Butch Heroes: Reinscribing the Narrative from the 15th to the 20th Century

Brief biographies and full-color paintings (modeled on Catholic holy cards) celebrate 500 years of queer, transgender, and gender nonconforming heroes you may never have heard of before. Katherina Hetzeldorfer was tried “for a crime that didn’t have a name” (same sex sexual relations) and sentenced to death by drowning in 1477. Charles aka Mary Hamilton was publicly whipped for impersonating a man in eighteenth-century England. Clara, aka “Big Ben,” was fought over by two jealous women in 1926 New York. And many more! Some stories are funny, others are tragic, all are painstakingly researched and presented here with great sensitivity and power.