 Red Room Writer Profile
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Jewelle Gomez's Blog
October 27, 2009
- This Friday, October 30th, the work of Judy Grahn (and her new collection/selection from Aunt Lute Books) will be celebrated at an All Hallows' Eve Extravaganza. If we went on just the titles of her poems and stories alone we'd want to show up! Mention "A Woman is Talking to Death" or "The Psychoanalysis of Edward the Dyke" and I'm there. But her substance is more than ...
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October 7, 2009
- Few moments stand out so clearly in my mind as the moment I saved the life of my best friend and most favourite poet, Cheryl Clarke. We used to live together in the good old days and were like two peas in a pod except she got up really early and I did not.She'd get ready for work at what felt, to me, like dawn as I tried to rouse myself to enough coherence to say "Have a good ...
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September 29, 2009
- The ability to speak; the right to speak; the skill of articulating what we care about; civil rights; human rights; discovery of new ideas; fresh ways of looking at a problem; solutions to problems; human contact; value for the lives of others; respect for ourselves; ability to curb violence; chance to teach our young an anti-violence way of being; honesty; the past century of human rights ...
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August 27, 2009
- ...everything would be just fine by now. It's the one year anniversary of Del's passing. She was one of the foremost activists in the lesbian feminist movement and she finally married (twice) her partner, Phyllis Lyon, after 52 years, before conservatives stole our rights back. Her book written with Phyllis, "Lesbian Woman" saved the lives and shaped the politics of an entire ...
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August 19, 2009
- I don't know if it's being a Bostonian or being a Virgo but sometimes I forget the sex. Not in my personal life (my spouse is happy to report) but in writing. At the Q & A session after a campus reading I did some years ago one of the students said they were surprised there was no sex in my novel. I guess because it was a vampire novel or maybe because the primary characters are ...
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July 29, 2009
- Since my first novel, THE GILDA STORIES, was published in 1991 I have had amazing success with it. The book remains in print and is used in a number of different types of college classes especially fantasy lit. It still has a great fan following among vampire enthusiasts and it doesn't hurt that the TV series, "True Blood," is spawning new ones every week!One thing I regret about ...
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July 22, 2009
- The Annual AfroSolo Arts Festival will do a public reading of my new play, "Waiting for Giovanni," at the African American Arts and Culture Center, (August 8th, 762 Fulton Street, San Francisco, 3 PM). It's free and the lovely intimate theatre seats a nice number of people...enough to create a real theatre experience but small enough to facilitate post-reading discussion.The ...
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June 8, 2009
- I/Porn I'm a period piece junkie. I watched all the episodes of the recent PBS adaptation of Charles Dickens' "Little Dorrit" and was riveted. When Nicholas Nickelby was on Broadway I sat through both sections, totally 7 hours, in one day and came out smiling. AND watched it on TV. Dickens is able to create a kaleidescope of quirky characters in that soap opera way but with enough class ...
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May 29, 2009
- The Civic Center Plaza here in San Francisco was bristling with energy when we waited on the steps of the Supreme Court on Tuesday to hear what the Justices had to say about Proposition 8. They ultimately let it and it's anti-equal marriage change to our constitution stand although in a wierd turn the Court validated the 18,000 marriages that had taken place...mine included. Now we have ...
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April 20, 2009
- National Poetry Month always makes me happy. So many poets...so few days in the month! I'll mention just a couple of finds:Aaron Shurin teaches at University of San Francisco and used to teach at San Francisco State, which is where we met in the mid-90s. His sparkling eyes are a hint at his major intelligence. He's written a number of collections of poetry since 1993 as well as two ...
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March 26, 2009
- I don't write as much poetry as I used to....except for writing my play about James Baldwin right now. But I always go back to it. The following poem was written for songwriter/poet Janis Ian and I dedicate it here to two other songwriter/poets: Ferron and Joan Armatrading.Lyrics There is an edge your voice drops over//becoming sand infinite particles distinct//and indistinguishable moving ...
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February 26, 2009
- So we made it into the New Era! Or some of us have. But how do we tell when something's funny and something's not funny? I've just finished a novel...I hope a comic novel...about survivors of the Black activist days of the 1960s. I wanted to remember all the brilliant work we did but also laugh at how silly we all were sometimes. That's a delicate balance in writing. I applaud the ...
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December 3, 2008
- I feel incredibly insulted! After four years of court and a triumph with the Supreme Court the citizens of California lost their minds. Okay only about half of them lost their minds and decided they had the right to take away my civil right to marry my partner. We were only married for four days before the slap in the face came. But I don't feel depressed. Angry and insulted though. ...
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October 17, 2008
- When I was a colored Catholic (budding lesbian) kid in Boston in the 60s I thought like many teens, I was the only one who felt alone and full of anxiety. Then I started listening to night time radio. I had a little transistor I snuggled up with and fell asleep to the voice of Dick Summer who played an eclectic selection of music and told stories and asked questions about life and the world ...
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October 15, 2008
- This is the real poetry of my life and unless we defeat Prop 8 at the polls when we elect Barack my marriage will be invalidated:Justice Ronald George, Chief JusticeCalifornia State Supreme Court “[W]e conclude that, under this state’s Constitution, the constitutionallybased right to marry properly must beunderstood to encompass the core set of basic substantive legal rights and attributes ...
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