GLR July-August 2024

so easily. Throughout its existence, the Pagoda grappled with issues dividing many lesbian communities at the time. Lesbian separatism, a philosophy that dominated many lesbian gather ings during the 1960s, ’70s, and ’80s, remained an abiding prin ciple at the Pagoda. While male tenants were evicted in 1978 and the Pagoda remained a women-only space until a hetero sexual couple bought a cottage in 1993, questions like the place of male children, and male relatives and friends in general, dogged the community. As a result, some women withdrew, in cluding one of the founders.

tage association with its own rules. The two women who initi ated this move had explicitly political motivations, having ar rived at the Pagoda to do a racism and classism workshop and then buying four cottages. Dubbed by Norman “The Growers,” Marilyn Murphy and Irene Weiss were a power couple who brought new energy to the Goddess-centered gatherings by adding study groups, political workshops, photo exhibits, and performances. Coincidentally, in the year before their arrival, Morgana MacTeer, a founder and the spiritual leader of the com munity, began to have dreams of moving to the mountains. Soon

Norman provides a thorough record of the particulars of these and other controversies, including sadomasochism, lesbian battering, and bisexuality. She also focuses on the prob lem-solving techniques the members em ployed to work through some of these matters. Chief among these in the first ten years was the Group, a weekly Thursday

after that, she bought a cottage in Alabama and began shifting allegiances to what would later become Alapine, a women’s community in Alabama. “The Growers” sec tion of the book covers 1988 to 1995, the time of residence of Marilyn and Irene. (Norman uses first names for Pagoda resi dents throughout.)

The Pagoda was a women’s land community “where lesbians could safely share their crea ti veworkand each other’s company.”

meeting where members voiced interpersonal issues and other concerns. For those who sought community in another way, there were Sunday brunches where meat was eaten, alcohol was drunk, and politics were discussed. Both of these social mechanisms en abled Pagodans to work through some of their differences and preserve the idea of a women-only sanctuary that originally at tracted many of them. Norman describes a shift in the life of the Pagoda with the purchase of more cottages and an expansion, resulting in the formation of the North Pagoda Land Association, a separate cot

The community’s new direction resulted in a division be tween North Pagoda and Old Pagoda. This physical distinction was also ideological in that the new North Pagoda residents dis dained the original founders’ principles of feminist spirituality and therapy. Norman aptly chronicles the political challenges and failures during this period, including the failure to change the all-white constituency of the community. During the entire life of the Pagoda from 1977 to 2016, only two people of color lived there. In the penultimate section of the book, titled “The Re

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