This morning I was reminded of a Facebook page I put up years ago for When Butches Cry (a Goldie finalist) and forgot about. The book is the first, very beautiful edition of A Troublemaker Never Cries, published by Sapphire Books in 2017. I created the Facebook page around the time it launched.
Then I went into a years-long depressive cycle that tried to kill the writer in me until my sixty-sixth birthday when I suddenly snapped out of it. That was a year ago, a year filled with productivity and an obsessive/compulsive (yeah, I recognize it) need to push through the stages of rationality to enter the world of possibility. I’m racing through life, tearing stories from within me and throwing them on paper, writing until three in the morning, then up at nine to begin again by ten. I’ve been so busy with writing, and learning the ins and outs of self-publishing, figuring out things like marketing, distribution, social networking, website design, advertising, and salesmanship, I completely forgot this page with the evocative book cover.
I changed my FB settings the other day, then got an unexpected notice of a page ‘like’. That’s a nice surprise, so I went to look and found the page has ten thousand followers with almost as many likes. What the hell? I mean, they sure didn’t translate into book sales.
Who are these people following and liking a book no longer in print? I took a closer look.
They are young South African women, identifying as butch and femme in comments, or leaving short introductory posts. A few have shared stories of being butch and how they feel when they cry. Others are femmes who tell the butches again and again that they matter in this world. I believe many follow the page to make friend requests for private connections. It seems my forgotten page has become a meeting site for butch and femme South African lesbians.
These young women are Troublemakers with a capital T, modern day versions of the same group of girls who became the characters in my Troublemaker Series.
I don’t know the current situation for lesbians in South Africa, but I know what it was like on a small isolated island in Traf and the Troublemakers’ time. From exchanges in English and some rough translations, I find them offering each other the same type of empathic support and validation of their lifestyles and loves – all happening on my page. I built them a campfire. (IYKYK)
My little book might never be read by 10,000 people, but it’s touched 10,000 people. I couldn’t be prouder. Well, maybe a wee bit prouder if they’d each buy a copy of the book, but hey – most of them don’t realize it is a book – the title and cover were enough to gather them together because, When Butches Cry, they need their friends.
