On September 23, 1970, a group of antiwar activists staged a robbery at a bank in Massachusetts, during which a police officer was killed. While the three men who participated in the robbery were soon apprehended, two women escaped and became fugitives on the FBI's Ten Most Wanted list, eventually landing in a lesbian collective in Lexington, Kentucky, during the summer of 1974. In pursuit, the FBI launched a massive dragnet. Five lesbian women and one gay man ended up in jail for refusing to cooperate with federal officials, whom they saw as invading their lives and community. Dubbed the Lexington Six, the group's resistance attracted national attention, inspiring a nationwide movement in other minority communities. Like the iconic Stonewall demonstrations, this gripping story of spirited defiancé has special resonance in today's America. Drawing on transcripts of the judicial hearings, contemporaneous newspaper accounts, hundreds of pages of FBI files released to the author under the Freedom of Information Act, and interviews with many of the participants, Josephine Donovan reconstructs this fascinating, untold story. The Lexington Six is a vital addition to LGBTQ, feminist, and radical American history.
Author
Josephine Donovan is the author of twelve books of nonfiction and the editor of four. A complete list of her publications is available on her web site: http://english.umaine.edu/people/jose.... Her fields of specialization include animal ethics, feminist criticism and theory, American women’s literature (especially nineteenth-century), and early modern women’s literature. Her work has been translated into seven languages (Japanese, French, Turkish, Swedish, Greek, German, and Chinese). Her most recent books are: Animals, Mind, and Matter: The Inside Story (2022); The Lexington Six: Lesbian and Gay Resistance in 1970s America (2020), a finalist for the Lambda Literary Aware; and The Aesthetics of Care: On the Literary Treatment of Animals. (New York: Bloomsbury, 2016). Recently published: a second, revised edition of Women and the Rise of the Novel (New York: Palgrave Macmillan 2013) St. Martin’s, 1999; paperback, 2000). It was termed “a work of extraordinary significance” by the Choice reviewer, who wrote, “Donovan has defined the field clearly, forthrightly, often brilliantly. All future discussion of the subject begins here” (October 2000). Also recently published was European Local-Color Literature: National Tales, Dorfgeschichten, Romans Champêtres (Bloomsbury, 2010), a work in comparative literature. Donovan’s best-known book, Feminist Theory: The Intellectual Traditions, first published in 1985, is now in its fourth edition (New York: Bloomsbury, 2012) Amazon.com notes, “this book has established itself as the classic survey and analysis of the roots and development of feminist theory.” A selection of other reviews of Donovan’s books may be found on her web site. Two of her books, Sarah Orne Jewett and Uncle Tom’s Cabin: Evil, Affliction, and Redemptive Love have recently been reprinted in revised editions on-line and in “print-on-demand” form by Cybereditions. Born in Manila in 1941, Donovan was evacuated from the Philippines with her mother a few months before Pearl Harbor. Her father, a Captain in the U. S. Army, remained in the Philippines where he was captured by the Japanese in 1942, remaining a P.O.W. for the duration. His memoirs, edited by his daughter, were recently published as P.O.W. in the Pacific: Memoirs of an American Doctor in World War II. She graduated, cum laude, from Bryn Mawr College in 1962 with a major in history, after spending her Junior Year in Europe. After graduation she worked as a Copy Desk clerk at The Washington Post and Time Magazine and as a general assignment reporter on a small newspaper in upstate New York. During this period she completed a course in Creative Writing at Columbia University. She received her M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in comparative literature from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1967 and 1971, respectively. She has held academic positions at several universities and worked for a time as a Copy Editor for G. K. Hall in Boston. She is Emerita Professor of English at the University of Maine.
