Rubyfruit Jungle

No one remembers her beginnings. Mothers and aunts tell us about infancy and early childhood, hoping we won't forget the past when they had total control over our lives and secretly praying that because of it, we'll include them in our future.

I didn't know anything about my own beginnings until I was seven years old, living in Coffee Hollow, a rural dot outside of York, Pennsylvania. A dirt road connected tarpapered houses filled with smear-faced kids and the air was always thick with the smell of coffee beans freshly ground in the small shop that gave the place its name. One of those smear-faced kids was Brockhurst Detwiler, Broccoli for short. It was through him that I learned I was a bastard. Broccoli didn't know I was a bastard but he and I struck a bargain that cost me my ignorance.

One crisp September day Broccoli and I were on our way home from Violet Hill Elementary School.

"Hey, Molly, I gotta take a leak, wanna see me?.

"Sure, Broc."

He stepped behind the bushes and pulled down his zipper with a flourish.

"Broccoli, what's all that skin hanging around your dick?"

"My mom says I haven't had it cut up yet."

"Whaddaya mean, cut up?"

"She says that some people get this operation and the skin comes off and it has somethin' to do with Jesus."

"Well, I'm glad no one's gonna cut up on me."

"That's what you think. My Aunt Louise got her tit cut off."

"I ain't got tits."

"You will. You'll get big floppy ones just like my mom. They hang down below her waist and wobble when she walks."

"Not me, I ain't gonna look like that."

"Oh yes you are. All girls look like that."

"You shut up or I'll knock your lips down your throat, Broccoli Detwiler."

"I'll shut up if you don't tel1 anyone I showed you my thing."

"What's there to tell? All you got is a wad of pink wrinkles hangin' around it. It's ugly."

"It is not ugly."

"Ha. It looks awful. You think it's not ugly because it's yours. No one else has a dick like that.

Rita Mae Brown is the bestselling author of the Sneaky Pie Brown series; the Sister Jane series; A Nose for Justice and Murder Unleashed; Rubyfruit Jungle; In Her Day; and Six of One, as well as several other novels. An Emmy-nominated screenwriter and a poet, Brown lives in Afton, Virginia.

The rare work of fiction that has changed real life . . . Because its heroine dares to be her unique and spirited self, despite society s biases about class and sexuality, Rubyfruit Jungle has helped generations of readers to do the same. If you don t yet know Molly Bolt or Rita Mae Brown, who created her I urge you to read and thank them both. Gloria Steinem
 
Groundbreaking. The New York Times
 
Powerful . . . a truly incredible book . . . I found myself laughing hysterically, then sobbing uncontrollably just moments later. The Boston Globe
 
You can t fully know or enjoy how much the world has changed without reading this truly wonderful book. Andrew Tobias, author of The Best Little Boy in the World
 
A crass and hilarious slice of growing up different, as fun to read today as it was in 1973. The Rumpus
 
Molly Bolt is a genuine descendant genuine female descendant of Huckleberry Finn. And Rita Mae Brown is, like Mark Twain, a serious writer who gets her messages across through laughter. Donna E. Shalala

A trailblazing literary coup at publication . . . It was the right book at the right time. Lee Lynch, author of Beggar of Love