Pat Parker

Pat Parker (born January 20, 1944 , † June 19, 1989 in Houston , Texas ) was an African American feminist poet .

Life

Parker grew up in a poor family as the youngest of four daughters in Third Ward in Houston, Texas. She lived in the Crossing Press neighborhood, where mostly black people lived. Her mother Marie Louise, née Anderson, worked as a domestic help, her father Ernest Nathaniel Cooks renewed car tires. When Parker was four, the family moved to Sunnyside, Houston, Texas. At the age of 17, Parker moved to Los Angeles, where she completed her undergraduate degree. She graduated from San Francisco State College. In 1962 she married the playwright Ed Bullins. After four years, the couple separated. Parker described her husband as physically violent and said she was scared to death of him. Her second marriage was to the writer Robert F. Parker, but soon found out that the idea of ​​marriage didn't work for her. Parker was a lesbian from the late 1960s, and in a 1974 interview she said: "After my first relationship with a woman, I knew where I wanted to go." Parker died of breast cancer in 1989 at the age of 45. She left behind her longtime partner and two daughters.

Work and activism

Parker first performed her poems publicly in Oakland in 1963. From 1986 she read regularly to women's groups in women's bookshops, cafes and at feminist events. In 1972 she published her first collection of poems entitled Child of Myself . In 1972 she joined the Women's Press Collective , which re-published her first work and also brought out her second book, Pit Stop , in 1973 . Both books sold so well that they had to be reprinted.

In 1976 Pat Parker and Judy Grahn recorded the spoken word album Where would I Be Without You? For the feminist label Olivia Records . on. In 1978 Pat Parker's poetry collection Movement in Black was published . In 1985 she published her last volume of poetry, called Jonestown & Other Madness .

Parker's poems are mostly of a narrative character and, with their question and answer structure, tie in with oral traditions of the working class and blacks in the USA. In an interview, Parker said she wanted to bring lyric and spoken language together to create something moving and powerful. In terms of content, Parker's texts deal with civil rights, the Vietnam War and lesbian lust and love. Again and again, her texts urge whites and men to question their own privileges .

Her fellow poet and friend Judy Grahn described Pat Parker as "the leading voice and spokeswoman for the ongoing tradition of black poetry". Her literature is designed in such a way that it points out both the black community and women to their precarious position as non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual in a racist , misogynistic , homophobic and imperialist culture. Clare said Parker illustrates the black lesbian-feminist perspective on love between women under circumstances that prevent intimacy and liberation.

In 1969 Pat Parker met the writer Audre Lorde , and until Parker's death in 1989 the women visited each other and wrote letters. Pat Parker also inspired others, for example feminist lesbian blues singer Nedra Johnson , whose song Where Will You Be? , the setting of a Pat Parker poem, is considered a kind of feminist hymn in the USA.

Parker belonged to the Black Panther movement , in 1979 she went on tour with the Varied Voices of Black Women . The group of poets and musicians also included Linda Tillery , Mary Watkins and Gwen Avery. Parker founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council (German: Revolutionärer Rat Schwarzer Frauen) and was involved in founding the Women's Press Collective . She was also an activist in gay and lesbian organizations. From 1978 to 1987 she worked as the medical coordinator at the Feminist Health Center for Women in Oakland.

Honors

The Pat Parker / Vito Russo Center Library, a library in New York , was named after Pat Parker and her fellow author Vito Russo. The "Pat Parker Place" in Chicago is a civic center named after her. The Pat Parker Poetry Award is also presented annually for non-rhyming poetry, narrative poetry, and dramatic monologues by black lesbian authors.

Publications

Books

• Child of Myself . Women's Press Collective, Oakland 1972.
• Pit stop . Women's Press Collective, Oakland 1973.
• Womanslaughter . Diana Press, Oakland 1978.
• Movement in Black: The Collected Poetry of Pat Parker, 1961–1978 . With texts from Child of Myself and Pit Stop , a foreword by Audre Lorde and an introduction by Judy Grahn. Diana Press, Oakland 1978. Expanded edition with an introduction by Cheryl Clarke: Firebrand Books, Ithaca NY 1999.
• Jonestown & Other Madness . Firebrand Books, Ithaca NY 1985.

items

Pat Parker published texts in, among others

• Plexus
• Amazon Poetry
• I never told anyone
• Home girls
• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color , edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, Women of Color Press, 1981

Non-fictional

• Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties (1993) (with Anna Livia Julian Brawn and Kathy Miriam)

Selected anthologies

• Where Would I Be Without You? The Poetry of Pat Parker and Judy Grahn. 1976 Olivia Records record
• Lesbian Concentrate. Record 1977 Olivia Records
• Revolution: It's Not Neat or Pretty or Quick. This Bridge Called My Back Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa , eds. Persephone Press, Watertown, Massachusetts 1981.

Individual evidence

1. ^ University of Minnesota, Voices from the Gaps , accessed June 4, 2014 /
2. ↑ Ms Magazine, April 9, 2012 Article National Poetry Month: "Have You Ever Tried To Hide?" , accessed June 4, 2014

literature

• Pamela Annas: A Poetry of Survival: Unnaming and Renaming in the Poetry of Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, Sylvia Plath, and Adrienne Rich . In: Colby Quarterly 18: 1, 1982, pp. 9-25.
• Gerald Barrax: Six Poets: From Poetry to Verse . In: Callaloo 26: 1, 1986, pp. 248-269.
• Lyndie Brimstone: Pat Parker: A Tribute . In: Feminist Review 34: 1, 1990, pp. 4-7.
• Linda Garber: Identity Poetics: Race, Class, and the Lesbian-Feminist Roots of Queer Theory . Columbia University Press, New York 2001, ISBN 0231506724 .
• Christian McEwen (Ed.): Naming the Waves: Contemporary Lesbian Poetry. Virago, New York 1988.
• Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa: This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color. Women of Color Press, New York 1981.
• Booklist. March 15, 1999, p. 1279.
• Conditions: Six. 1980, p. 217.
• Library Journal. July 1985, p. 77.
• Margins. Volume 23, 1987, pp. 60-61.
• Women's Review of Books. April 1986, pp. 17-19.
• Virginia Blain, Patricia Clements and Isobel Grundy: The Feminist Companion to Literature in English: Women Writers from the Middle Ages to the Present. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut 1990, p. 833.
• Adrian Oktenberg: In Women's Review of Books. Wellesley, Massachusetts, April 1986, pp. 17-19.
• Ridinger, Robert B. Marks: Pat Parker. In: Gay & Lesbian Literature. St. James Press, Detroit, Michigan 1994, pp. 289-290.