Cheryl Clarke Takes us to School

Our guest today is the Black lesbian feminist writer, Cheryl Clarke. She is the author of Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1982), Living as a Lesbian (1986, reprinted in 2015), Humid Pitch (1989), Experimental Love (1993), and By My Precise Haircut (2016).  Since 1979, she has written for and edited numerous publications, including the iconic feminist anthologies, This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women of Color (Moraga and Anzaldua, eds., 1980), and Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (Smith, ed., 1982). Most recently her work appears in Mouths of Rain: An Anthology of Black Lesbian Thought (Jones, ed., 2021) Since 2013, she has been a co-organizer of the annual Hobart N. Y. Festival of Women Writers. She received her Ph.D. in English from Rutgers University. And after 41 years of service there, on the New Brunswick (N.J.) campus, she retired in 2013. This interview was recorded by Angela Denise Davis via a ZOOM online video on June 23, 2021. You can view a short clip of Dr. Clarke reading the poem she recited at the following link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZbgJhSTbR9E Visit ZAMI NOBLA online at https://www.zaminobla.org/.