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Black lesbian literature is a subgenre of lesbian literature and African American literature that focuses on the experiences of black women who identify as lesbians. The genre features poetry and fiction about black lesbian characters as well as non-fiction essays which address issues faced by black lesbians. Prominent figures within the genre include Ann Allen Shockley, Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke, and Barbara Smith.
Black lesbian literature is characterized by its central focus on black women's experiences as they are shaped by interlocking systems of oppression like racism, sexism, homophobia, and class discrimination.
Black lesbian literature emerged from the Black Feminist movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. Dissatisfied with the inability of both the feminist movement of the 1960s and the Civil Rights Movement to address the specific forms of oppression experienced by black women,[1] these writers produced critical essays and fictional works which gave voice to their experiences, using Black Feminist theories like intersectionality as tools to carry out their analysis. Through this critical analysis, black lesbian writers and activists were able to use the genre to make necessary interventions in the normative ideologies regarding race, gender, and sexuality which emerged from these larger political movements.[2]
More specifically, the genre allowed black lesbians to examine the homophobia that they encountered in nearly all of their political and community circles[citation needed]. Writer and activist Cheryl Clarke wrote essays like "The Failure to Transform: Homophobia in the Black Community"[3] and "Lesbianism: An Act of Resistance"[4] which both explore the way that white male patriarchy and white supremacy create the gendered and racialized forms of homophobia that black lesbians experience.[citation needed]
In 1977 the self-proclaimed activist group of black feminists and lesbians known as The Combahee River Collective published a statement in which they outlined their main political objectives to fight racism, sexism, homophobia, and class oppression simultaneously. Although many prominent activists were involved in the conception of the statement, the piece was drafted and finalized by Demita Frazier, Beverly Smith, and Barbara Smith.[5] Within the statement the group declared its rejection of Lesbian separatism, deeming it ineffective as a political strategy because it excludes others, namely progressive black men, from joining their cause.[6]
One of the foundational texts of the genre is Ann Allen Shockley's novel, Loving Her. Published in 1974, Loving Her is widely considered to be one of the first, if not the first, published pieces of black lesbian literature.[7] The book follows the story of Renay, a black woman who leaves her abusive marriage to a black man to enter a relationship with a white lesbian named Terry. Loving Her is considered groundbreaking for its explicit portrayal of lesbian sexuality and it paved the way for black women writers to depict lesbian relationships in their writing.[8]
Shockley followed the publication of Loving Her with two more books, The Black and White of It, a collection of short stories featuring various black lesbian protagonists, which was the first of its kind,[9] and another novel, Say Jesus and Come to Me. Other works began to arrive in the early 1980s which featured black lesbian protagonists like Alice Walker's novel The Color Purple and Audre Lorde's autobiography Zami: A New Spelling of My Name. While both novels explored the development of their characters' sexuality, they also examined the characters' experiences as black women in a sexist and white supremacist society.[citation needed] In 1983 Anita Cornwell wrote the first published collection of essays by an African-American lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America.[10]
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