The 1950s queer-life groundbreaker by ';a literary pioneer... [who] forever changed perceptions of same-sex love and desire' (Advocate.com). Ann Aldrich flung a provocative assertion at her readers in 1955 when she opened her landmark account of lesbian life in New York City by saying this book was the ';result of fifteen years of participation in society as a female homosexual.' After the release ofWe Walk Alone, Aldrich became both a heroine and a scapegoat in some of the period's most contentious public debates over what exactly ';lesbian culture' was. Her non-fiction pulp literally transformed the landscape overnight, and ';the effect on women was electric. From every corner of creation, they wrote wrenching letters of relief and gratitude' (Ann Bannon, author ofThe Beebo Brinker Chronicles). Part Kinsey-esque portraits of real people, part you-are-there reports on the scene in bars and offices and at clubs and house parties, We Walk Alone is revealing and compelling composite of an alienated yet amazingly self-aware communityone that Aldrich would revisit three years later in We, Too, Must Love. Today, ';these essential cultural artifacts' (UTNE Magazine), as Stephanie Foote explains in her afterword, are ';as rich and conflicted a look at the formation of lesbian urban culture as that of any contemporary queer historian.'