’s writing. I think perhaps that is why this book was so widely read at the time it was first published. Today, there are probably more interesting novels with homosexual characters. That Molly’s homosexuality was the focus of the book led me to tire of the story after a while. What I did like, though, was Molly’s determination to succeed and her own knowledge that she was a worthwhile person who could make something of herself even if others doubted her.

The ending of the book was quite perfect for its time. If this book would have been written today, however, its ending would have been very different.