I Am a Woman

Laura Landon walks out on her overbearing father and a life that never fit, and lands in Manhattan with a typewriter's worth of skills and a secret she can barely admit to herself. By day she works as a secretary; by night she shares an apartment with Marcie, a pretty, careless roommate whose closeness is a slow-burning torment. Then one evening Laura finds her way to a bar in Greenwich Village and meets Beebo Brinker (tall, wry, entirely unashamed) and discovers there is a world where women like her actually exist.

Published as a dime-store paperback in 1959, Ann Bannon's novel became a lifeline passed hand to hand, one of the founding books of lesbian literature. It still reads with startling immediacy: funny, aching, and honest about desire at a time when honesty carried real risk. A pulp classic that turned out to be the real thing.

At roughly 76,900 words, I Am a Woman runs about 8½ hours at 1x narration speed. That figure is an estimate based on a typical narration pace. The exact length depends on the voice and the playback speed you choose.

The edition linked here is available from Project Gutenberg under its US public-domain listing. Check the edition, translation, completeness and copyright rules where you live. LoudReader lets you browse and download Gutenberg books; they are not all stored on installation. To listen:

1. Install LoudReader on iPhone or iPad, or its iPad app on a compatible Apple Silicon Mac.
2. Search for “I Am a Woman” in the built-in catalog and add it to your library.
3. Press play. A natural offline voice reads the book while each word highlights on screen, and your place is saved between sessions.

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