Michelle Cliff
Michelle Cliff | |
---|---|
Born | 2 November 1946 ![]() Kingston, Jamaica |
Died | 12 June 2016 ![]() |
Nationality | American |
Alma mater | |
Occupation | Writer ![]() |
Works | Abeng (1985); No Telephone to Heaven (1987); Free Enterprise (2004) |
Michelle Carla Cliff (2 November 1946 – 12 June 2016) was a Jamaican-American author whose notable works included Abeng (1985), No Telephone to Heaven (1987), and Free Enterprise (2004).
Cliff also wrote short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs. A historical revisionist, many of Cliff's works sought to advance an alternative view of history against the established mainstream narrative. Cliff was a lesbian who was born in British Jamaica.
Biography
Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later.[1] She moved back to Jamaica in 1956 and attended St. Andrew High School for Girls, where she kept a diary and began her writings before returning to New York City in 1960.[2] She was educated at Wagner College and the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic positions at several colleges including Trinity College and Emory University.
Cliff was a contributor to the 1983 Black feminist anthology Home Girls.
From 1999 onwards, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California,[3] with her partner, poet Adrienne Rich. The two were partners from 1976; Rich died in 2012.[4]
Cliff died of liver failure on 12 June 2016.[5][6]
Works
Fiction
- 2010: Into the Interior. Novel. University of Minnesota Press
- 2009: Everything is Now: New and Collected Stories. Short stories. University Of Minnesota Press
- 2004: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant. Novel, City Lights Publishers
- 1998: The Store of a Million Items (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company). Short stories
- 1993: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant (New York: Dutton). Novel
- 1990: Bodies of Water (New York: Dutton). Short stories
- 1987: No Telephone to Heaven (New York: Dutton). Novel (sequel to Abeng)
- 1985: Abeng (New York: Penguin). Novel
Prose poetry
- 1985: The Land of Look Behind and Claiming (Firebrand Books).
- 1980: Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise (Persephone Press).
Editor
- 1982: Lillian Smith, The Winner Names the Age: A Collection of Writings (New York: Norton).
Other
- 2008: If I Could Write This in Fire. Non-fiction collection. University of Minnesota Press
- 1982: "If I Could Write This in Fire I Would Write This in Fire", in Barbara Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press).
- 1994: "History as Fiction, Fiction as History", Ploughshares, Fall 1994; 20(2-3): 196-202.
- 1990: "Object into Subject: Some Thoughts on the Work of Black Women's Artists," in Gloria Anzaldúa, ed., Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (San Francisco: Aunt Lute), pp. 271–290.
Feminism
in 1981, Cliff became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.[7]
Further reading
- Curry, Ginette. "Toubab La!": Literary Representations of Mixed-race Characters in the African Diaspora.Cambridge Scholars Pub., Newcastle, England.2007 [1].
- Cartelli, Thomas (1995), "After the Tempest: Shakespeare, Postcoloniality, and Michelle Cliff's New, New World Miranda," Contemporary Literature 36(1): 82-102.
- Edmondson, Belinda (1993), "Race, Writing, and the Politics of (Re)Writing History: An Analysis of the Novels of Michelle Cliff," Callaloo 16(1): 180-191.
- Lima, Maria Helena (1993), "Revolutionary Developments: Michelle Cliff's No Telephone to Heaven and Merle Collins's Angel," Ariel 24(1): 35-56.
- Lionnet, Francoise (1992), "Of Mangoes and Maroons: Language, History, and the Multicultural Subject of Michelle Cliff's Abeng," in Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson (eds), De/Colonizing the Subject: The Politics of Gender in Women's Autobiography, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, pp. 321–345.
- Machado Sáez, Elena (2015), "Writing the Reader: Literacy and Contradictory Pedagogies in Julia Alvarez, Michelle Cliff, and Marlon James", Market Aesthetics: The Purchase of the Past in Caribbean Diasporic Fiction, Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, ISBN 978-0-8139-3705-2.
- Raiskin, Judith (1994), "Inverts and Hybrids: Lesbian Rewritings of Sexual and Racial Identities," in Laura Doan, ed. The Lesbian Postmodern, New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 156–172.
- Raiskin, Judith (1993), "The Art of History: An Interview with Michelle Cliff," Kenyon Review 15(1): 57-71.
- Schwartz, Meryl F. (1993), "An Interview with Michelle Cliff," Contemporary Literature 34(4): 595-619.
References
- ^ Agatucci, Cora (1999). "Michelle Cliff (1946- )". In Nelson, Emmanuel S. (ed.). Contemporary African American Novelists: A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press. p. 95. ISBN 0-313-30501-3. Retrieved 30 May 2010.
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: External link in
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- ^ Diedrich, Lisa. "Michelle Cliff". Postcolonial Studies @ Emory University.
- ^ "Adrienne Rich, 1929-", a time line, credited as "Page by Chelsea Hoffman, Fall 1999", at the Drew University Women's Studies Program website.
- ^ Opal Palmer Adisa (17 June 2016), Tribute to Jamaican-American author, Michelle Cliff (11/2/1946-6/12/2016.
- ^ Grimes, William (18 June 2016). Michele (sic) Cliff, Who Wrote of Colonialism and Racism, Dies at 69, The New York Times. Retrieved 18 June 2016.
- ^ "Associates | The Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press". www.wifp.org. Retrieved 21 June 2017.
External links
- Use dmy dates from March 2012
- 1946 births
- 2016 deaths
- 20th-century American novelists
- Lesbian feminists
- Lesbian writers
- Jamaican feminists
- Jamaican women novelists
- LGBT writers from the United States
- LGBT writers from Jamaica
- African-American feminists
- American feminists
- Wagner College alumni
- Alumni of the Warburg Institute
- Trinity College (Connecticut) faculty
- Emory University faculty
- Jamaican emigrants to the United States
- American women short story writers
- American women novelists
- LGBT novelists
- African-American women writers
- 20th-century American women writers
- African-American short story writers
- Deaths from liver disease
- 20th-century American short story writers
- African-American novelists
- 20th-century Jamaican novelists
- 21st-century Jamaican novelists
- Novelists from Connecticut
- Novelists from Georgia (U.S. state)