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Red Jordan Arobateau

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This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Urve (talk | contribs) at 05:49, 16 June 2022 (add small detail - the book contains sigcov). The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

  • Comment: I firmly believe that it meets NAUTHOR, especially considering how frequently and widely his works are cited and analyzed in academic literature. Additionally, he is one of the firsts to write in those genres and more prominently so in the sub-genres. I have contributed to adding citations that help establish the preceding, so I will leave this for someone else to review. — The Most Comfortable Chair 09:09, 30 May 2022 (UTC)

Red Jordan Arobateau (November 15, 1943 – November 25, 2021) was an American author, playwright, poet, and painter. Mostly self-publishing over 80 literary works, Arobateau was one of the earliest and most prolific writers of street lit. He was a proponent of transgender and lesbian erotica, and his writings focused on themes of butch lesbians, sex work, transsexuality, drug use and social implications of those lifestyles.

Arobateau moved to San Francisco in adulthood because of its LGBTQ friendly culture, where he transitioned and became a trans man. He appeared in documentaries such as Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community (1984), and his essay was a part of Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present (1992). Although Arobateau lived in poverty for the most part, his life and works have been researched in several academic studies, and he was cited as an inspiration by writers Ann Allen Shockley and Michelle Tea.

Life

Red Jordan Arobateau was born on November 15, 1943 in Chicago. He was an only child of a Christian Honduran immigrant father and a mother of African American descent. He was raised as a female.[1] Arobateau started writing when he was 13 to escape a turbulent home life;[2] his mother was abusive towards him.[3] When he was 15, he read a pulp magazine that had a brief mention of a lesbian character — feeling seen for the first time, he began to identify as a butch lesbian.[1] Arobateau started spending time on the streets, in queer areas, lesbian and dive bars, and developed alcoholism in adolescence.[3] His parents divorced when he was 17, and he lived with his father until he was old enough to live on his own.[1]

Arobateau shifted to New York City before moving to San Francisco in 1967 — where he spent the rest of his life — largely because of its LGBTQ friendly culture. Arobateau took "Jordan" from his grandmother's last name, and "Arobateau" was based off his given surname with an "A" added to the original form, "Robateau". After he got his hair dyed red, he conceived that the color represented sensuality and eroticism of his work; thus he adopted "Red" as his first name.[2][1]

History books tell us a lot about the lives of upper-class women such as Gertie Stein and Alice B. but very little of the underprivileged lesbian factory workers, queer servants, and tranny seamstresses. There's a whole group of dikes to whom these characters, these books may appeal.

— Red Jordan Arobateau
The Lesbian Review of Books, 1996.[3]

Arobateau published his first work in the 1970s, and remained mostly self-published throughout his life.[4] He worked different jobs to fund each publication, and had experience working as an office assistant, factory worker, karate teacher, nurse's aide, cashier and cook. By and large, Arobateau lived his adult life in poverty.[1][5] Relying on the grapevine, he sold his works in off the record lesbian channels, and limited physical distribution of his copies to lesbian bars, feminist bookstores and the streets.[2] Occasionally his content was published by indie and LGBTQ publications,[4] such as On Our Backs.[6]

Arobateau's prose focused primarily on subjects such as sex work, lesbian issues, transsexuality, and drug use.[2] His stories feature butch lesbians and transgender men as they fall in love with sex workers, come out as transgender, or serve their sentences in prison. He explored the challenges of these lives as well as the joy found in them. Arobateau also wrote different volumes of poetry. The focus of his poems was largely on his spiritual beliefs.[1]

In 1982, writer Ann Allen Shockley wrote one of the earliest reviews of Arobateau's writing—she reviewed "Susie Q", a short story appearing in a collection by poet Judy Grahn as "Suzie Q".[7][8] Shockley provided a collection of biographical details of Arobateau's life in her review, including his struggles with a mixed racial identity and his religious journey.[7] Two years later, Arobateau appeared in Greta Schiller's Before Stonewall: The Making of a Gay and Lesbian Community, where they discussed his life and challenges before the Stonewall riots of 1969.[9] Arobateau's "Nobody's People" — an essay about social rejections faced by people of mixed-race heritage, including himself — was a part of Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present (1992), edited by Margaret Busby.[10] During the 1990s, he transitioned his gender, underwent a sex reassignment surgery, and began to identify as a trans man.[1] Until at least 2004, his books were not circulated in Canada due to the tight pornography laws in the country that bar the entry of "obscene material".[11]

By 2007, he had published 80 novels, plays, collection of short stories and poetry.[12] The same year, he was featured in Martin Rawlings-Fein's Clocked: An Oral History, where he gave personal anecdotes in context of the history of the transgender rights movement.[13] Tom Waddell Health Center in Tenderloin, San Francisco was the first primary care clinic in the US to offer transgender health care services; Arobateau was one of 12 patients to feature in its 2012 documentary — Transgender Tuesdays: A Clinic in the Tenderloin by Mark Freeman and Nathaniel Walters. He also presented the film at the 2012 Transgender Summit.[14][15] Arobateau was a long-time member of FTM International.[13]

Formerly an atheist, Arobateau converted to Christianity after the death of his father.[1] He lived with his partner Dalila Jasmin.[16] Arobateau died on November 25, 2021 in San Francisco at age 78.[17]

Legacy

At a time when Black, explicitly queer artistic expression was virtually invisible in the mainstream, Arobateau's work was more than just homoerotic. It challenged the heterosexual, male-centric vision of Black sexual pleasure and desire at the core of street lit's popularity, expanding the genre into otherwise off-limits realms.

— Naomi Extra
Vice, 2018.[2]

Arobateau was one of the earliest writers and proponents of street lit, transgender and lesbian erotica. A 2018 profile in Vice described his content as "writing that helped pave the way for inclusive depictions of Black sexuality".[2] For Arobateau's entry in Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States (2009), Emmanuel S. Nelson summarized that "arguably Red Jordan Arobateau is the first and probably most prolific female-to-male transsexual writer of African American descent."[1]

L. H. Stallings wrote in a CR: The New Centennial Review article that "the skill of transgressing gender and sexuality were perfected by Iceberg Slim and Red Jordan Arobateau".[18] In To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction (1995), Joanna Russ characterizes works such as Arobateau's fiction to be "a few of the marvelous things that exists outside the pale of the dominators".[19] Writers Ann Allen Shockley and Michelle Tea have mentioned Arobateau as one of their inspirations.[5][20]

Life and works of Arobateau have been analyzed and discussed in various types of academic literature pertaining to identity, social changes, and early history and evolution of those literary topics.[21][22][23]

Bibliography

Novels
  • A Blackman Is Not A Windup Doll
  • A Hillbilly Girl Is Like A Butterfly
  • A Small Retrospect Of My Art Paintings
  • Acts Against The Power Of Authority
  • Ashcan Betty
  • At An Early Age
  • Autumn Changes
  • Barrio Blues
  • Boogie Nights/Party Lights
  • Boy Center
  • Can't Go On Another Day
  • China Girl
  • Come With Me Lucy
  • Compassion
  • Daughters Of Courage
  • Dirty Picture
  • Electro Shock Doktor
  • Empire!
  • Ephemeris — The Book Of Time
  • Flash! On The Hustler
  • Fisherpeople
  • Fleamarket Molly
  • For Want Of The Horse The Rider Was Lost
  • Garbage Can Sally
  • Ho Stroll
  • Hobo Sex
  • How's Mars?
  • In The Strange Embrace Of A Prodigal
  • Jailhouse Stud
  • Journey series
  • Ladies' Axiliary Of The Left/Champagne, Firecrackers, Gunshots & The Smoke From The Death Factory
  • Lamentations In The Cool Of The Evening
  • Lay Lady Lay
  • Leader Of The Pack
  • Light At Dawn
  • Lucy & Mickey
  • Man Gone/Starvax
  • My Continuing Journey Into Artistic, Spiritual, and Revolutionary Thoughts
  • Outlaws!
  • Passage series
  • Prisoner Of Hearts
  • Saints
  • Satan's Best
  • Stage Door
  • Street Fighter
  • The Bacchanalias Society Bash
  • The Bars Across Heaven
  • The Big Change
  • The Black Biker
  • The Blood Of Christ Against The Lies of Babylon
  • The Clubfoot Ballerina/The Prima Dona
  • The Great Heart Bank Robbery
  • The Man From The Blax Galaxy
  • The Nearness Of You/Sorrow Of The Madonna
  • The Rich/The Poor In Spirit
  • To The Man With His Hat In His Hand
  • Tranny Biker
  • Vengeance!
  • Westpoint Of The Universe
  • Where The World Is No
  • White Girl
Short story collections
  • Alexander D'oro
  • Boys' Night Out
  • Doing It For The Mistress
  • Rough Trade
  • Stories From The Dance Of Life series
  • Street Of Dreams
  • Suzie–Q
Plays
  • Carnivalla
  • Daughters Of Courage
  • Higher Ground
  • How Don Juan Died
  • In The Malestrom
  • Inhabitants Of A Ghettoized Population
  • Lavandarette Of My Solitude
  • Our Dyke House
  • The Love Lament Of Peter Pan
  • The Maids
Poetry collections
  • Laughter Of The Witch
  • The Age of Om
  • The Iron Woman

See also

References

  1. ^ a b c d e f g h i Nelson, Emmanuel S. (2009). Encyclopedia of Contemporary LGBTQ Literature of the United States: M–Z. Greenwood Press. pp. 38–39. ISBN 978-0-313-34863-1.
  2. ^ a b c d e f Extra, Naomi (February 22, 2018). "The Groundbreaking Author Who Celebrated the Sex Lives of Poor, Queer People". Vice. Retrieved June 7, 2022.
  3. ^ a b c Arobateau, Red Jordan (1996). "The Real Red Jordan Arobateau". The Lesbian Review of Books. 2 (3): 3.
  4. ^ a b "Remembering Red Jordan Arobateau (1943–2021)". Nightboat Books. December 17, 2021. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  5. ^ a b Shockley, Ann Allen (Autumn 1979). "The Black Lesbian in American Literature: An Overview". Conditions: Five. Vol. 2, no. 2. pp. 133–42.
  6. ^ Leckert, Oriana (June 14, 2019). "The First Lesbian Porn and 10 Other Revealing Artifacts from Lesbian History". Vice. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  7. ^ a b Horton-Stallings, LaMonda (2015). Funk the erotic: Transaesthetics and black sexual cultures. University of Illinois Press. pp. 224–225. ISBN 9780252097683.
  8. ^ Shockley, Ann Allen (1982). "Red Jordan Arobateau: A Different Kind of Black Lesbian Writer". Sinister Wisdom. 21.
  9. ^ "Documentales y películas sobre la lucha por los derechos LGBTQ" [Documentaries and Films About the Fight for LGBTQ Rights]. CNN en Español (in Spanish). Warner Bros. Discovery. June 28, 2019. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  10. ^ Arobateau, Red Jordan (1992). "Nobody's People". In Busby, Margaret (ed.). Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present. Jonathan Cape. pp. 593–603. ISBN 978-0-224-03592-7.
  11. ^ Rowan, Cole (Spring 2004). "Tranny Biker". FTM Newsletter. No. 54. FTM International. pp. 6–7. Retrieved April 11, 2022.
  12. ^ Arobateau, Red Jordan (2007). Book Catalogue 2008 Red Jordan Arobateau. Red Jordan Press. pp. 4–7. ISBN 978-0-615-17308-5.
  13. ^ a b "FTMI Board". FTM Newsletter. No. 62. FTM International. Spring 2007. p. 5. Retrieved April 12, 2022.
  14. ^ "Why". Transgender Tuesdays. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  15. ^ "Who". Transgender Tuesdays. Retrieved June 11, 2022.
  16. ^ The Bancroft Library; University of California. "Red Jordan Arobateau Pictorial Collection Guide". Digital Transgender Archive, Northeastern University. 2009. Retrieved February 24, 2022.
  17. ^ "Memorial Set for Red Jordan Arobateau". Bay Area Reporter. March 6, 2022. Retrieved April 13, 2022.
  18. ^ Stallings, L. H. (Fall 2003). ""I'm Goin Pimp Whores!": The Goines Factor and the Theory of a Hip-Hop Neo-Slave Narrative". CR: The New Centennial Review. 3 (3): 186.
  19. ^ Russ, Joanna (1995). To Write Like a Woman: Essays in Feminism and Science Fiction. Indiana University Press. p. 65. ISBN 978-0-253-20983-2.
  20. ^ Preston, Devon (December 5, 2019). "Spilling the Tea with a Tattooed Literary Icon". Inked. Pinchazo Publishing Group. Retrieved June 8, 2022.
  21. ^ Books:
  22. ^ Journals:
  23. ^ Dissertations:

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