playwright, Lorraine Hansberry

It was one of the first ‘gay’ novels I’d ever read (I was an isolated 15 year old lesbian when I found it in a stack of Black novels my father had) and it changed my world. The time was 1957; Baldwin was told it would ruin his career in literature and that Martin Luther King, Jr. would probably never invite him onto another march! But Baldwin wrote it anyway and it’s a monument to his courage, his brilliantly sensual use of language and maybe to stubbornness.

But early on I found I was writing a play with all men. It’s not a realistic play—it all takes place in Baldwin’s head as he wrestles with his demons. But who were the women in his world? Lorraine Hansberry jumped right out at me. She was a contemporary and an actual friend of his—not that I couldn’t include her if she had not been since it’s a ‘dream play.’

Hansberry was the first African American woman to have a play on Broadway, “A Raisin in the Sun” (1959). (Please see the film with Sidney Poitier, Ruby Dee and Diana Sands and burn any copies you can find of the Sean Combs travesty…or maybe just wipe him off the tape and keep Sanaa Lathan and Audra MacDonald). At 29, she was the youngest and only the 5th woman to win the New York Drama Critics Circle Award.

She was an amazing thinker and activist who, before she died, reached out to the lesbian community. She is fabled to have died at home with her long time female lover—something that we hope will be confirmed now that her private papers have been opened up for research.

Hansberry has been a personal inspiration for me as much as Baldwin has. She too was told she was ‘writing off topic’ when her next play featured white characters. It was echoed for me in the 1990s when some people told me that writing a Black Lesbian vampire novel was a bad idea!

I admire Hansberry’s ability to look at the world through a big lens, to be able to see herself in the context of all that was around her not just the narrow life being lived just in front of her. Figuring out who we are can really be aided when we can look at others and see their effort too; that’s why people go to plays after all.

Most critical discussion of “A Raisin in the Sun” focuses on the battle between the older son and his mother over how he should spend the late father’s insurance money. Critics almost uniformly underplay the daughter’s role in the piece. She’s a great stand in for Hansberry: brash, smart, independent and ambitious. She refuses to be subject to her African boyfriend’s insistence on the ‘female’ role or her brother’s dismissal of her career aspirations. Her play also raises the issue of a woman’s right to abortion along with the other ideas few were talking about any where much less on a Broadway stage.
A more intimate look at Hansberry’s life is sure to be exciting and illuminating. In the mean time her fans have subsisted on whispers and the brilliance of her writing. Putting her in my play meant I reread her work and essays about her as I constructed her dialogue. It was like getting to have long conversations with one of my heroes. Her genius did not fail.

The actress playing Lorraine, Desiree Rogers, is an amazing embodiment of Hansberry’s spirit and smarts…and she wears a sweater well! Some rewards for writing can not be predicted.

I grew up when there still was a HOLLYWOOD, like the big letters on the hill. Women and men moved there to follow a dream of film fame and either made it and became the glamorous headlines we devoured over our cornflakes or ended up waiting tables.

Some endured over the years to remind us that famous people actually have been doing things like really acting, create charitable foundations, and champion Civil Rights for years before becoming a a philanthropist was as simple as putting a DONATE button on your website.

Elizabeth Taylor was one of those glamorous, beautiful women who kept the gossip columnists busy, much like the Hiltons and Kardashians do today. But she was actually a working actor, not just a pretty face. And OH what a face and body, quite unlike the stick thin, unshapely bods of current stars. I saw her on Broadway in “The Little Foxes” and her compelling beauty radiated way up to the balcony.

In “Cat on A Hot Tin Roof” there’s a scene with Paul Newman in which she wears a white slip like nobody else. You could tell the director was trying to keep her from spilling out of it and the innocence of the white, old fashioned slip was so tasty you couldn’t keep her eyes off of her. I thought: if I weren’t a lesbian I’d be one now! And I was only 10 at the time.

She had a great sense of humour about herself which is often missing today: “I am a very committed wife. And I should be committed too – for being married so many times.” Seven marriages (Richard Burton was my favorite, of course) And we loved to watch each one! She was so scandalous the Pope chided her…now that’s almost as good as the three Oscars she won.

Before people were talking about AIDS in Hollywood Taylor said: “I don’t think President Bush is doing anything at all about Aids. In fact, I’m not sure he even knows how to spell AIDS.”

She was sensitive to the issue, I’m sure, because some of the best friends she grew up with in Hollywood (she started at 12!) were gay–Rock Hudson, Montgomery Clift, among others. So she lived out the principles behind her friendships. No matter how bizarre (Michael Jackson) or curious (Larry Fortensky) the relationship she was loyal and thoughtful.

She spoke her mind and was not bound like many others of her generation (the brilliant Marilyn Monroe comes to mind) to role fulfillment. And she was almost as witty as Oscar Wilde: “The problem with people who have no vices is that generally you can be pretty sure they’re going to have some pretty annoying virtues.”

Mostly why I’m sad is that I grew up with her iconic and outrageous behaviour and it means I’m getting old too. And she said words I can still live by:

“I call upon you to draw from the depths of your being – to prove that we are a human race, to prove that our love outweighs our need to hate, that our compassion is more compelling than our need to blame.”
Elizabeth Taylor, actor, AIDS activist, foxy femme! 1932-2011

I was watching a television special about early television shows…ok now you know one of my secrete obsessions…and it covered detective programs. Going back to Dragnet, I Spy (featuring Bill Cosby in a first), The Rockford Files, Mannix, television has always had a fascination with crime dramas. The show pointed out the dearth of female stars in these dramas by mentioning my personal favorite Honey West, which starred the late and delicious Anne Francis and interviewing the star of Police Woman, Angie Dickenson.

It was fascinating and disturbing to hear Dickenson, in a relatively recent interview, insist she wasn’t never a feminist. To put the sharp point on her statement she proclaimed she only refused to do one episode during the run of the series: she would not drive a tractor trailer truck! She said that would be too ridiculous! Her statement was shown just after a shot of her dancing on a table in a white fringed bikini!

I don’t like to go back in history and chastise people for not having political foresight. The progressive political context is hard to see when you’re deep inside of it and not focused on the ramifications of your actions. Still it felt like a betrayal.

Dickenson is not alone in that historic lack of feminist backbone. One of my most favorite women in history, Eleanor Roosevelt, refused to support the Equal Rights Amendment, http://www.equalrightsamendment.org/faq.htm which still remains un-ratified. Essentially all the amendment would basically say is that women are human beings and should be treated accordingly. It’s no wonder we haven’t gotten ENDA passed!

Years ago I used to show episodes of the more recent female detective show Cagney and Lacey, in a feminist studies class to talk about media representation of women and how female bonding is empowering. When I had the opportunity to share that with one of the show’s stars during a public event, she appeared puzzled that the show represented something so deep and complex. Fortunately she was pleased when I gave a capsule description of how she’d come to be a feminist icon. But clearly her role wasn’t as hugely liberating for her as it was for those of watching hungrily for signs of women’s empowerment.

Maybe these women already felt empowered so didn’t connect with the need of other women to find that within ourselves. Or maybe they were just forging ahead with their lives and the feminist context didn’t have resonance for them at that point in history.

Contemporary writer/icon, Alice Walker, backed away from the word feminist to coin her own term, womanist, in an effort to be inclusive of women of color. An admirable effort that I think some younger women have embraced. But it was not a rejection of the principles of feminist thought.

But so many young women still refuse to think of themselves as feminist or even see the need for feminist activism I worry about the future of our children.

Between the degradation of little girls through baby doll ‘beauty pageants’ (I think the parents should be arrested for child abuse) and the wholesale rape of women in the Congo http://www.vday.org/node/1695 and in the U.S. http://www.rainn.org/statistics and other nations, it’s difficult to tell what century we’re living in—the 21st or the 16th .

I always assume: ‘boys will be boys’ not as a way of excusing un-evolved, primitive behaviour but as a way to keep me from expecting miracles. However I do always hope that ‘girls will be women.’ That is I hope they will grow out of infantile dependence on men for approval and childish attitudes that demand they separate from other women like we all were the ones who made them go to their rooms without dessert when they were 8 years old.

I expect more from women because we are smarter. Ooops that slipped out! But we are; we have the Ginger Rogers phenomenon going for us: doing every dance move that Fred Astair is performing but doing it backwards and in high heels! Maybe like many political movements we go two steps forward and one step back.

In the meantime I’m going to keep my eyes open for media representations that make women look and feel good. And you could pick up a DVD of The Avengers and note that Diana Rigg as Emma Peel would have driven a tractor trailer rig without breaking a sweat, a manicured finger nail or her high-heeled boot!

***

I just had an amazing Chanukah dinner but it was totally not what I’d been planning. My spouse Diane and I were hosting for the first time in a while. Her youngest sister, recently divorced, came with her 13 year old daughter, as well as their mother, and middle sister. An all girl dinner for the first time and I was planning to make latkes!

I’m from Boston so anything involving a potato makes me happy. When I learned to make them I was thrilled with the annual opportunity to trot out my old family recipe…okay…not so old and not my family but it is a good recipe.

But the best laid plans…as they say. The plumber had to come in the morning for what was just going to be a quick stop to diagnose a drainage problem. He ended up working (successfully) for almost 5 hours which threw off the writing I’d planned to do (that makes me cranky) AND the grocery shopping. All I could accomplish while he snaked and who knows what all, was putting up our solstice decorations.

Slowly as the time passed I reluctantly let go of the idea of latkes. The delay was too distracting and you have to be diligent with latkes–no burning, perfect timing to keep them warm, not too greasy–especially for in-laws and when latkes is not your first language.

I considered buying some from Max’s, since I’d already made some majorly good apple sauce. But I wasn’t sure I had time to get across town and back, so I reluctantly let go of that culinary triumph. A small disappointment compared to the next one.

I put the two chickens in the oven and within 15 minutes pungent smoke filled the house! Diane was home from work before the fire alarm went off. So I turned everything off as she raced around opening windows. We discovered that massive amounts of something had dripped down—who knows when—and caked the bottom trays. We removed them to the back yard to cool since the depth of the build up was impossible to dent with a Brillo pad or a screw driver.

Diane was amazingly calm considering her family was arriving within two hours. It was easy for me–they were not the folks who raised me. While they are my family I don’t have the deep childhood history that often creates ‘holiday dinner anxiety disaster’ that afflicts most people and is the subject of a bunch of movies. (See my favorite: “Home for the Holidays” with Holly Hunter and Robert Downey Jr.) You know the disease where someone ends up throwing the gravy boat at a sibling or an aunt bitterly and drunkenly reveals a family secret.

Diane, The Cool, however, switched gears immediately; dashed to the store to buy some crabs and multi-colored pasta and we had a fabulous meal. The family was appropriately sympathetic, not judgmental (what family isn’t), pitched in and we all sat down relaxed and laughing. It was as if someone had slipped a ‘lude into our iced tea.

We had a great time and after everyone left Diane said: “Let’s have the family over again for new years.” In our 18 year history together that phrase has never been uttered!

My “NO” was resounding! No point in pushing our luck.

I just visited a campus in Nebraska and could feel the sorrow laced through the students, some the same age as Tyler Clementi. The age he was before being humiliated by the viral spread of pictures of him kissing another boy in his Rutgers dorm room; before he jumped off the George Washington Bridge.

And there were three others who took their lives, even younger. All boys. And there are probably others unreported. Young people ashamed of or afraid of being gay, preferring death to their identify.

I know that girls get bullied in person and on line. Those have been the cases we heard about most. But the female victims are usually called sluts not dykes.

It made me wonder what happens to young lesbians. We know they’re out there. Does sexism somehow make girls treat each other differently? Not necessarily better but some other ways of harrassing each other?

When I was in high school—an all girls school—one of the students made nasty cracks about my best friend suggesting she was my lover. She was. The suggestion of lesbianism was everywhere but no one ever copped to it. It was the 1960s.
I don’t know where the anger came from or the power of it. But after her sly threat all I remember is telling her she’d regret it if she ever came near either of us again.

I’m not proud about threatening a fellow student but I’m really happy that’s what I felt instead of being suicidal.
So it makes me wonder if there are young lesbians out there dying, or making some other choice? Will we hear about them? Will they survive?

We just returned from a vacation in the Southwest, a magical place that feels like it exists outside of the U.S. Of course it doesn’t really and my first realization of that was when planning our visit Canyon de Chelly. It’s the site of numerous and amazing Native American cliff-dwellings in a canyon that’s been inhabited for more than a thousand years!

But it’s in Arizona! After reading about Arizona’s horrible, discriminatory immigration policy I was determined not to spend any money in that state. I know my little expenditure doesn’t have a huge effect but it was important not to feel like I was collaborating with mean-spirited policies that target brown people. So what’s a lesbian/feminist to do?

Turned out we could make a great choice that was also comfortable. We got our gas in New Mexico, drove the 3 1/2 hours to Canyon de Chelly, stayed in the Thunderbird Lodge which is run by Navajos and located within the federal park which is on the reservation! Then we ate in the Thunderbird cafeteria w/the few other visitors and the Navajo workers…don’t miss the Navajo taco!

The ethereal beauty of the Canyon, the advanced architecture of the remaining cliff-dwellings and the resilience of the Navajo living in hogans in the canyon were inspiring. Every day there was a reminder that despite what history books would like us to believe Native Americans are alive and maintaining the original American culture which has much to teach us.

It was also a reminder that there is no social protest too small. Feeling a part of change can make change happen. Lesbian/feminists have always been right there in the frontlines for progressive change whether it was women’s right to choose (we’d already chosen!) or care for HIV patients or breast cancer.

We’ll hope for better decisions by the folks of Arizona in the future; and keep supporting Native and immigrant culture wherever we can and being out progressive dykes on the road!

Red Poppy
For Marilyn Buck, political prisoner, who passed away after serving 25 years of an 80 year sentence.

On Veterans Day neighbors wore them
on their lapels.
Pristine plastic
Blood bright flowers
to honor the fallen, mostly men
except, of course, the women
and children. Collateral to the chaos
that puffed the chests
of men.
You and I are of an age
To remember those flowers
and how their presence
made backs straighten,
drew strangers together warming
their hands over stories of
honorable death.
Never wilting, faithless blaze
of color seduced them,
made death and honor
one
When, in truth, whether in a field
or a cage
the poppy is a sign of life.
Delicate, vulnerable, capable
of bringing a smile to your face
and remind us of peaceful things.
Where have all the flowers gone?
We puzzle at our own
destructive impulse,
turning flora into instruments
of isolation when all they ask
is that we honor them
honor life wild.

I know by now a lot of people are feeling Glee-full—the coverage has begun to saturate (and I say that being a Gleek, myself).  The over top response to the weekly musical show, “Glee,” took TVland by surprise and as with everything pop culture there comes a backlash.  Critics (mostly) have already started to pick apart elements as if they first imagined it was being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

What is most unique about the show is hardly ever commented on:  “Glee” is a mainstream, (not to mention FOX) television show that actually touches on significant ideas and issues!  bullying, teen pregnancy, disability, feminism and homophobia just off the top.

AND it has TWO out queer performers…one of whom who plays a queer student and the other plays a straight woman who perversely seems queer. Chris Colfer and Jane Lynch have, in one season, changed the face of television, picking up where “Ugly Betty” (sadly) left off.  Putting queer people in a cultural context that gives them resonance beyond the laugh track or their straight gal pals.

I am still waiting for the portrayal of a lesbian I can recognize (L Word was nice but not it for me.) on television.  The show that comes closest is “Exes and Ohs” on LOGO, funny and working class.

“Glee” in the meantime keeps cranking out the big musical numbers that remind me of the best days I had in high school; it lets Chris Colfer sing the high notes and Jane Lynch dress up like Madonna.  What could be bad!

Jane looked fabulous, by the way, at the National Center for Lesbian Rights annual gala on May 1!  Totally a lesbian I recognize.

In a side gallery of the Metropolitan Museum of Art

It was like waking in an Olga Broumas poem:

Colored girl surrounded by Greek marble

and repressed desires.  Or a surprise

—stumbling into my two muses

at a cocktail party.

You hardly expect to recognize anyone you know.

Each guest is so big and famous they look different

close up and out of context of book or picture

I was angry at the warrior holding Medusa’s huge head aloft,

as if the simple dismemberment was triumph.

How ‘boy’ not to notice that she’d

turned him to stone.

Eyes closed, Medusa looked at my cast down gaze,

a subtle undulation of the snakes around that head

and the soft turn of her mouth

pointed me toward the other.

The two here together—however captured—

Unbowed, unrepentant

There, Sappho supine. Hardness made soft like the Buddha

by the craft of draping stone, by the eyes—serene, searching.

Her feet outstretch from beneath her garments;

One the size of my arm.  Not the diminutive

or dainty thing biographers describe.

That bigness comforts me. One’s muse should be

supersize to channel our fancies

and stay in our sight.

Sappho lay back a short distance from Medusa

but always in relationship, the line of communication

a laser  between them.

Sappho, a warrior firm and shapely,

one hand on her breast knowing Medusa

always watched.

***

I know by now a lot of people are feeling Glee-full—the coverage has begun to saturate (and I say that being a Gleek, myself).  The over top response to the weekly musical show, “Glee,” took TVland by surprise and as with everything pop culture there comes a backlash.  Critics (mostly) have already started to pick apart elements as if they first imagined it was being nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize.

What is most unique about the show is hardly ever commented on:  “Glee” is a mainstream, (not to mention FOX) television show that actually touches on significant ideas and issues!  bullying, teen pregnancy, disability, feminism and homophobia just off the top.

AND it has TWO out queer performers…one of whom who plays a queer student and the other plays a straight woman who perversely seems queer. Chris Colfer and Jane Lynch have, in one season, changed the face of television, picking up where “Ugly Betty” (sadly) left off.  Putting queer people in a cultural context that gives them resonance beyond the laugh track or their straight gal pals.

I am still waiting for the portrayal of a lesbian I can recognize (L Word was nice but not it for me.) on television.  The show that comes closest is “Exes and Ohs” on LOGO, funny and working class.

“Glee” in the meantime keeps cranking out the big musical numbers that remind me of the best days I had in high school; it lets Chris Colfer sing the high notes and Jane Lynch dress up like Madonna.  What could be bad!

Jane looked fabulous, by the way, at the National Center for Lesbian Rights annual gala on May 1!  Totally a lesbian I recognize.