I cherish Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold for teaching me about butch-femme cultures I never knew existed and inspiring me to practice oral history and ethnography as queer research method. An instant lesbian and queer classic when it was published, twenty years later it has become a vital document of the 1990s butch-femme revivals that gave rise to queer theory and new forms of gender. And it remains invaluable as a model for radical research practices that document local and ordinary lives.

--Ann Cvetkovich, author of An Archive of Feelings: Trauma, Sexuality, and Lesbian Public Cultures

A bold, tender, and timely exploration of working class lesbians, Boots of Leather, Slippers of Gold is classic queer oral history that continues to inspire. Through the memories shared by butches and femmes from varied racial and ethnic backgrounds who lived and loved pre- and post-World War II, we learn lessons of individual courage and celebrate collective resistance.

-- Marcia M. Gallo, author of Different Daughters: A History of the Daughters of Bilitis and the Rise of the Lesbian Rights Movement