Friends as lovers; lovers as friends; ex-lovers as friends; ex-lovers as family; friends as family; communities of friends; lesbian community. These are just a few of the phrases heard often in the daily discourse of lesbian life. What significance do they have for lesbians? Do lesbians view friends as family and what does this analogy mean? What sorts of friendships exist between lesbians? What sorts of friendships do lesbians form with non-lesbian women, or with men?

These and other questions regarding the kinds of friendships lesbians imagine and experience have rarely been addressed. Lesbian Friendships focuses on actual accounts of friendships involving lesbians and examines a number of issues, including the transition from friends to lovers and/or lovers to friends, erotic attraction in friendship, diverse identities among lesbians, and friendships across sexuality and/or gender lines.

Friends as lovers; lovers as friends; ex-lovers as friends; ex-lovers as family; friends as family; communities of friends; lesbian community. These are just a few of the phrases heard often in the daily discourse of lesbian life. What significance do they have for lesbians? Do lesbians view friends as family and what does this analogy mean? What sorts of friendships exist between lesbians? What sorts of friendships do lesbians form with non-lesbian women, or with men?

These and other questions regarding the kinds of friendships lesbians imagine and experience have rarely been addressed. Lesbian Friendships focuses on actual accounts of friendships involving lesbians and examines a number of issues, including the transition from friends to lovers and/or lovers to friends, erotic attraction in friendship, diverse identities among lesbians, and friendships across sexuality and/or gender lines.

Mary Field Belenky, Lynne A. Bond, and Jacqueline S. Weinstock, hoping to carry Belenky's theoretical work in the bestselling "Women's Ways of Knowing" into the realm of everyday life, created the Listening Partners project, designed to help young women isolated in rural poverty give voice to their personal and communal needs and come together to create social change," A Tradition That Has No Name" explores this project and the work of other women who have created organizations to give voice to and strengthen traditions of community organizing and leadership, particularly as they have developed in communities of women marginalized by race and class. Ranging across cultures and classes--from struggling inner-city neighborhoods to affluent middle-class suburbs, from African American communities in the South to poor rural communities in Vermont--the book teaches us how to appreciate the ways women create networks of listening and community-building, and how to bring these little-recognized traditions of women's activism to the forefront of public life. It is these "public homeplaces" women create together, the authors argue, that hold the key for empowering communities and creating social change.