An Introduction to Ann Bannon's I Am A Woman

A Review of 2nd Novel in the Beebo Brinker Chronicles

Sep 18, 2008 Sabrina Louise Webb

Ann Bannon's 2nd novel in the 'Beebo Brinker Chronicles' follows Laura following her previous love affair and introduces Jack Mann and the infamous Beebo Brinker.

I Am A Woman picks up immediately where Odd Girl Out left off; following Laura recovering from her intense love affair with sorority girl Beth. Set in New York’s Greenwich Village Laura meets a whole host of new characters.

Marcie

Marcie becomes Laura’s housemate. Straight, but curious, Laura soon becomes infatuated with her. Marcie though divorced is still seeing her ex-husband, Burr. Burr and Marcie have a strange relationship; they argue constantly but can’t seem to get along without each other.

Jack

Jack is described as ‘small, physically tough and very intelligent. He was a sort of cocktail-hour cynic, disillusioned enough with things to be cuttingly funny.’ (Bannon, 1959, p.21)

Jack and Laura are inadvertently set up by Marcie, not realising that either of them are ‘queer.’ Jack takes Laura, Marcie and Burr to a local bar, The Cellar, which turns out to be a gay-bar and a focal point of all of the novels.

After their initial meeting, Jack and Laura become firm friends. The next time Laura and Jack meet they talk more about their sexuality; Jack tries to warn Laura about the perils of living with and falling in love with Marcie.

Beebo

I Am A Woman is the novel when the infamous Beebo Brinker is first introduced, as a friend of Jack’s. They first meet at The Cellar, when Laura is going home after a long night. Laura is less than impressed with Beebo, who is the arch-typical butch lesbian.

Laura and Beebo meet again in The Cellar following a falling-out between Laura and Marcie. At the end of the night Laura doesn’t want to go home and can’t go to Jack’s and ends up staying at Beebo’s despite the fact that Laura dislikes her intensely.

The remainder of the novel sees Laura wrestling with her conflicting feelings for Marcie and Beebo, as well as trying to attain closure on her relationship with her estranged father.

The Author:

Ann Bannon (real name Ann Weldy) was born in 1932 in Illinois and is author of five lesbian ‘pulp-fiction’ novels written in the 1950s and 1960s.

Bannon was twenty two when she started writing Odd Girl Out, which would become the first in what is now known as the ‘Beebo Brinker Chronicles.’ Bannon recalls being inspired by the only two lesbian novels she had read which were Radclyffe Hall’s The Well Of Loneliness and Vin Packer’s Spring Fire.

Bannon also said, as she was writing the novels that the characters became like her friends; through them she was able to live the life she felt she was never able to lead, being a wife and mother to two children.

Ann Bannon has won numerous awards for her work: in 1990 OUTLOOK awarded Bannon for her outstanding, pioneering contribution to Lesbian and Gay writing, in 2004 she was inducted into the Saints and Sinners literary festival hall of fame.

References:

Bannon, A., 1959, ‘I Am A Woman,’ United States: Cleis Press Inc.

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I Am A Woman