"It is the writer’s duty, pleasure and function, he said, to bring out those sparks. Feinberg once stated that like “all forms of prejudice, bigotry against transgendered people is a deadly carcinogen. We are pitted against each other in order to keep us from seeing each other as allies. Genuine bonds of solidarity can be forged between people who respect each other’s differences and are willing to fight their enemy together.” I think of the marginalized experiences some people find threatening that have always been here, will always be here. In the past, we pretended not to see them because we did not have a name for them. But art dies, art expires within the time limits of its era, if it does not keep pushing us to name those sparks."

A consideration of the book: "The novel Stone Butch Blues addresses the theme of prejudice and persecution faced by members of the LGBTQ community in Post-War America. It also expands upon the Queer theory. The protagonist of the novel, Jess Goldberg is born into a working class, traditional, Jewish American family. Although born female, Jess is never able to reconcile herself into society's definition of a proper girl."

"An essay is presented on the author's personal experiences teaching the canonical novel Stone Butch Blues, by Leslie Feinberg. The author claims that the novel answers questions of gender studies on people of all genders. She also asserts that Feinberg addresses how gender identity and gender expression are determined by external forces."

A consideration: "Novel about an American lesbian's transition to a trans man. In 1993 Leslie Feinberg (1949–2014) published hir (Feinberg preferred zie/hir pronouns) debut novel Stone Butch Blues with Firebrand Books, an independent lesbian feminist publishing house in Ithaca, New York. Prior to Stone Butch Blues, the bulk of Feinberg's writing had appeared in Communist periodicals such as Workers World and Liberation and Marxism magazine. In 1992, the year before the novel's publication, Feinberg also published a pamphlet titled Transgender Liberation, and excerpts from hir forthcoming novel appeared in The Persistent Desire, an anthology of writing on butch-femme relationships. Typed on a borrowed laptop at night after work, Stone Butch Blues extends the earlier pamphlet's focus on the history of trans and gender-nonconforming people before the emergence of a transgender movement in the 1990s."

A consideration:
"At the violet hour, when the eyes and back
Turn upward from the desk, when the human engine waits
Like a taxi throbbing waiting,
I Tiresias, though blind, throbbing between two lives,
Old man with wrinkled female breasts, can see." - T.S. Eliot, Wasteland
"In presenting the daily struggles of a working-class transgendered person, a person who fits into neither prescribed gender category, Leslie Feinberg's first novel ..."