Point of View

In After Sappho, Schwartz employs a first-person collective narrator whose manifold voice mirrors the solidarity of the novel’s lesbian community. Throughout the novel, a generalized ‘we’ narrator discusses various characters, events, publications, and laws, contextualizing these many entries within the tradition and lineage of lesbianism. A community unfolds within the novel’s own point of view; by using a collective narrator, Schwartz suggests that the lesbians in After Sappho—as well as lesbians more generally—are linked together by a shared, though never uniform, perspective. The communal narrator thus acts as a formal manifestation of the lesbian community itself. The narrative focuses on the many ways in which lesbians, and in particular lesbian artists, support one another during times of oppression and discrimination, as well as the love that they share in moments of joy and desire. In a novel that directly explores the...