Blanche Wiesen Cook & Clare Coss

[reviews_and_ramblings]

Blanche Wiesen Cook (born April 20, 1941 in New York City), Distinguished Professor of history at John Jay College in the City University of New York, is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884-1933, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winning biography of Eleanor Roosevelt.

Cook's biography is controversial because of her claims that Roosevelt had a lesbian affair with reporter Lorena Hickok. An out lesbian, Cook is also the author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume 2 , The Defining Years, 1933-1938, and The Declassified Eisenhower: A Divided Legacy of Peace and Political Warfare.

She and her partner, Clare M. Closs, celebrated their twenty-fifth year together in 1994. They lived in New York City and East Hampton.

Clare M. Coss (born 1935) has a BA in theatre from Louisiana State University and a master‘s degree in theatre education from New York University and, in the mid-1970s, she completed a master’s degree in social work at the State University of New York·Stony Brook and trained as a psychotherapist. She divides her two careers between her psychotherapy practice in New York City and her writing work in her studio on Long Island.

In the late 1960s, when Coss began writing plays. she dealt primarily with two major themes: plays inspired by women breaking down interior and exterior barriers and plays about women who strove to forge their vision of a just society. ln 1971 the Berkshire Theatre Festival gave Coss her tirst full production. From 1977 to 1981, she was a cofounder and co-artistic director of the Women`s Experimental Theatre, and producer Margot Lewitin invited the group to be in residence at the Interart Theatre in New York. There, with Sondra Segal and Robena Sklar, Coss coauthored a trilogy on women in the family. Then, in the early 1980s. Coss left in order to write her own plays. Various readings and workshops led to productions of three of her plays. In 1996 she edited an anthology of lesbian love poems. Arc of Love, published by Simon and Schuster.


Blanche Wiesen Cook and Clare Coss, 1993, by Robert Giard
Blanche Wiesen Cook, Distinguished Professor of history at John Jay College in the City University of NYC, is the author of Eleanor Roosevelt: Volume One 1884-1933, a Los Angeles Times Book Prize winning biography of Eleanor Roosevelt. She and her partner, Clare M. Closs, celebrated their twenty-fifth year together in 1994. They lived in NYC and East Hampton. Clare Coss divides her two careers between her psychotherapy practice in New York City and her writing work in her studio on Long Island.

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blanche_Wiesen_Cook

Two factors define the complicated lives of these women, regardless of whether they were erotically or romantically attracted to other women. The first is that they were frequently connected to one another through a large, close-knit network of relationships that sustained them personally and professionally. The second is that they often focused on social issues that affected women and children. Historian Blanche Wiesen Cook argues that "networks of love and support are crucial [for] women to work in a hostile world... frequently the networks of love and support that enable politically and professionally active women to function independently and intensively consist largely of other women." --A Queer History of the United States by Michael Bronski

Blanche Wiesen Cook, 1993, by Robert Giard


Clare Coss, 1993, by Robert Giard

American photographer Robert Giard is renowned for his portraits of American poets and writers; his particular focus was on gay and lesbian writers. Some of his photographs of the American gay and lesbian literary community appear in his groundbreaking book Particular Voices: Portraits of Gay and Lesbian Writers, published by MIT Press in 1997. Giard’s stated mission was to define the literary history and cultural identity of gays and lesbians for the mainstream of American society, which perceived them as disparate, marginal individuals possessing neither. In all, he photographed more than 600 writers. (http://beinecke.library.yale.edu/digitallibrary/giard.html)

Further Readings:

Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Reading level: Ages 18 and up
Paperback: 608 pages
Publisher: Penguin (March 1, 1993)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140094601
ISBN-13: 978-0140094602
Amazon: Eleanor Roosevelt, Vol. 1: 1884-1933

Eleanor Roosevelt was born into the privileges and prejudices of American aristocracy and into a family ravaged by alcoholism. She overcame debilitating roots: in her public life, fighting against racism and injustice and advancing the rights of women; and in her private life, forming lasting intimate friendships with some of the great men and women of her times.

This landmark biography provides a compelling new evaluation of one of the most inspiring women in American political history. Celebrated by feminists, historians, politicians, and reviewers everywhere, it presents an unprecedented portrait of a brave, fierce, passionate political lerader of our century.

Eleanor Roosevelt : Volume 2 , The Defining Years, 1933-1938 by Blanche Wiesen Cook
Reading level: Ages 18 and up
Paperback: 686 pages
Publisher: Penguin (Non-Classics) (June 1, 2000)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0140178945
ISBN-13: 978-0140178944
Amazon: Eleanor Roosevelt : Volume 2 , The Defining Years, 1933-1938

Historians, politicians, feminists, critics, and reviewers everywhere have praised Blanche Wiesen Cook's monumental Eleanor Roosevelt as the definitive portrait of this towering female figure of the twentieth century. Now in her long-awaited, majestic second volume, Cook takes readers through the tumultuous era of the Great Depression, the New Deal, and the gathering storms of World War II, the years of the Roosevelts' greatest challenges and finest achievements. In her remarkably engaging narrative, Cook gives us the complete Eleanor Roosevelt— an adventurous, romantic woman, a devoted wife and mother, and a visionary policymaker and social activist who often took unpopular stands, counter to her husband's policies, especially on issues such as racial justice and women's rights. A biography of scholarship and daring, it is a book for all readers of American history.

A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America by Leila J. Rupp
Paperback: 241 pages
Publisher: University Of Chicago Press; 1 edition (May 1, 2002)
Language: English
ISBN-10: 0226731561
ISBN-13: 978-0226731568
Amazon: A Desired Past: A Short History of Same-Sex Love in America

With this book, Leila J. Rupp accomplishes what few scholars have even attempted: she combines a vast array of scholarship on supposedly discrete episodes in American history into an entertaining and entirely readable story of same-sex desire across the country and the centuries.

"Most extraordinary about Leila J. Rupp's indeed short, two-hundred-page history of 'same-sex love and sexuality' is not that it manages to account for such a variety of individuals, races, and classes or take in such a broad chronological and thematic range, but rather that it does all this with such verve, lucidity, and analytical rigor. . . . [A]n elegant, inspiring survey." —John Howard, Journal of American History

More Particular Voices at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Particular Voices

More Real Life Romances at my website: http://www.elisarolle.com/, My Ramblings/Real Life Romance