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With titles such as Satan Was a Lesbian, Forbidden and Sin Girls, it was safe to say that it was also a particular presentation of female relationships, which could be found in the books. The covers were hard to ignore: Scantily-clad women lusting after each other left little doubt as to what would take place upon the pages. Lustful Literary Lesbians as Flawed Representation

Her words summarise the ambivalent feeling that the entire lesbian pulp fiction genre sparked as an emotional reaction among queer female readers on one hand, the descriptions catered to a straight male audience ( The Gripping Story of Hilda, Whose Twisted Desires Led her to Brink of Degradation… anyone?), allowing salacious glimpses into an unknown twilight world, where women indulged in sex with other women, while on the other hand, they also acknowledged that lesbian sexuality existed – and that the notion of a lesbian identity was able to be embraced by women still in the closet, young as well as old. To say that the moment was formative is to downplay the effect: Forrest went on to write the novel Curious Wine (1983), considered now to be a classic in lesbian literary history. Forrest describes coming across her very first lesbian pulp book in a seedy corner store back in the heydays of the 1950s. It led me to other books that told me who some of us were, and how some of us lived.” “It opened the door to my soul and told me who I was. But that changed when the book genre pulp fiction – mass-produced cheap paperbacks with a focus on raunchy content – created a market for quickly-consumed literature. While the portrayal of the lesbian lifestyle was overly crass and hyper-sexualized, the literary representation also acknowledged that non-straight women existed – and that the possibility of creating one’s own life outside heteronormative standards existed. If representation in pop culture and media still leav es a lot to be desired, imagine being a lesbian in the 1950s: The chances of seeing your sexual identity pictured was slim to none.