Lesser Known Queer Literary Icons

With censorship and bans ping-ponging throughout the U.S. at a horrifying charge, queer individuals can’t simply do their jobs and stay their lives. There is not any sitting on the sidelines for us, as an alternative, we now have to be activists in a eternally battle for our rights. This was additionally true of our historic figures, lots of whom needed to announce their queerness amidst much more poisonous environments than that of our present trashfire state of affairs. In the case of queer literary icons, they didn’t simply write or publish, but additionally hustled to get their work learn in a world attempting to silence them.

I’ve studied LGBTQ+ historical past and popular culture for many of my grownup life, so I selected 4 individuals whose names hadn’t turned up within the 20 years I’ve been consuming all method of homosexual media. Again, it doesn’t imply they aren’t well-known figures in their very own proper, every of them are, however in some way they’ve snuck underneath the radar of mainstream queer historical past. It was solely a yr in the past that I found Nobuko Yoshiya and, although she is definitely very well-known in Japan the place there’s a museum devoted to her, she didn’t have the breakthrough fame of different authors who populate our LGBTQ+ literary canon.

Truly, studying solely not too long ago about many of those queer literary icons makes me query how English and Creative Writing is taught — why did individuals have me studying Joyce and Hemmingway for the forty third time however not a single work by any of the individuals listed beneath? My queer-story-obsessed self didn’t find out about them till I used to be actively searching for LGBTQ+ literary figures whose names I didn’t acknowledge. That is nuts, however I’m glad that I lastly have discovered them and may now share them with you.

Al-Hakam II

Al-Hakam II is the one non-author on this listing. The second Arab Caliph of Córdoba, featured in Sarah Prager’s Rainbow Revolutionaries: 50 LGBTQ+ People Who Made History, was behind the development of an important and really grand library. He additionally led Al-Andalus, the Muslim-ruled a part of the Iberian Peninsula, and efficiently made peace with the Catholic kingdoms of northern Iberia. His reign started when he was 46 and lasted a brief interval of solely 16 years from 961-976.

Born in 915 to Abd-ar-Rahman III and Murja, that’s mainly the extent of what’s recognized about his formative years. He oversaw the development of many lovely buildings, together with an infinite library. His library might need contained greater than 400,000 books (unconfirmed, however , ballpark quantity). He additionally was liable for an enormous translation of written works, from Latin and Greek into Arabic, and his massive ol’ library employed a ton of individuals.

Apparently, there have been rumours that he had an all-male harem. Problematic, after all, if you end up finally anticipated to have an inheritor. Ultimately, he gave in and married — the story goes that Al-Hakam married a concubine named Subh, however then nicknamed her Jafar, a masculine title. Also, Subh is alleged to have worn brief hair and male-styled pants and, whereas some individuals counsel that she did this to be taken severely by the largely male courtroom, I give that some very skeptical side-eye.

Alain Locke

Education and Activism

Born on September 13, 1885, Alain (née Arthur) Leroy Locke grew up in Philadelphia. According to Alain Locke: Faith and Philosophy, Locke was one in every of only a few undergraduates who attended Harvard University and he was the primary Black Rhodes Scholar. Despite that honour and the truth that he graduated magna cum laude, 5 Oxford schools rejected him. Hertford College finally accepted Locke, and afterward, he’d obtain an assistant professorship place in English at Howard University. At Howard, he taught race relations however then bought fired for combating for equal pay for Black school; fortunately short-lived, he was rehired a yr later by Mordecai W. Johnson, the primary Black president of the college. He remained a professor there till retiring.

Literary Historian

Alain Locke wrote largely tutorial writing from a philosophical bent, with an extended listing of books, evaluations, and articles to his title. One of his best-known works was The New Negro, a set that includes seminal essays authored by himself and different Black authors. In 2020, it was republished as Voices of the Harlem Renaissance. Though his writing was all tutorial nonfiction, he was a mentor to lots of the authors of the Harlem Renaissance.

Unfortunately, as a result of discrimination of the time, Locke didn’t stay an out life. Leonard Harris, Locke’s biographer, explains that Locke exchanged romantic letters with males however lived a really secretive existence.

While Locke doesn’t have the moment and far-reaching title recognition of Harlem Renaissance figures like Langston Hughes and Nora Zeale Hurston, his affect stays. In 2020, Dr. Ann Olivarius, a Rhodes scholar and lawyer, named Locke alongside Zambian civil-rights activist Lucy Banda-Sichone as the 2 figures who ought to exchange Oriel College’s controversial statue of Cecil Rhodes, a British imperialist.

Pat Parker

Writing Poetry

Born in Houston however finally settling within the Bay Area, Pat Parker (initially Patricia Cooks) was an American poet and activist. Much of her poetry offers with poverty and home violence, and he or she was open about her life experiences with these matters. She was married twice — as soon as to Ed Bullinsmen, a playwright and Black Panther who abused her, after which to writer Robert F. Parker. In the Sixties, she divorced Parker and got here out. Parker had two daughters and her poetry fought again in opposition to the concept that lesbians couldn’t be correct mother and father.

Unfortunately, she died far too younger at 45, however had an acclaimed profession that noticed her as an important a part of the founding of the Black Women’s Revolutionary Council and the Women’s Press Collective. She has 5 printed poetry collections: Child of Myself (1972), Pit Stop (1975), Movement in Black (1978), Womanslaughter (1978), and Jonestown & Other Madness (1985). She recorded an album, Where Would I Be Without You (1976), alongside fellow lesbian poet Judy Grahn.

Her poem “My Lover is a Woman” is completely heartbreaking, full of nuance, depth, and gorgeously vivid imagery. It’s additionally an unimaginable ode to her activism, coping with problems with civil rights, girls’s rights, and homosexual rights. In 2016, Sapphic Classics printed The Complete Works of Pat Parker (2016) — till then, her work had been out of print for 20 years. New York City’s Stonewall Inn celebrated Parker in 2019, including her to the National LGBTQ Wall of Honor as one in every of its “pioneers, trailblazers, and heroes.”

Other remaining tributes embrace Pat Parker Place, a neighborhood heart in Chicago, and The Pat Parker Poetry Award, which is awarded to Black, feminist lesbian poets.

Elana Dykewomon

Born Elana Michelle Nachman, she was born in Manhattan, however her household moved to Puerto Rico in order that her father, a lawyer, may open a apply. Her mom labored as a researcher for Life journal and later turned a librarian in Puerto Rico.

Beginning in 1987, she had a seven-year run as an editor of Sinister Wisdom, the lesbian literary which nonetheless exists to at the present time. She was additionally one of many organizers of the San Francisco Dyke March.

The writer was nonetheless publishing underneath her delivery title till the early Nineteen Eighties, after which she selected a pen title to make a pointed, political assertion: Dykewoman, finally shifting a letter to turn into Dykewomon. Dispatches From Lesbian America, a 2017 anthology of essays, had a chunk written by her that defined, “I chose ‘dyke’ for the power and ‘womon’ for the alliance,” she wrote in an essay printed in a 2017 anthology, “Though not religious, she identified strongly with her Jewish background.” An obituary in The Times of Israel quoted her as having joked, “If I had to do it all over again, I might have chosen Dykestein or Dykeberg.” Personally, I like that on many ranges.

So there you’ve it, there are at all times extra queer icons to search out out about. Interested in studying about different lesser-known queer historic figures? This put up is the place to go subsequent. Keep studying.