Cheryl Clarke
″I am a mannish dyke, muff diver, bull dagger, butch, feminist, femme, and PROUD,″ says Cheryl Clarke, quoting a poster she saw at the 1991 Lesbian and Gay Studies Conference at Rutgers University. The distinguished writer and educator, now retired after 41 years in Rutgers´ administration, is a prolific author of poetry and critical studies from a black lesbian perspective. Clarke cites her groundbreaking essays, ″Lesbianism: an act of resistance″ in This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (1982), and ″The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community″ in Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1984) as her favorite achievements. ″One of the happiest moments of my writing life was when After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement was published in 2005. I felt I had made a contribution to Afro-American critical writing,″ Clarke tells GO. The author of four books of poetry and multiple critical essays, and a former board member of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation for Justice, Clarke continues to nurture and inspire the next generation of African-American lesbian thinkers. In 2013, Clarke also received the Kessler Award for service to the LGBT queer communities from the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies at CUNY. What advice does she offer to our community today? ″I say, avoid thinking that the liberal mainstream is enough.″ -KL
What Do You Think?