SCARC completed 2 new finding aids April – June 2024; as of the end of June, SCARC has 1147 finding aids in Archives West.
These finding aids are available through the Archives West finding aids database, the SCARC website, and the OSU Library discovery system a.k.a. “the catalog.” The links below are to the guides in Archon, SCARC’s finding aids website.
The Edith Yang Papers consist of materials generated and collected by Edith Yang. In 1954, Yang, as a Chinese-American Woman, was the first woman of color to be licensed as an architect in Oregon. Yang predominantly worked within Benton County, Oregon, with the majority of her work taking place within Corvallis and the Oregon State University campus. The collection documents her architectural work in four areas: commercial, residential, and OSU, as well as World War II-related projects. Also included are biographical and other materials reflecting Yang’s community engagement within the Corvallis community.
Irwin Stone was a biochemist and chemical engineer who was known for his groundbreaking research on ascorbic acid, more commonly known as Vitamin C. He championed the use of Vitamin C for food preservation and human health throughout his career, influencing how Vitamin C was used by nutritionists, biochemists, medical professionals, and the pharmaceutical industry. Materials document his research and career as a biochemist, public speaker, and author and relate to Vitamin C’s effects on diseases such as cancer, stress, wound healing, AIDS, and drug addiction. Access to Box 12 Folder 13 and Box 11 Folder 57 is restricted due to the presence of confidential information.
In honor of the new guide created to showcase the LGBTQIA+ rare books within the SCARC rare books collection, some of these rare books are being exhibited in the display case outside of the SCARC Reading Room on the 5th floor of the library!
While looking at the collection as a whole and trying to separate the books into two themes, there was one clear theme, that being books written by and for Oregonians, which will be the second exhibit going up at the end of August 2024. With those books removed, we surveyed the remaining books, and another theme emerged: the good, the bad, and the misrepresentation. This set of materials deals with the ways that queer people have been referred to and used within media historically. While there are more good representations than bad representations, the bad cannot be overlooked and ignoring them would not accurately represent the historical record that exists.
Below a picture of the exhibit can be found, as well as copies of the statements that are placed within the bookcase:
The Exhibit, mid-June – August, 2024
The Good……
These books and magazines represent some of the more positive depictions of queerness within the rare books collection. While all have not been confirmed to have been written by someone in the queer community, all of them show positive representations of queer relationships and allow space for queer stories to be shared.
The Strange Path (Reprint 1953) was written by Gale Wilhelm, a pioneering lesbian writer who wrote two lesbian books in the 1930s, the other being We Too Are Drifting (1935), which is also available in the collection.
Davy (1964) by Edgar Pangborn is one of those that may not have been written by a queer person, as he was not openly out, but he is often read as a queer author due to the relationships and themes he crafts within his stories.
Kaliflower (1977) is a collection of art, poetry, and prose written by members of the Kaliflower commune. One tenet of their commune was sexual exploration, and relationships were encouraged between all members of the commune referred to as “mutual marriage.”
On our backs (1974) is a magazine that, though being mainly focused on straight feminist issues, had a large lesbian readership and it featured lesbian focused content from time to time. Ultimately the lesbian members of the collective left to found their own periodical, the Furies, published in 1972-1973, but on our backs still holds a place within lesbian feminist history.
…the Bad, and the Misinformation
These books are some of the books within the collection that portray negative stereotypes of queerness or spread misinformation. These contain themes or plot points that are centered around historical events such as the Cambridge Five in the UK, the AIDS epidemic in the U.S. in the 80s, and the anti-gay hysteria occurring in the 90s in the U.S.
Purple 6, published in 1962, is nuclear suspense fiction set in the UK, that utilizes opinions about the Cambridge Five as plot points. The Cambridge Five were a ring of spies in the UK during the cold war from the 1930s to the 1950s of which at least two, possibly three, were gay or bisexual, and claimed to be spying under threat of blackmail from the Soviet Union. Within the book, as they come to understand that there is a spy in their midst, everyone’s sexualities are investigated because of this stigma that if you were queer then you were more liable to blackmail or treason.
The AIDS Plague (1986) is by Dr. James McKeever, who was a fundamentalist physician. He combines surprisingly accurate AIDS information and education with religious aspects from Christianity, and blames not just homosexuality, but all deviant sexual behavior outside of marriage. Not the worst representation, but certainly not the best.
7 Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child by Scott Lively was published in 1990, and is described on the book jacket as “A concise, practical guidebook for parents who wish to protect their children from pro-homosexual indoctrination and the possibility of recruitment into the homosexual lifestyle.” Lively is known for being an aggressively anti-gay pastor who helped introduced anti-gay laws into Uganda and possibly Russia. This is possibly as far from a queer-positive book as you could get.
The LGBTQIA+ Rare Books LibGuide started with curation of books from the Rare Books that had any connection to LGBTQIA+ people or topics, which was done by Anne Bahde, Special Collections Librarian for Research and Learning. Once all of the materials had been paged, I got to spend more than a few hours poking through all of the materials. The trouble with doing work like this is that everything is so fascinating, it can be hard to stay on task without getting lost in the materials. Regardless, I was able to take pictures of all of the books, take some notes on the content, and then start on the LibGuide.
I decided to separate the books into 5 categories: Magazines and Newspapers, Music and Arts, Fiction and Queer Pulps, Non-fiction, and HIV/AIDS. What follows is a highlight of the materials in each category, as well as information that was found through some light researching.
Tip: Right Click on an image and hit “Open image in new tab” for a larger view of the image so that the text is readable.
Magazines and Newspapers
The Lavender Network
The magazines and newspapers were by far the most interesting set of materials to me, and the one that I found myself spending the most time on. One rather interesting one was the Lavender Network, or “Oregon’s Lesbian and Gay Newsmagazine,” created in Eugene, Oregon.
Kaliflower
Kaliflower, with its colorful covers and wonderful artwork, was quite an eye-catcher. I spent some time flipping through the pages, trying to ascertain why a self-published magazine from a commune about communal-living was in a curation of queer books, but I soon found out. Their articles on sexual freedom and exploration, and “mutual marriage” elucidated that for me, but their other articles on their anti-capitalist practices and advice for communal living were just as interesting.
Off Our Backs
But the materials that I kept finding myself coming back to was the run of off our backs (lowercase stylized as oob). It had an array of queer and lesbian focused features, those being columns, interviews, artists, and letters from lesbian subscribers. There were comic strips from Alison Bechdel’s “Dykes To Watch Out For,” advertisements for other lesbian periodicals, groups, and retreats, and statements from lesbian groups and organizations. And yet lesbians were still marginalized within oob.
This lesbian-marginalization spawned not only one, but two separate lesbian-focused magazines. Furies, a lesbian focused periodical that was founded when the lesbian members of the collective left, but was only published for a short year. Another publication that was created out of spite against oob was On Our Backs (OOB), a lesbian erotica magazine that ran from 1984 to 2006. Its existence sprung out of the anti-pornography stance that oob held, particularly during the sex war period of the 80s in lesbian and feminist communities (interesting further reading here).
Despite the faults, this set of oob is a really incredible time capsule back to feminist culture in the 70s. Reading these even inspired me to subscribe to a new queer magazine that is created and printed in Portland, in hopes that one day I could look back on them as I am looking at oob now.
Music and Arts
Turned On Woman Songbook Come Out Comix
I do have to say that I am an enjoyer of comics and graphic novels, especially queer focused ones, so Come Out Comix was a real treat for me. It was really interesting to read it as someone who lives in the Willamette valley, as it is set in Portland, and Coos Bay was also mentioned. Turned On Woman was also interesting, but as I can’t read sheet music, I think it’s intrigue was lost to me.
Fiction and Queer Pulps
Torchlight to Valhalla (Original Cover and Title) The Strange Path (Reprint Cover and Title)
The queer pulps are definitely the catchiest bunch of this collection, but seemed different from what I expected at first glance. The Strange Path was written by Gale Wilhelm, a pioneering lesbian author, but this edition is a rename of the original book titled Torchlight to Valhalla, with the new name being paired with a new pulpy cover. This printing occurred in 1953, almost ten years after Wilhelm stopped writing and 25 years after the book was originally published. Barbara Grier, who is known for essentially building the lesbian book industry, speculated in the foreword of one of the publishings of Torchlight to Valhalla that she stopped writing “because the world would not let her write the books she wanted,” that being books with lesbian characters, as her last three novels featured heterosexual themes. Looking at the title, the Strange Path, through the lens of this information makes me a bit sad. Wilhelm probably didn’t think that this path was a strange one, but at the time, the world did think that. This led not only to Wilhelm writing stories she truly didn’t enjoy, but to a misbranding of one of the stories where she was able to share her true self.
The other pulp fiction that has an eye-catching cover does not do any better, with the content of this one being the main offender. The Men Between has been described as what “seems to be anti-gay propaganda in disguise” by a reviewer of the book. The tagline on the back of the seems to say the same, reading “Mike thought he was normal until he was raped by another man – and he liked it!”
Non-fiction
It Could Happen To You 7 Steps to Recruit Proof Your Child
It Could Happen Happen To You was my favorite of the non-fiction books, mainly for all of the inserts that were seen within it. There were a lot of comics, posters/flyers, and advertisements relating to the Local Measure 51 in Eugene that these activists were working against. Two other books that are really interesting include the Homosexuality Bibliography and Supplement, which could be a really great resource if you are looking for works published earlier than 1975. Lastly, Seven Steps to Recruit-Proof Your Child, although rather homophobic, does have a lot of interesting illustrations, including queer right’s groups posters and ads that they took out of context. This book was also created in Oregon and contains a lot of Oregon related content.
HIV/AIDS
The AIDS Time Bomb
I chose to separate out the HIV/AIDS related books as they are not necessarily about queer people or written by them, but they are included in this collection due to the stigma in the US surrounding HIV/AIDS as being something that only gay men contract, which is far from the truth. One of these books, AIDS: The American Roads of Denial by Richard Caper, shines light on that fact. It details his story as a person with AIDS (PWA) as an intravenous drug user and the social rejection he faced when his diagnosis got out, and his walk across the country to raise awareness. It is by far the most positive representation of queerness in any of the AIDS books, as the other two contain rather negative depictions of queerness in relation to AIDS.
The Necessary Friction zine, produced by the Corvallis Lesbian Avengers, features art and writing in a variety of formats that relate to the experiences of queer people, and especially lesbian women, as well as the activities of the Lesbian Avengers. This material was written by members of the Lesbian Avengers, as well as solicited from the broader Corvallis community.
Wired was published by the OSU Hattie Redmond Women & Gender Center. The Center’s mission is informed by feminist theories and lessons, we are committed to creating spaces of community, supporting advocacy, and developing student leaders who actively contribute to building feminist futures.
Issues of Wired are available online via ScholarsArchive@OSU: Wired Issues
The Benton County Quaranzine was compiled by the staff of the Corvallis-Benton County Public Library and consists of submissions from area residents collected from June 1 to November 2, 2020, focusing on life during the pandemic and the era’s political unrest. The resulting print publication includes drawings, cartoons, collages, photographs and other artistic renderings, as well as essays and poems.
Contributors to the project were: Quinn Andreas, Ellen Beier, Jack Compere, Molly Curry, Tru Denton, Sarah Finkle, David Grube, Mari Beth Hackett, Forrest Johnson, Charlie Kelso, Colleen Kitchen, Erin MacAdams, Nancy Chestnut Matsumoto, Orion Olson, John Otto, Vic Russell, Linda Varsell Smith, Karen Stephenson, Kim Thackray, Marvel Vigil and Marion J. Whitney.
