Photographed by Lukas Keapproth

The annotated bibliography of Wisconsin Book Festival Director Alison Jones Chaim.

“You think your pain and your heartbreak are unprecedented in the history of the world, but then you read. It was books that taught me that the things that tormented me most were the very things that connected me with all the people who were alive, or who had ever been alive.” — James Baldwin

The Twins at Saint Clare’s by Enid Blyton

St. Clare’s is a series of six books about a girls’ school of that name written in the early 1940s by prolific children’s author Enid Blyton. Boarding school series have long been an identifiable genre in British popular literature. Typically, protagonists break school rules for honorable reasons, but often receive severe punishments if caught.

Some of my earliest fantasies involved English boarding schools. I yearned for the life I saw in our family albums: black and white groups of clear-faced uniformed kids laughing together at ancient secrets. At my own school, I never quite fit in—until Jane let me be her friend. And then she didn’t. And then she did again. Fifth grade was a roller coaster. And lessons. Jane wrote me notes: tips about first bras, about not holding hands on the playground any more. The boys were calling us lezzies, she explained. I wonder now what I thought that meant.

A Little Demonstration of Affection by Elizabeth Winthrop

A girl at the edge of puberty from a reserved, stiff-upper-lip family feels alive for the first time, consumed by an intense wanting, and by the certainty that what she wants is wrong.

Middle school, 1979. Health class was taught by a cross between Jerry Garcia and Grizzly Adams. Having passionate feelings for another woman is entirely normal, we were assured. Many adolescent girls go through this phase. It was a phase! “Most girls who feel this way are not lesbians,” Ann Landers chimed in. No worries, then, that I was more infatuated with my first boyfriend’s stepmom than I was with the boy. My mother noticed. She asked me, “Is she some kind of lesbian?” From her tone it was clear: there was no “good” kind.

Ordinary Families (Virago Modern Classics edition) by E. Arnot Robertson

A curious if flawed example of the 1930s coming-of age story, rather more frank than other novels of its kind in dealing with family allegiances and sibling rivalry as well as a young woman’s awakening to sexuality.

By the time I admitted it to anyone else, I was 21. I told my summer boyfriend, who was sweet, supportive, and (predictably) intrigued. I returned to my final year of college, determined to date—or at least to make out with—a woman. At the tiny isolated campus I’d chosen, this was not easy. When I attended my first BGLU meeting (formerly just GLU, so, bi was … welcome?), I found myself in a room surrounded by people whom I knew by sight, and who’d known me as straight for almost four years. It was the first time I was stared at for being queer.

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

An abused woman finds self-acceptance through love with a blues singer: “She say, I love you, Miss Celie. And then she haul off and kiss me on the mouth. Um, she say, like she surprise. I kiss her back, say, um, too. Us kiss and kiss till us can’t hardly kiss no more. Then us touch each other.”

None of the girls I really wanted to kiss ever showed up at those meetings. Finally there was a woman who took pity on me for a couple of frustratingly chaste months. With her, I marched on Washington for the first time. “We’re here, we’re queer, get used to it!” But they weren’t using the word “queer” to be inclusive. It was because it rhymed with “here.” There was no circle in which one could get up and say my name is Alison and I am bisexual, where everyone would reply Welcome, Alison. The most positive response was reassurance that it would be OK to come all the way out and be a lesbian. Lots of women say they’re bi at first, I was told. That first step is scary. They understood.

Bi Any Other Name: Bisexual People Speak Out edited by Loraine Hutchins and Lani Kaahumanu

New York City, Pride 1990. Thinking that if I showed up with some queers I’d be accepted, I made myself talk to a group of dykes on the subway platform. My style might have been the butch side of femme, but I never set off anybody’s gaydar. Despite my Birkenstocks, I always felt like an imposter. I never got the right haircut. It seemed I was like a mixed-race person who could pass, and that people resented me because I could choose the other way if I wanted. Why would you want this life? Someone asked me. Why wouldn’t you? I wanted to say back. But I knew.

Is It a Choice? Answers to 300 of the Most Frequently Asked Questions about Gays and Lesbians by Eric Marcus

At my best friend’s fairytale wedding, I sat on the steps down to the tennis court and cried and cried. Was it because I despaired of ever finding a soulmate? Or because I knew I would never have a wedding like that if I were gay? Was I crying because I was queer, or because I wasn’t queer enough?

Lesbian Couples: A Guide to Creating Healthy Relationships by D. Merilee Clunis and Dorsey Green

My first real girlfriend was an ex-nun chiropractor who ultimately tossed me out of her house and threw away any belongings I’d left behind. My haircut didn’t matter. I don’t want a lover who’s bisexual, she said. She spat out the word like it tasted bad: by-SECK-shoo-ul.

Sex and Other Sacred Games: Love, Desire, Power, and Possession by Kim Chernin and Renate Stendhal

This exploration of female sexuality challenges women to invent their own roles and to live out the full range of possibilities in passion.

Over the next few years, my inept attempts to connect with a variety of female mismatches nearly convinced me I was nothing but a curious straight girl after all. Ironically, and simultaneously, I was suddenly being noticed by men. Perhaps the more I tried to be myself, the more attractive I was to others.

Sita by Kate Millett

An autobiographical exploration of the dissolution of Millett’s obsessive love affair with a female college administrator who ultimately betrays her by leaving for a man.

I did have a lovely storybook wedding, as it turns out. There was a level of dissonance, however, that crept into my life as a heterosexually married mom. I am not going to insult my past, or those who shared it with me, by saying that I was a tortured closeted lesbian. I was bi, I knew it, and I said so. And I am still bi. But I have also changed.

Married Women Who Love Women by Carren Strock

Trees drop their leaves every year. Reptiles shed their skin. Hair turns whiter by the decade. “We all change and grow, Ali,” an early girl-crush wrote in my 9th grade yearbook. One morning I woke up in a sweat and realized: “This is not a choice. This is what I dream at night. This is what I want.”

Sexual Fluidity: Understanding Women’s Love and Desire by Lisa M. Diamond

For some women, Diamond argues, love and desire are not rigidly heterosexual or homosexual but fluid, changing as women move through the stages of life.

After 25+ years of wrestling, finally I had to decide. And now it wasn’t just about me. I agonized over what it would do to my family, the people I loved the most.

It wasn’t a question of coming out. I had come out decades ago, and I’d been bi forever. But I had become invisible. Longtime friends assumed I was straight. I could see the selfishness in my desire to be recognized; the ego. And then I thought: what message am I giving the kids?

Dear John, I Love Jane: Women Write about Leaving Men for Women edited by Candace Walsh and Laura André

I pictured two conversations with my children, ten years into the future, things having gone two different ways. In the first, they say, “Our childhood was perfect until you left. After that, nothing was ever the same again.”

In the second, when I come out to them, they stare, shocked. “How could you pretend to be someone you’re not, all that time? How could you live a lie?”

And then I knew. Those were the kids I wanted to raise. Kids who expect the truth, from themselves and from those they love. Kids who would never allow themselves, or their future partners, to pretend to be anything other than who they truly are.