Committed to the struggle for civil rights, in the late 1950s Joan Steinau marched and protested as a white ally and young woman coming to terms with her own racism. She fell in love and married a fellow activist, the Black writer Julius Lester, establishing a partnership that was long and multifaceted but not free of the politics of race and gender. As the women’s movement dawned, feminism helped Lester find her voice, her pansexuality, and the courage to be herself.

Braiding intellectual, personal, and political history, Lester tells the story of a writer and activist fighting for love and justice before, during, and after the Supreme Court’s 1967 decision striking down bans on interracial marriage in Loving v. Virginia. She describes her own shifts in consciousness, from an activist climbing police barricades by day and reading and writing late into the night to a woman navigating the coming-out process in midlife, before finding the publishing success she had dreamed of. Speaking candidly about every facet of her life, Lester illuminates her journey to fulfillment and healing.

PUBLISHER AND ACCOLADES

University of Wisconsin Press, May 2021

• 2022 PEN Oakland – Josephine Miles Literary Award
• 2022 Northern California Book Award Finalist
• Winner silver medal of Story Circle Sarton Women’s Book Award in Memoir
• Winner of Montaigne Medal for the Eric Hoffer Awards
• Finalist for Foreword Indies

“This book is the real deal, the way it was. A good book for folks to grow on. I love it! Bravo!”
—Alice Walker, Pulitzer Prize–winning author of The Color Purple

“[A] fascinating, beautifully written memoir . . .”
—NY Journal of Books

“This memoir, written with a skilled, wholly human hand, is as intensely personal as it is universal.”
—Katie Hafner, author of The Boys

“This intimate, brave memoir is also one that many women will recognize as their own: a lifetime spent trying to heal others and the world, only to discover one must start with oneself.”
—Robin Morgan, editor of Sisterhood Is Powerful

“Exceptional. It is a real challenge to write a memoir that is intellectually deep, psychologically sophisticated, and politically principled that is also engaging, accessible, funny, and tender. Loving before Loving certainly is all that. What a remarkable ride.”
—Becky Thompson, author of A Promise and a Way of Life

“[Lester] gives us riveting observations of turbulent political times seen through the lens of her own history, yielding a frank look at her journey to fulfillment.”
—Diablo Magazine

“An engaging and inspiring narrative!”
—Beverly Daniel Tatum

“A compelling journey about a life worth telling, Lester allows us to go with her through her eventful life with unmitigated candor about her failures and exuberant joy in her successes.”
—Eleanor Holmes Norton

“Lester’s story will be an inspiration to every activist and to everyone searching for a way to use their voice and words as part of the fight for justice.”
—Maxine Wolfe

“This well-told story gives us a front row seat to the events that are unfolding in the civil rights and women’s rights movements in the 1960s and ’70s. The tough choices haven’t changed—family, love, self-care, community. How do we find grace?”
—Irma Herrera, playwright and performer of Why Would I Mispronounce My Own Name?

“What a compelling read!”
—Linda Gray Sexton, author of Searching for Mercy Street: My Journey to My Mother, Anne Sexton

“Brave and compelling. Lester’s ultimate triumph felt like my own celebration, after I shared her remarkable journey through pivotal social movements and personal pain. Brava!”
—Lalita Tademy, New York Times best-selling author of Cane River

“Vividly written and profoundly moving, Lester’s journey—as wife, mother, activist—is politically insightful and prescient.”
—Blanche Wiesen Cook, author of Eleanor Roosevelt, 3 vols.

“Lester’s insightful narrative on how the persistence of violence based on race, class, and gender shapes personal as well as political life is still relevant today. It informs, inspires, and entertains.”
—Charlotte Bunch, founding director at the Center for Women’s Global Leadership, Rutgers University

“Lester’s memoir unfurls a painful and rewarding road map through a writer’s life and the social history that shaped it, revealing the peaks and valleys that made her the phenomenal writer she is today.”
—Jewelle Gomez, Lambda Literary Award–winning author of The Gilda Stories and playwright of Waiting for Giovanni

“Lester shows that the personal is political and the political is personal. Beautifully written, important history. An extraordinary book.”
—Marissa Moss, author of Amelia’s Notebook series 

“A powerful memoir. A magnificent read!”
—Ellery Washington, Pratt Institute

“Joan Lester hurled herself into life as she searched how to be a writer. Her memoir is a reminder of long meetings into the night and frightening knocks on the door, of courage shouted out at demonstrations and lovemaking across forbidden color and gender lines, of books that profoundly changed our lives.”
—Holly Near, author of Fire in the Rain, Singer in the Storm

“You will be cheering for the heroine all the way through the book.”
—Frances Dinkelspiel, New York Times best-selling author of Tangled Vines

“This book is laced with passion and anger—both personal and political—that buffets and thwarts Lester but forces her to hold tight to her dreams.”
—Elizabeth Partridge, author of National Book Award finalist Marching for Freedom