(1949-2014)
Leslie identified as an anti-racist white, working-class, secular Jewish, transgender, lesbian, female, revolutionary communist. She was a member of the National Committee of Worker’s World Party and managing editor of
the Worker’s World newspaper. Her 1993 first novel, “Stone Butch Blues,” is considered a groundbreaking work about the complexities of gender.
“[With] this novel [Stone Butch Blues] I planted a flag: Here I am— does anyone else want to discuss
these important issues? I wrote it, not as an expression of individual ‘high’ art, but as a working-class organizer
mimeographs a leaflet—a call to action . . .
I am typing these words as June 2003 surges with Pride. What year is it now, as you read them? What has been won; what has been lost? I can’t see from here; I can’t predict. But I know this: You are experiencing the impact of what we in the movement take a stand on and fight for today. The present and past are the trajectory of the future. But the arc of history does not bend towards justice automatically—as the great Abolitionist Frederick Douglass
observed, without struggle there is no progress . . .”
“That’s what the characters in Stone Butch Blues fought for. The last chapter of this saga of struggle has not yet been written.”
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