“The Bearded Lady Truckstop Cafe: An Oral History of the San Francisco Dyke Scene” is both a much needed history of The Bearded Lady, an important queer feminist space in San Francisco in the 1990s, and a fascinating dive into the world that The Bearded Lady was created to resist. Crabb’s interviews explore everything from slam poetry, to AIDS, to the rise of the internet, to Riot Grrrl, to DIY, to intersectionality, to burgeoning trans identities. The people she speaks with are candid, and present a complicated picture of a space that was important and daring—and also complicated. The oral histories are so thorough and embodied, reading the book felt like returning to a place I’d never visited. This is a tremendous resource for future historians. For everyone who was there—and for everyone who never got to go—The Bearded Lady Truckstop Cafe is an incredible record of what bold, wily dykes can do with a space, a community, and a little (very little) money. 

—Hugh Ryan, When Brooklyn Was Queer

interviewee’s include trans icons Silas Howard, Daniel Sea, and Lynn Breedlove; authors and artists Harry Dodge, Ali Liebegott, Shoshana von Blanckensee, Stanya Kahn, and Lisi DeHaas; filmmakers Sarah Kennedy, Sini Anderson, and Tai Uhlmann; cultural activists Cara Page, Zeph Fishlyn and Elissa Sloan Perry; tattoo artists Idexa Stern and Elitreo Frye Jimenez; astrologer Jessica Lanyadoo and many, many others. Includes personal photographs and art by Miriam Klein Stahl, based on photos by Chloe Sherman