LGBTQ+

The Best of the Straight & Narrow: 1986 - 1993

Tales of an American Lesbian

by Holly Valero

It was the late 1980s. A time before email, the World Wide Web, desktop publishing, cell phones, and sadly, spellcheck. Today’s LGBTQIA+ was missing more than a few letters and symbols.

I was a 21-year-old lesbian in search of a normal life working as the night shift disc jockey at WTTC radio, a 500-watt AM/FM station in the rural Pennsylvania town of Towanda.

Dreams of making more than $3 an hour and maybe even finding at least one lesbian my age took me to Concord, New Hampshire. It was there, in my mid 20s, that I began writing The Straight and Narrow, a monthly column series documenting the politically turbulent 1980s. The global AIDS epidemic coincided with early LGBTQ activism. The result was widespread fear, a lot of intolerance, and internal community strife.

Despite AIDS casting a national spotlight on the gay community, the lesbian population in the face of that epidemic simply disappeared. I wanted to remind the world – and lesbians – that we were still here, still queer, and still trying to get used to it.

ISBN: 978-0-9834835-7-1 Ebook - Kindle
ISBN: 978-0-9834835-8-8 Paperback
ISBN: 978-0-9834835-9-5 Ebook - EPUB

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Born in Miami, Florida in the early 1960's, Holly Valero grew up on a 100-acre, Pennsylvania sheep farm. An early career in radio took her first to New Hampshire and then Portland, Maine, where she became involved in early LGBT rights and writing. Holly Valero is a writer, artist, and programmer living in Southern Maine.

Holly Valero's Tales of an American Lesbian: The Best of the Straight and Narrow 1986-1993 is a bit of a time capsule to me. Valero is about eight years my senior, so when she was in her mid-twenties and writing for The Straight and Narrow I was finishing high school and still unaware of my own identity as a lesbian. Now a few decades later, I find these essays bittersweet.

Reedsy Discovery • March 15, 2020
Holly Valero's Tales of an American Lesbian: The Best of the Straight and Narrow 1986-1993 is a bit of a time capsule to me. Valero is about eight years my senior, so when she was in her mid-twenties and writing for The Straight and Narrow I was finishing high school and still unaware of my own identity as a lesbian. Now a few decades later, I find these essays bittersweet.

The Book Commentary • March 15, 2020
Holly Valero’s story is nothing short of inspirational and uplifting, and Tales of an American Lesbian —The Best of the Straight & Narrow: 1986-1993 speaks of the magnitude of the LQBTQIA+ community’s struggles and fights for justice.

The Book Commentary • February 15, 2023