Books with author Karla Jay

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes readers from her early days in the 1968 Columbia University student riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front. In Southern California in the early 70s, she continued in the battle for gay civil rights and helped to organize the takeover of "The Ladies' Home Journal" and "ogle-in" - where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men.

Karla Jay's memoir of an age whose tumultuous social and political movements fundamentally reshaped American culture takes readers from her early days in the 1968 Columbia University student riots to her post-college involvement in New York radical women's groups and the New York Gay Liberation Front to Southern California in the early '70s, where she continued in the battle for gay civil rights. We see here helping to organize the takeover of The Ladies Home Journal and “ogle-ins”—where women staked out Wall Street and whistled at the men. We follow her in the fast lane of the sexual freedom movement as she liberates sun worshippers from their bathing suits.

The Lavender Menace, written by Karla Jay, is the story of her 'coming out" and her involvement in the informal group of lesbian radical feminists formed to protest the exclusion of lesbians and lesbian issues from the feminist movement at the Second Congress to Unite Women in New York City on May 1, 1970. Other members included Martha Shelley, Rita Mae Brown, Lois Hart, Barbara Love, Ellen Shumsky, and Michela Griffo, and were mostly members of the Gay Liberation Front (GLF) and the National Organization for Women (NOW).