Jewelle Gomez

File:Jewelle.jpg

Jewelle Gomez (born 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American author, poet, critic and playwright.

Background

Gomez was raised by her great grandmother, Grace, who was born on Indian land in Iowa to an African American mother and Ioway father. Grace returned to New England before she was fourteen when her father died and was married to John E. Morandus, a Wampanoag and descendent of Massasoit, the sachem for whom Massachusetts was named.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s she was shaped socially and politically by the close family ties with her great grandmother, Grace and grandmother Lydia. Their history of independence as well as marginalization in an African American community are referenced throughout her work. During her high school and college years Gomez was involved with Black political and social movements which is reflected in much of her writing. Subsequent years in New York City she spent in Black theatre including work with the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop and many years as a stage manager for off Broadway productions.

During this time she became involved in lesbian feminist activism and magazine publication. She was a member of the Conditions Collective, a lesbian feminist literary magazine [4]. More of Gomez's recent writing has begun to reflect her Native American (Ioway, Wampanoag) heritage. Her work often intersects and addresses multiple ethnicities as well as the ideals of lesbian/feminism and classism issues.

Writing

Gomez is the author of seven books, but is most known for the double Lambda Literary Award winning novel The Gilda Stories (Firebrand Books, 1991) [5]. This novel, which reframes the traditional vampire mythology, taking a lesbian feminist perspective, is an adventure about an escaped slave who comes of age over two hundred years. According to scholar, Elyce Rae Helford, "Each stage of Gilda's personal voyage is also a study of life as part of multiple communities, all at the margins of mainstream white middle-class America."

She also authored the theatrical adaptation of the novel Bones and Ash which in 1996 toured thirteen U.S. cities performed by the Urban Bush Women Company. The book, which remains in print, was also issued by the Quality Paperback Book Club in an edition including the play.

Her other books include Don't Explain, a collection of short fiction; 43 Septembers, a collection of personal/political essays; Oral Tradition, poems collected and new.

Her fiction and poetry is included in over one hundred anthologies including the first anthology of Black speculative fiction, "Dark Matter: A Century of African American Speculative Fiction," from Warner Books, edited by Sheree R. Thomas; Home Girls: a Black feminist Anthology from Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and Best American Poetry of 2001 edited by Robert Haas.

Gomez has written literary and film criticism for numerous publications including The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine and Black Scholar.

She's been interviewed in periodicals and journals over the past twenty-five years including a September 1993 Advocate article where writer Victoria Brownworth discussed her writing origins and political interests. In the Journal of Lesbian Studies (Vol. 5, #3) she was interviewed for an article entitled "Funding Lesbian Activism," which linked her career in philanthropy with her political roots. She's also interviewed in the 1999 film produced for Public Television, After Stonewall, directed by John Scagliotti.

Her newest work includes a forthcoming comic novel, Televised, recounting the lives of survivors of the Black Nationalist movement and was excerpted in the anthology Gumbo. edited by Marita Golden and E. Lyn Harris.

She is also authoring a play about James Baldwin being written in collaboration with Harry Waters Jr, an actor and professor in the theatre department at MacAlester College. Readings have been held in San Francisco at Intersection for the Arts at a seminar on Baldwin at Carleton College in Northfield, MN, at the Yellow Springs Writers Workshop in Ohio, AfroSolo Festival [6] and the 2009 National Black Theatre Festival [7]. Gomez and Waters were interviewed on the public radio program "Fresh Fruit," (KFAI-FM) by host Dixie Trechel in 2008. The segment also includes two short readings from the script.

Activism

Gomez was on the original staff "Say Brother," one of the first weekly Black television shows (WGBH-TV Boston, 1968), and was on the founding board of the Gay and Lesbian Alliance Against Defamation (GLAAD) in 1984.

She also served on the early boards of the Astraea Lesbian Foundation and the Open Meadows Foundation, both devoted to funding women's organizations and activities. She's been a member of the board of the Cornell University Human Sexuality Archives and the advisory board of the James Hormel LGBT Center of the main San Francisco Public Library. She was a member of the loose-knit philanthropic collective founded in San Francisco in 1998 called 100 Lesbians and Our Friends. The group, co-founded by Andrea Gillespie and Diane Sabin, was designed to educate lesbians who were culturally miseducated--as women--about the use of money and benefits of philanthropy. The philosophy of making "stretch gifts" (not reducing contributions already being made) to lesbian groups and projects raised more than $200,000 in two years.

She was a commencement speaker at the University of California at Los Angeles Queer Commencement and acted as host or key note speaker for Gay Pride in New York City and San Francisco.

She and her partner, Diane Sabin, are among the litigants against the state of California suing for the right to legal marriage. The case is being brought to the courts by the City Attorney of San Francisco, the National Center for Lesbian Rights and the American Civil Liberties Union. She has written extensively about gay rights since the 1980s, including articles on equal marriage in Ms. Magazine and has been quoted extensively during the court case. In May 2008 the Supreme Court ruled in favor of the litigants, allowing marriage between same-sex couples in the state of California. Such ceremonies may legally begin after thirty days, which allow municipalities to make administrative changes. They were among 18,000 couples married in California before the anti-equal marriage proposition (Prop 8) came before the California voters and was passed by a narrow margin on November 4, 2008.

Professional

Formerly the executive director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University, she has also had a long career in philanthropy. She was the director of Cultural Equity Grants at the San Francisco Arts Commission and the director of the Literature Program for the New York State Council on the Arts.

She has presented lectures and taught at numerous institutions of higher learning including San Francisco State University, Hunter College, Rutgers University, New College of California, Grinnell College, San Diego City College, The Ohio State University and the University of Washington (Seattle). She is the former director of the Literature Program at the New York State Council on the Arts and of Cultural Equity Grants at the San Francisco Arts Commission. She also served as executive director of the Poetry Center and American Poetry Archives at San Francisco State University.

She is currently employed as Director of Grants and Community Initiatives for Horizons Foundation, the oldest lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender foundation in the US. She serves as the President of the San Francisco Public Library Commission.

Selected Bibliography

• Don't explain: Short Fiction (1998)
• Swords of the Rainbow (1996, edited with Eric Garber)
• Oral Tradition: Selected Poems Old and New (1995)
• Forty-Three Septembers (1993)
• The Gilda Stories: A Novel (1991)
• Flamingoes and Bears (1986)
• The Lipstick Papers (1980)

External links

• Personal website
• Personal blog