Women Authors From The United States

"the incredible Sheree Renée Thomas, who edited the groundbreaking anthology Dark Matter: 100 Years of Speculative Fiction From the African Diaspora."

"She went back and collected folklore that so many people had forgotten. So many people don't even tell their children anymore. Don't even know that we used to tell the stories. The tongue can barely even sing the songs anymore. She brought it back and she brought it back for children. That, coupled with the wonderful art that always went with her work . . .When I think back on my childhood book collection, there were very few books that reflected me. Very few with black children, or black anyone. And the few that I had were by Virginia Hamilton . . . and I feel that she touched many lives and did it so beautifully. Such a brilliant storyteller and writer. I mean, it's one thing to retell someone's story, but to tell it in such a way that was uniquely hers. She's such an amazing writer and that's just the folklore. You go into her novels. The House of Dies Drear. The Planet of Junior Brown. Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush. Just really amazing. And who knew that she wrote a traditional science fiction trilogy?"

"Dark matter as a metaphor offers us an interesting way of examining blacks and science fiction. The metaphor can be applied to a discussion of the individual writers as black artists in society and how that identity affects their work. It can also be applied to a discussion of their influence and impact on the sf genre in general. While the "black sf as dark matter" metaphor is novel, the concept behind it is not. The metaphor is neither farfetched nor uncommon if one considers popular themes within the black literary tradition. An excellent example is Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man (1945), a novel that introduced the idea of black invisibility."

"Most of my friends who do love to read would, at the time, never consider themselves science fiction readers. They associated it with whatever they saw on television and whatever they stopped reading when they were little. And that's it. They simply thought white boys with guns, white boys with toys, lasers, or space operas, and that's it. They had no idea of all the different amazing work that's been going on for decades and decades and decades. And I thought, once they get it they're gonna love it."

"What still needs to be accomplished can be summed up by the lovely album released on my birthday last year by Solange—A Seat at the Table. How much significant, systemic progress and change can be made if you still don’t have a seat at the table? Walter Mosley was organizing around this question in the early 90s via PEN’s Open Book Committee, which I believe he founded, to help bring more people of color into the publishing industry. Why is that vital? Because different people at the table ask different questions, seek different voices, and have a different relationship to all the things we are told are “universal.” Intersectionality matters. Consider what work we wouldn’t get to read if other talented people didn’t get a seat at the table, a chance to guest edit, an opportunity to curate, to be a juror, to host, promote, celebrate, read and review, be reviewed, speak …"

"My parents were... It was in the house along with James Baldwin, and Amiri Baraka when he was LeRoi Jones. All of that was in the house. It was like my play land. And I'd like to say, they are like regular working class people who contribute to the bottom line. They didn't necessarily show up at the writers' conventions, or stand up at readings, but they bought books and read them regularly. In fact, that's how I learned about Tolkien. It was in the house. There were books everywhere and, of course, LPs [long-playing records] everywhere."

"One of my favorite poets is Lucille Clifton, author of a good number of fine books, including Blessing the Boats, Quilting, and Two-Headed Woman."

"Good stuff is always being published. We want more “good stuff” and mo’ different good stuff, thank you! Work that reflects other lenses, other values, other world views in addition to the other good stuff that is traditionally published. I couldn’t say if there is a specific number in mind, but there is certainly a lot of encouraging, exciting work being created and shared today in a number of mediums, enough to see the flourishing of multiple communities of speculative writers and artists around the country and around the world. What an amazing, gratifying thing it is to be able to reach for whole volumes of South Asian steampunk, a novel imagining Belgian steampunk, African or Cuban science fiction, or whole volumes of any number of other fascinating bodies of work that might not have been visible two decades ago. If the increasing scholarship and number of Afrofuturism classes are a sign, and the festivals and conferences are a symbol, then new ground is being explored within and beyond the academy and the publishing industry. And that’s progress!"

"I never quite know how to answer this question. I started working on Dark Matter in 1998, sold it in 1999, and it was published in 2000. We’re still having the same conversations about the paucity of diversity in the publishing industry that we were having then—except then, people could identify only a handful of black writers actively writing and publishing in the genre. Samuel R. Delany and Nalo Hopkinson spoke about waiting to see that “critical mass” and the inevitable backlash from that."

"I remembered being so amazed by Greg Bear's stories from when my parents subscribed to OMNI magazine."

"I like to write about ordinary folks in extraordinary circumstances."

"It blows your mind, right?...it's a very painful story. And he has to get through the pain with humor. And also, the way he sets up some of our heroes, the leaders at time. I mean, Madam C. J. Walker doesn't come off too well in the book. Brother Frederick Douglass doesn't do too well either. W. E. B. Dubois . . . No one is safe. Not the black characters, not the white characters. He just kind of lays it out there."

"Mainly because I am a reader first and foremost and the book that I wanted to read didn't exist at the time. I really went looking for the book and couldn't find it...what I read for pleasure was science fiction. I wanted to read more Octavia Butler; I wanted to read another Tananarive Due book; I even read a LeVar Burton novel. I don't know how to tell you how desperately I was searching."

"Is it not anti-Semitic for women to refuse to work with Israeli feminists solely because of their nationality, especially since many of these Israeli women are courageously taking stances against their government?"

"I was born in 1933 in Vienna, Austria, the year Hitler came to power; his shadow shadowed me." So Evelyn Torton Beck began the narrative of her life as a Jewish lesbian feminist at the NYU "Women's Liberation and Jewish Identity" conference...Beck described the difficulty of including Jewish themes in feminist discourse. "First, there is the fear of attack that produces a protective silence; second, is the fear of being perceived as too 'demanding: 'pushy, or 'politically incorrect. Third, and possibly more than any other factor, the fear of being excluded keeps Jewish women silent. Speaking and writing about explicitly Jewish themes (or even including them substantially) raises the worry that the work will be perceived as marginal, and therefore not as widely read and discussed." With Jews invisible and excluded, the "benign' anti-Semitism of indifference and insensitivity took over. Feminists categorized Jews with a radical "otherness" that was denied at the very moment it was created. "If Jews do not fit in, Beck worried, "it is quite likely that other groups may not fit into the conceptual framework we have constructed." Yet Beck maintained her optimism. "Across the U.S. and in many other parts of the world, Jewish lesbian-feminist communities were in the process of coming together; their very existence was exhilarating and inspired hope that by organizing around our differences, would come unity, and that our feminist projects, in all their complexity, would succeed."

"In reading Evelyn Torton Beck's lesbian anthology, Nice Jewish Girls, in the summer of 1982 I was catapulted into a maze of strong emotion and a recognition of so many of the patterns and experiences I shared with the contributors. In her introduction, Beck had written a line that brought me right to attention. Actually it was a footnote. It said: "One wonders how anyone can wholeheartedly fight the oppression of another group when, in order to do so, she finds it necessary to denigrate and deny her own oppression." In reading this I recognized much about myself."

"Probably the single most insistent theme in this book, repeated with variation and from many different angles and perspectives, directed at both non-Jewish lesbians and non-lesbian Jews, is the desire of the contributors to be "all of who we are.""

"I started this project in a spirit of optimism, rooted in my pleasure (and relief) at finally having found a sense of congruence for the pieces of my life. I have since become increasingly sobered by the ramifications of what it can mean to want to say: I am a Jewish lesbian. The truth is that it is extremely difficult to identify oneself as a Jew outside the long shadow of anti-Semitism. It is like trying to imagine what it would feel like to be a lesbian in a non-homophobic world. So this book has become the exploration of complexities, as well as a celebration of our survival."

"That virtually no reviews of these highly-praised and widely-read authors mention anti-Semitism is a symptom of how little consciousness there is of this issue. Fortunately, excellent guidelines that would help raise consciousness are available. Paul E. Grosser and Edwin G. Halperin in Anti-Semitism: The Causes and Effects of a Prejudice, include an extended discussion of how to analyze anti-Semitism in works of literature while keeping in mind the integrity and responsibility of the artist."

"Evelyn Beck for her groundbreaking work on Jewish issues in the feminist and lesbian movement, and for Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, where so much began."

"What I hope is that this book will also open a dialogue with the rabbonim. Well, maybe not the rabbonim, but with members of the Jewish community-at-large. I'd like them to shep naches from our contributions to Jewish life. I'd like to hear them say "mazel tov" instead of "oy gevald" when they see we've made a book of our own."

"In response to an upsetting confrontation between Jewish women and women of color in a New England regional Women's Studies Conference,** Cherríe Moraga (et al.) wrote in Gay Community News, "We don't have to be the same to have a movement, but we do have to be accountable for our ignorance. In the end, finally, we must refuse to give up on each other.""

"We have come to understand that white women must work on their racism with each other, that such education is not the burden of women of color."

"Why is it often difficult to see parallels? Do we resist seeing them? Need one oppression cancel out another? Would the recognition that it is not either/or but both/and be too overwhelming? What would happen if we admitted that oppressed groups can themselves be oppressive? In the face of this complexity, a few facts remain clear: oppression is never less oppressive simply because it takes a different form."

"Isn't it vital for us to make connections between oppressions? To see in what ways anti-Semitism, racism, and other forms of oppression are different and alike?"

"I had managed to rationalize my shock and dismay when I found the narrator of Ruby fruit Jungle (by Rita Mae Brown) describing the fat Jewish girl Barbara Spangenthau as someone who "always had her hand in her pants playing with herself, and worse, she stank. Until I was fifteen I thought that being Jewish meant you walked around with your hand in your pants." In 1974, as an emerging lesbian, I didn't want to admit that the movement's leading fiction writer was basing her humor on age-old anti-Semitic stereotypes. I simply couldn't afford to take it in. So I kept silent. In those early years of struggle it seemed unworthy to make a fuss. And worse-it seemed divisive. I could not yet claim my anger. I wanted too much to belong...Bertha Harris' novel lover shocked me by its reliance on Jewish stereotypes, associating Jews with violence, sex and money. Jewish physical characteristics are consistently seen as exotic and dangerous...while there are quite a number of Jewish characters in Jan Clausen's short story collection Mother, Sister, Daughter, Lover, not one of them has any positive attributes."

"Historically, Jews have been proud of our non-homogeneous thinking and our skills in seeing complexity. "Three Jews, four opinions," is a maxim quoted with pride."

"I want the radicalism of the very outrageous, very outspoken, very political lesbian-feminists, Maxine Feldman, Robin Tyler, Alix Dobkin, and Linda Shear to be recognized as part of the Jewish radical-activist tradition in Eastern Europe. As comics, Feldman and Tyler follow the tradition of Jewish storytellers and wedding jesters (who warned the brides against marriage), whose job it was to keep the community laughing and crying, revealing it to itself: “Jewish women within the movement have often been the ones to change their names. . . . My last name is obviously very Jewish. Someone once asked me why I hadn't changed my name. I said to them, "I think you better check your anti-Semitism. Why haven't you asked Meg Christian?" (Maxine Feldman)"

"I feel I was very lucky, though, because when I came out, which was in 1973, New York was just hopping. It was exploding. It was after Stonewall. Lesbians started getting organized. I belonged to a group of lesbian writers. There were four of us who decided to start Conditions magazine, for example, and before that we had a group called Di Vilde Chayas [the wild animals], which was a group that had Adrienne Rich, Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz, Gloria Greenfield, and Evelyn Beck, who did Nice Jewish Girls."

"I began to understand the limits that the dominant culture places on "otherness." You could be a Jew and people would recognize that as a religious or ethnic affiliation or you could be a lesbian and some people would recognize that as an "alternative lifestyle" or "sexual preference," but if you tried to claim both identities-publicly and politically-you were exceeding the limits of what was permitted to the marginal. You were in danger of being perceived as ridiculous and threatening."

"In Vienna in 1938, when I was five years old and Hitler came to power, visibility was not safe. Schools were closed to me, as were parks, stores, restaurants. Once I was sent to buy butter because I was blonde and did not look Jewish. Men came and took my father away."

"My family history is a series of gaps, leaving questions to mark the spaces: What happened to my father while he was gone? Who took us in after the Nazis evicted us from our apartment? How did we get by after they confiscated the small business my father had painstakingly built up over the years? How did my father get out of the camps? My parents talked about those years, selectively. And not often."

"According to Jewish Law, this book is written by people who do not exist. I assure you, it's all very logical: we're not proscribed because we don't exist. If we existed, believe me, they'd be against us."

"To be born a Jew is to be part of a unified culture that is also extremely diverse."

"One of the things that guided how I was thinking about the ending was this Alice Walker quote, where she’s talking about writing The Color Purple and about what a radical act it is to give certain characters a happier, peaceful ending. I don’t know that Libertie necessarily has a happy ending, but she has an ending in which she is in a place of strength that she wasn’t necessarily before. That was really important for me, as an artistic and political choice. As I was writing the first draft, I was also teaching the Toni Morrison novel Love. I was reading a lot of her interviews around the time that book came out, and she did this really wonderful interview with Charlie Rose. He asks her about her characters being happy and she says something like, “They know something about themselves that they didn’t know before. And so in that way, they have won.” And she said, “Winning isn’t like your character gets a fancy car at the end or a big job, or gets the girl or anything like that. Winning is, they didn’t know something about themselves before and now they understand something about themselves fundamentally at the end of the narrative. And in that way, they have ‘won.’” And then she says, sort of very playfully, as she does in her interviews, she says, “I only write about winners.” So I think about that a lot when I’m writing and thinking about what sort of choices the characters make and why you may follow a character through a story and what that might look like when you’re writing."

"I read the same five people over and over again. But it’s Toni Morrison; Toni Cade Bambara is a huge influence..."

"For many of us, unexpectedly, the experience of coming out as lesbians was a crucial step toward our coming out as Jews. The experience of being outside the bounds of society as a lesbian makes a woman more willing to acknowledge other ways in which she stands outside. It becomes increasingly harder to ignore the signals of outsiderhood. And soon one doesn't want to."

"A lot of us come to writing because we love to read books and read very widely. And if you are a Black person or a person of color or a white woman or a woman of color or a Black woman, so many of the books that you’re told to read—“You love to read, read this book”—you’re not in them. Those books could be very wonderful and formative, but I think as a creator, you have to think about, where am I actually writing to and from, and what am I going to pull from? Am I going to pull from the tradition that is not necessarily my language, but I’ve been told is the language of fiction? Or do I pull from the things that are actually around me to make stories— make meaning for myself and for the people who I want to write to?"

"One mantra of the last couple years that I’ve given myself is: we do not have time for shorthand anymore. We don’t have time to reduce things to its pithiest element. We do not have time for that because that actually sets us back so far and muddies the water so much and just messes up the actual conversation. We should be looking at works and having big, messy, and complicated discussions about them."

"Read the books that are really messy. Read the books that everybody is telling you are problematic. And actually pick a part that word. When I was teaching, the last quarter of class I had to sort of be like, “we can’t use that word to talk about books because it means absolutely nothing.”"

"I write for Black women. If others enjoy as well, I am really happy that they connect to the work. But if I were to write a piece that everyone except Black women connected to, I would feel, on some level, that I’d failed."

"Evelyn Torton Beck's Nice Jewish Girls: A Lesbian Anthology, published in April 1982, sold ten thousand copies over the next ten months and made an enormous impact on the women's community."

"The contemporary fiction I read is mostly by Black, queer, and Black and queer writers. There are some extraordinary people working right now and there are scenes in literary fiction being published that I know wouldn’t have been published five years ago. But they probably would have 45 years ago. Tommy Orange, Torrey Peters, Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah, Maisy Card are all extraordinary. Art is cyclical – it’s less about getting better, and more about looking for those books and pieces that have always done what I described above – inviting people into a conversation, always going deeper. They’re out there. They just aren’t necessarily a part of “the canon” and definitely aren’t regularly taught to others. Simone Schwarz-Bart’s The Bridge of Beyond; Michelle Cliff’s No Telephone to Heaven; Carlene Hatcher Polite’s The Flagellants are all books like this."

"For many Jews, the question of Israel is the most complex and confusing aspect of identifying as a Jew today. Israel is undoubtedly a patriarchy and theocracy hostile to women and lesbians; there are also serious problems with its foreign policy and its treatment of Palestinians. Jews of color who live in Israel experience racism, classism, and the elitism of Ashkenazi Jews. This situation becomes even more complex when we realize the strong Sephardic backing of the present Begin administration."

"The work of a fiction writer is to take narrow experiences and explore the emotional vastness that’s within them."

"The question of the silent majority, I think that the demographic that that phrase is invoking exists, but I don’t think they’ve ever been silent. I think they’ve probably been pretty loud in the chorus of what people think America can or should be. But a key part, at least in there, that demographics’ identity of the last 50 years ago, since the 70s, is this idea that they are somehow on the defensive, that they’re somehow oppressed, which is super interesting. I think if there’s anything that is different about white supremacy in this moment than it has been in the past in American culture is that it’s very much invested in the idea of whiteness as victimhood and less sort of whiteness under attack, which are two slightly different things. The older version of white supremacy is whiteness under attack, but always triumphant. And this version is very much whiteness as a marginalized identity, somehow, in this country."

"I said, “The term white backlash frames those actions as inevitable and natural, as if order is being restored after Black liberation goes ‘too far.’ And while I agree that white backlash inevitably follows Black freedoms, I do not think there’s anything natural or blameless about it. What if the conversation instead was framed as ‘There’s something in the construction of whiteness that demands violent supremacy, when even the glimmer of another way of being comes through, and why is that?’“ So, I thought a lot about how I was taught about white backlash in history class growing up. I don’t even think we were allowed to attach the word “white” to it. I think it was just sort of like backlash in general. It’s often framed as sort of, “Well, what do you expect people to do? Like, this is sort of like a bridge too far.” And even for myself, I think I’ve internalized that."

"We’re going on like year 250 of this argument that doesn’t seem to be true. A statistic that really struck me that I read a few years back was that the Obama administration is the only administration in like the last 40 years, I think, that didn’t have any felony convictions come out of anybody working in that administration. Unfortunately, that is a remarkable fact of American political life. So, even with a presidency, and Obama I’m not suggesting was like a wonderful, blameless president and did everything correct, but within the letter of the law, he sure did apparently. So, even in that instance of the Obamas so carefully curating their public persona and public approach for a white audience, for a white middle-class swing voter audience, and really catering to that audience in their policy, and general stance—even in that case of like the best “Good Negro” we could ever produce resulted in Trump. I just really want to push back on this idea that white backlash is somehow something that can be satiated or stopped in any sort of way, and that it’s more a function of the social construct of whiteness and what’s within that."

"The whole nature of how ppl respond to this coup would change if ppl, knew the full history of Reconstruction--and learned it as "white identity based mobs regularly overturned elections whenever a Black person or someone perceived as a Black ally was elected"

"Behind her, on the wooden bookshelves, are birch bark baskets and sewn boxes, mukluks, and books by the environmentalist Winona LaDuke and Leslie Marmon Silko"