queerbetweenthelines-blog

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Dear Straight People: Why you fascinated with discovering gay rappers? Gay people rap! Just like gay people ride bikes and eat tofu.

Denise Frohman, “Dear Straight People” 

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While the pre-Stonewall era was in most ways a dark time for gay rights, it was something of a golden era for gay and lesbian pulp fiction. During the post-War paperback boom, several publishing houses launched imprints devoted—however cryptically—to gay and lesbian novels. Though most of the books were little more than pornography, some—like Ann Bannon’s “Beebo Brinker” series, which is still in print after fifty years—have slowly earned critical recognition. Lesbian titles were especially popular, crossing over to a straight-male readership (some things, it seems, never change). Despite their explicit subject matter, the novels tended to include ham-fisted moral lessons about the dangers of the homosexual lifestyle; in this way, publishers could claim that the books served a public service beyond mere titillation. Savvy readers knew the truth.

Well Covered: Pulp Pride by Meredith Blake (http://www.newyorker.com/books/page-turner/well-covered-pulp-pride)

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H. D. , excerpt from “Last Winter: Section III”

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Didn’t Sappho say her guts clutched up like this? Before a face suddenly numinous, her eyes watered, knees melted. Did she lactate   again, milk brought down by a girl’s kiss?   It’s documented torrents are unloosed by such events as recently produced not the wish, but the need, to consume, in us,   one pint of Maalox, one of Kaopectate. My eyes and groin are permanently swollen,   I’m alternatingly brilliant and witless —and sleepless: bed is just a swamp to roll in.   Although I’d cream my jeans touching your breast,   sweetheart, it isn’t lust; it’s all the rest of what I want with you that scares me shitless.

Marilyn Hacker, “[Didn’t Sappho Say Her Guts Clenched Up Like This?]”

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I started writing poetry again because I became a lesbian and a feminist and because I came to see, to understand, the need for a radical, transformative change in the human world I live in. I became a poet because I became a revolutionary...

Minnie Bruce Pratt, interview excerpt quoted in “The Struggle to Write”

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I want to live the rest of my life, however long or short, with as much sweetness as I can decently manage, loving all the people I love, and doing as much as I can of the work I still have to do. I am going to write fire until it comes out of my ears, my eyes, my noseholes—everywhere. Until it's every breath I breathe. I'm going to go out like a fucking meteor!

Audre Lorde, excerpt from a journal entry collected in A Burst of Light

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Audre Lorde, Zami

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Emmanuel Xavier, “Urban Affection”

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Audre Lorde, “Age, Race, Class and Sex: Women Redefining Difference” (1980)

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Excerpt from “Two Mornings and Two Evenings: A Miracle for Breakfast” by Elizabeth Bishop

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I name myself “lesbian” because this culture oppresses, silences, and destroys lesbians, even lesbians who don’t call themselves “lesbians.” I name myself “lesbian” because I want to be visible to other black lesbians. I name myself “lesbian” because I do not subscribe to predatory/institutionalized heterosexuality. I name myself lesbian because I want to be with women (and they don’t all have to call themselves “lesbians”). I name myself “lesbian” because it is part of my vision. I name myself lesbian because being woman-identified has kept me sane. I call myself “Black,” too, because Black is my perspective, my aesthetic, my politics, my vision, my sanity.

Cheryl Clarke, “New Notes on Lesbianism in The Days of Good Looks: The Prose and Poetry of Cheryl Clarke, 1980-2005

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Excerpt from “Two Mornings and Two Evenings: Paris, 7am” by Elizabeth Bishop

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“When we speak we are afraid our words will not be heard or welcomed. But when we are silent, we are still afraid. So it is better to speak.”

—Audre Lorde

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Where language and naming are power, silence is oppression, is violence.

Adrienne Rich, “The Burning of Paper Instead of Children” in The Will to Change

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These poems they are things that I do in the dark reaching for you whoever you are and are you ready?

June Jordan, excerpt from “These Poems” in Directed By Desire: The Collected Poems of June Jordan