By Jewelle Gomez–
There is a Swahili proverb that states: “One fire brand after another keeps fire burning.” I wish I’d known that bit of wisdom years earlier when a young, African American woman told me how disappointed she was in “baby boomers” because we went all out with radical ideas and actions “for a while.” Then she asked: “Why did we just (according to her) give up, go home to have kids, and work straight jobs?” I tried to explain that many of us were still child-free and had held down jobs the entire time we were contributing to the process of changing the world.
I also told the young woman (I never got the hang of the gens: X, Millennials, Z) who was about 30, that I couldn’t go into a long answer to her question because I had to get to my meeting of Old Lesbians Organizing for Change (https://oloc.org/).
Years earlier I felt a similar frustration listening to some of the writers who’d been published by the lesbian feminist press, Firebrand Books. They complained bitterly when its founder/editor, Nancy K. Bereano decided to retire. After almost singlehandedly editing, shepherding through production, and promoting over 100 lesbian/feminist titles (including 3 of my own), Bereano removed herself from publishing in 2000; but she has yet to up her role as a community activist in Ithaca, New York, where she founded the press in 1984.
Our steps are slower but we’re still marching—it wasn’t only college students who organized for the election of Barack Obama. We’ve had treatment for glaucoma and cataracts, but still envision societal change. We’ve had surgery on our backs, feet, shoulders, colons, hearts, and just about every organ that hasn’t been removed, yet we still raise our voices and rally.
And we do continue to hoist up our progressive agenda knowing we’re carrying the banner of those movements that went before us: labor, suffragists, civil rights, anti-war. Most of us realize all the movements are connected and that change is more of a relay race than a sprint. In a relay each team member is responsible for their stretch of the track while the next runner picks up the baton (or firebrand) and keeps moving it forward.
Lesbians as well as other progressive and Queer activists were especially vocal during the struggles of the 1970s and 1980s because of the misogyny that’s so embedded in the general culture. Dismissal and denigration of women and lesbians is evidenced everywhere: on tv channels devoted to female victimhood as entertainment, in contract negotiations for female professionals, in Newsweek opinion pieces (Are you over thirty, unmarried, and childless? Shame!), in headlines (women were only 24% of news subjects or sources), and Supreme Court rulings.
The representation of lesbians is even more reprehensible. It’s like we live in Victorian times when lesbians were not just invisible but also impossible (because it wasn’t sex if a man wasn’t involved). And what was up with the disappearing Dyke March this year?
However, being known for my radical hope I end with this news: Professor Jeffrey Iovannone spearheaded the creation and installation of a plaque honoring Bereano and Firebrand Books in Ithaca. It’s the first approved, permanent commemorative honoring lesbians in the college town. Of course, the building that had housed the press is now owned by the Christian Twelve Tribes cult, which is anti-homosexual so it refused the city permission to install the plaque. The town of Ithaca—the municipality and the citizens—decided to go ahead with honoring its local hero and put it up across from the building on a city-owned piece of land in the center of the popular walkway called the Commons.
The celebration was huge; Bereano looked elegant and no nonsense as usual. And youthful relay runners seemed ready to pick up the baton. The final good news is that most of the books from the press are still available at bookstores and libraries where one firebrand after another keeps our fire burning.
Jewelle Gomez is a lesbian/feminist activist, novelist, poet, and playwright. She’s written for “The Advocate,” “Ms. Magazine,” “Black Scholar,” “The San Francisco Chronicle,” “The New York Times,” and “The Village Voice.”
Follow her on Instagram and Twitter @VampyreVamp
Leave Signs
Published on July 11, 2024
Recent Comments