KFAI

Host: Dixie Treichel

A Celebration of Women’s History Month. I’m highlighting two iconic lesbian couples: Gertrude Stein/Alice B Toklas and Del Martin/Phyllis Lyon.
I’ll be playing Gertrude Stein (1874-1946) reading several short pieces of her work recorded in 1935, and two excerpts of interviews with Alice B. Toklas (1877-1967). In one, recorded in 1952, Toklas talks about how she met Stein and the challenge of being Stein’s proof reader, and in the other, recorded in 1963, she is reading and talking about her Hashish Fudge recipe detailed in her 1954 The Alice B. Toklas Cookbook.
Also two interview excerpts with activists Del Martin (1921-2008) and Phyllis Lyon (1924-2020) in 1978 and 1989, talking about their life, what is was like in the 1950s before gay liberation, co-founding the social group Daughters of Bilitis (Bill-E-tis) in 1955 that became the first lesbian rights group in the US, its publication The Ladder in 1956 and being infiltrated by the FBI.

Gertrude Stein
PennSound, The Speech Lab Recordings, Columbia University, 1935

Alice B. Toklas
Alice B. Toklas Oral History Excerpt 1952, Oral History Center of The Bancroft Library

Alice B. Toklas reads her recipe for hashish fudge, 1963
Open Culture

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon
The Lesbian Underground; Lesbe Friends, KPFA in 1978, American Archive of Public Broadcasting

Del Martin and Phyllis Lyon 1989
Making Gay History | LGBTQ Oral Histories from the Archive