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Typing up her own newspaper on a clattery typewriter, building a scooter out of fruit crates, playing baseball, and dressing as a boy to ride the rails and learn firsthand about Depression-era “hobo” culture, it’s safe to say we know that Kit grew up to be a badass. Oh Kit, rough-n-tumble butch queen of my heart. Kit Kittredge - born 1923, turns 18 in 1941 Additionally, Eve Adams opened a salon and tearoom in Greenwich Village called Eve’s Hangout where queer community congregated - I picture Rebecca here, probably with a copy of The Autobiography of Alice B. Eve Adams was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who traveled around America distributing radical leftist literature, and whose 1925 book Lesbian Love was burned for being ~indecent~. By the early 1920s, bars in the West Village were growing devoted gay clientele, like one which in 1929 would be renamed Marie’s Crisis (and which remains a beloved gay piano bar.) However, I like to imagine Rebecca in community with Eve Adams, subject of a superb recent biography by queer historian Jonathan Ned Katz. Prohibition was in effect from 1920-1933, but let’s be real: this girl’s too resourceful not to find the best house parties and speakeasies. Rebecca grew up in New York during peak Edith-Wharton era, and would be 18 just as the 20s were really starting to roar. Rebecca wasn’t yet part of the story when I was a kid, but god I wish I’d had these books when I was in the thick of my A Tree Grows in Brooklyn phase. However, by her mid-to-late twenties, I know in my heart Samantha would’ve been sneaking off to speakeasies with her, ahem, ~best friend~ Nellie and reading Radclyffe Hall. As historian Lillian Faderman notes, at this point in time there weren’t many bars where women could go Samantha would more likely have found her queer family at a ladies’ club or activist circle. Growing up with her bicycling suffragette Aunt Cornelia, how could Samantha become anything other than a legend? Her civic-minded progressive labor politics are central to her story and I can see her growing up to do further community outreach and advocacy work, probably as one of those SpinstersTM who totally had a “historians will say they were friends” kind of partnership. A lot of Samantha nostalgia centers her luxurious accessories, but beneath all the frills, Samantha is the badass femme queen we all deserve.
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Samantha Parkington - born 1895, turns 18 in 1913īecause Samantha’s original books are set in 1904, I’m counting her as my first 20th century girl, and what a helluva start to the century she represents. What community spaces would have been available to them as they entered adulthood? What bars would they be sneaking into? What might their queer lives have been like? So let’s imagine these adorable queer icons as they’d be turning 18, maybe figuring things out, maybe beginning to search for queer community.
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These stories, for me, are so closely connected to their chronological settings Molly is the 1940s girl, Kit is the 1930s girl, etc, and imagining them older, in subsequent decades, lets these vibrant characters expand beyond their original narrative confines. In wondering how these stories shaped the person I’ve become, I’ve also become curious about how the characters I love might have grown up. Thanks to the incredible work of Allison Horrocks and Mary Mahoney at the acclaimed American Girls podcast, I’ve been thinking a lot about how my childhood fascination with the historical American Girl books shaped my lifelong love of history (the early 20th century in particular). I’m saving my “American Girl Made Me Gay” essay for another day, but let’s be clear that that’s where I’m coming from. I’m a Molly, if you couldn’t tell, but also with strong Kit tendencies. Let’s just take it as a given that American Girl characters are queer icons. The 200 Best Lesbian, Bisexual & Queer Movies Of All Time.LGBTQ Television Guide: What To Watch Now.