Latina, lesbian and a professor in Medart: an ‘outrageous’ heroine

By Mary Jane Ryals

Warning: You won’t want to put this book down once you crack open its lyrical voice, easy-to-follow satire of academic – among other rich categories you could try to slot it into. Luckily, it doesn’t fit into any, yet fits into all.

How could you not fall for a first line, “A hearse as blue as a north Florida sky purred toward Tallahassee, sun glinting off roof and hood”?

Its driver, heroine Arden Benbow, is a token twofer hired from UCLA to teach in a conservative North Florida town of Medart in the 1970s. She’s a Latina poet. What the good ole boys don’t know until she’s signed her contract is that she’s also a lesbian who rides a motorcycle and arrives in town with a 6-foot-3 gay black male dancer. The small liberal arts school will soon find out that Arden will be bringing to town her partner and six kids.

What’s a hierarchical institution of higher learning to do with such a case? Simple – get rid of her.

Outrageous, written by veteran Tallahassee writer Sheila Ortiz-Taylor, this 21st-century novel of manners will make you stay up all night reading and will have you laughing out loud. Ortiz-Taylor struts her literary stuff in this, her third novel in a series of Arden Benbow adventures.

Taylor manages to show the South with an incisive yet affectionate eye. When the dean’s oh-so-Southern wife, Bobbi June, talks to Topaz Wilson (the gay male dancer) and Arden, Bobbi June is at a protocol loss, so to speak.

“You want some salt and pepper for that, Topaz honey?” Bobbi June asks. Then “Is it all right to call you by your first name, Mr. Wilson, honey?”

Yet Arden saves the day with, “Let’s not stand on ceremony, Bobbi June...And you can call me Arden. You’re the first person ever to call me Dr. Benbow, and every time you do, I think for just a minute I might be wanted in surgery.”

Taylor, just retired as Townsend Professor of English at Florida State, has four novels, a book of poems and a family memoir under her belt already. As an expert in the novel of manners, she manages to slip in many subtle references to great British writers like Austen, the Bronte sisters and others along the way.

Outrageous IS outrageous, and all Taylor’s characters have qualities that make them distinctly hilarious. The story introduces us to Dean Billy Wayne Kilgore, who believes in true-to-form academic convention, that “there seemed only enough to fight over,” and that the object of academe is “managing your career: publish, publish, publish.”

We meet Assistant Chair Bertha Michaels, probably a closet lesbian even to herself, who just wants to keep under the radar, retire, and bird watch. Then there’s Butch, the head of the work crew who will remodel the ancient mansion Arden decides to buy. In asking Arden about her lifestyle, Butch says, “They’re sayin’ down to the post office and the Unocal that you folks are . . . well, that y’all . . . are different. REAL different. If you take my meaning. Ma’am.” Arden’s response garners logic to completely and gently confuse and comfort ol’ Butch.

Does Arden lose her job? It’s a Latina lesbian poet versus a whole host of fellas who love the academic hierarchy they created. Who ought to win?

Who does – I’m not telling.

You have to pick up the book and read. But remember, you’ll be up all night laughing over the “lady boys,” Ambiguities of Space, the labyrinthine nature of human interaction in the South, Boss Granny, St. John, the paranoid head of creative writing at the school who puts his cigarettes out in pats of butter at dinner meetings with the dean and chair, the entire rugby team who Arden teaches to love poetry and so much more.

Book Info:
Outrageous
by Sheila Ortiz-Taylor
Spinsters Ink, 2006
ISBN: 1-883523-72-9