Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Born | May 31, 1973 Washington, D.C., U.S. |
| Nationality | American |
| Genre | Non-fiction, novel, memoir |
| Notable awards | Lambda Literary Award |
Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore (born May 31, 1973) is an American author and activist. She is the author of two memoirs and three novels, and the editor of six nonfiction anthologies.
Sycamore was born in Washington, D.C. to a Jewish family [1] and was raised in the Potomac Highlands neighborhood of Rockville, Maryland. [2] After spending a year in college at Brown University, in 1992 she moved to San Francisco where she became involved in activism with ACT UP.
Sycamore was involved in ACT UP in the early 1990s and Fed Up Queers in the late 1990s. In 1998, she was the host of the first Gay Shame event in New York, appearing with performer Penny Arcade, writer Eileen Myles, cabaret artists Kiki and Herb, and queercore band Three Dollar Bill held in Brooklyn, NY, which was captured in the documentary film entitled Gay Shame 98, by Scott Berry. She was one of the instigators of Gay Shame in San Francisco, which started in 2000 and became "a year-round direct action extravaganza dedicated to exposing all hypocrites". [3] Sycamore was involved in the cultural center Dumba, and is a leading critic of assimilationist trends in gay culture. [4] [5] [6]
Sycamore's first anthology, Tricks and Treats: Sex Workers Write About Their Clients, was published by Haworth Press in 2000. Her first novel, Pulling Taffy, was published by Suspect Thoughts Press in 2003. Her second anthology, Dangerous Families: Queer Writing on Surviving, was published by Haworth Press in 2004. Her third anthology, That's Revolting!: Queer Strategies for Resisting Assimilation, was published by Soft Skull Press that same year. Her fourth anthology, Nobody Passes: Rejecting the Rules of Gender and Conformity, was published by Seal Press in 2006.
Her second novel, So Many Ways to Sleep Badly, was published by City Lights Books in 2008. Her fifth anthology, Why Are Faggots So Afraid of Faggots? Flaming Challenges to Masculinity, Objectification, and the Desire to Conform, was published by AK Press in 2012, and was an American Library Association Stonewall Honor Book. [7]
Sycamore's first memoir, The End of San Francisco, was published by City Lights Books in 2013, and won a Lambda Literary Award. [8] Her third novel, Sketchtasy, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2018. Her second memoir, The Freezer Door, was published by Semiotext(e) in 2020, and received rave reviews in The New York Times [9] and The Washington Post [10] on the publication date. The Freezer Door was named one of the Best LGBTQ Books of 2020 by O, The Oprah Magazine, [11] was a New York Times Editors' Choice, [12] and was a finalist for the 2021 PEN/Jean Stein Book Award, an annual award which recognizes a "book-length work of any genre for its originality, merit, and impact, which has broken new ground by reshaping the boundaries of its form and signaling strong potential for lasting influence." [13]
Sycamore's sixth anthology, Between Certain Death and a Possible Future: Queer Writing on Growing Up with the AIDS Crisis, was published by Arsenal Pulp Press in 2021. Her next book, Touching The Art, is scheduled to be published by Soft Skull Press in 2023. [14]
In January 2009, Sycamore initiated a public postering project called Lostmissing, which she describes as:
You know when you have a friend who you think will always be there—no matter what, at least you'll have that friendship, right? Lostmissing is a public art project about the loss of that relationship, a specific relationship for me—right now it's missing. [15]
Sycamore opposed the push among the LGBT movement for same-sex marriage, arguing that it distracts from more pressing issues like the securing of universal health care and housing security for all. [16] [17] Sycamore also opposed the LGBT movement's focus on inclusion in the US military, arguing instead that the movement should be focused on opposing the harmful impacts of the military at home and abroad. In 2010, she appeared on Democracy Now! in the segment Does Opposing “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” Bolster US Militarism? A Debate with Lt. Dan Choi and Queer Activist Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore, and later penned op-eds against trans inclusion in the military in Truthout [18] and The Baffler. [19] In 2018, in collaboration with Dean Spade, Sycamore co-organized a Queer Anti-Militarism Townhall: Trans Liberation Not U.S. Invasion at the Seattle Public Library, alongside other queer and trans anti-military voices, including Micha Cárdenas, Soya Jung, Nikkita Oliver and Matt Remle. Sycamore contributed to Against Equality: Queer Critiques of Gay Marriage, [20] and wrote the introduction to Against Equality: Queer Revolution, Not Mere Inclusion, [21] anthologies printed by the Against Equality collective in 2010 and 2014. In 2008, Sycamore was named as a "visionary" as part of Utne Reader magazine's "50 Visionaries Who Are Changing the World." [22]
Sycamore is genderqueer and uses she/her pronouns. [17] She has described herself as, "A genderqueer, faggot, and a queen, on the trans continuum, in a gender bending, gender blur kind of place. But the words I relate to the most are probably 'faggot' and 'queen.' 'Queer' would be more of a broader political identity." [27]
Sycamore is the granddaughter of Gladys Goldstein. She writes about her grandmother inTouching the Art. [28]
Queer is an umbrella term for people who are not heterosexual or are not cisgender. Originally meaning 'strange' or 'peculiar', queer came to be used pejoratively against LGBT people in the late 19th century. From the late 1980s, queer activists began to reclaim the word as a neutral or positive self-description.
Leslie Feinberg was an American butch lesbian, transgender activist, communist, and author. Feinberg authored Stone Butch Blues in 1993. Her writing, notably Stone Butch Blues and her pioneering non-fiction book Transgender Warriors (1996), laid the groundwork for much of the terminology and awareness around gender studies and was instrumental in bringing these issues to a more mainstream audience.
Sarah Miriam Schulman is an American novelist, playwright, nonfiction writer, screenwriter, gay activist, and AIDS historian. She holds an endowed chair in nonfiction at Northwestern University and is a fellow of the New York Institute for the Humanities. She is a recipient of the Bill Whitehead Award and the Lambda Literary Award.
Gay Shame is a movement from within the queer communities described as a radical alternative to gay mainstreaming. The movement directly posits an alternative view of gay pride events and activities which have become increasingly commercialized with corporate sponsors as well as the adoption of more sanitized, mainstream agendas to avoid offending supporters and sponsors. The Gay Shame movement has grown to embrace radical expression, counter-cultural ideologies, and avant-garde arts and artists.
Tony Arena, also known by his pen name Anonymous Boy, is an openly queer artist, writer, and filmmaker. He is known for his comics, his involvement in the queercore movement, and other contributions to queer punk zines, his column in Maximum Rocknroll magazine, his public-access television program The Wild Record Collection, and animation such as his film Green Pubes.
Robert Kirby is an American cartoonist, known for his long-running syndicated comic Curbside – which ran in the gay and alternative presses from 1991 to 2008 – and other works focusing on queer characters and community, including Strange Looking Exile, Boy Trouble, THREE, and QU33R.
Brett Josef Grubisic is a Canadian author, editor, and sessional lecturer of the English language at the University of British Columbia.
Charlie Jane Anders is an American writer specializing in speculative fiction. She has written several novels as well as shorter fiction, published in magazines and on websites, and hosted podcasts; these works cater to both adults and adolescent readers. Her first science fantasy novels, such as All the Birds in the Sky and The City in the Middle of the Night, cover mature topics, received critical acclaim, and won major literary awards like the Nebula Award for Best Novel and Locus Award for Best Science Fiction Novel. Her young adult trilogy Unstoppable has been popular among younger audiences. Shorter fiction has been collected into Six Months, Three Days, Five Others and Even Greater.
Gay pulp fiction, or gay pulps, refers to printed works, primarily fiction, that include references to male homosexuality, specifically male gay sex, and that are cheaply produced, typically in paperback books made of wood pulp paper; lesbian pulp fiction is similar work about women. Michael Bronski, the editor of an anthology of gay pulp writing, notes in his introduction, "Gay pulp is not an exact term, and it is used somewhat loosely to refer to a variety of books that had very different origins and markets". People often use the term to refer to the "classic" gay pulps that were produced before about 1970, but it may also be used to refer to the gay erotica or pornography in paperback book or digest magazine form produced since that date.
Daphne Gottlieb is a San Francisco-based performance poet.
Douglas A. Martin is an American poet, a novelist and a short story writer.
Jennifer Camper is a cartoonist and graphic artist whose work is inspired by her own experiences as a Lebanese-American lesbian. Her work has been included in various outlets such as newspapers and magazines since the 1980s, as well as in exhibits in Europe and the United States. Furthermore, Camper is the creator and founding director of the biennial Queers and Comics conference.
Robert Andrew "Bob" Kohler was a gay rights pioneer. Born and raised in Queens, New York, Kohler was a lifelong activist in New York City. He was at the Stonewall riots, and was a friend to many of the activists in groups like the Gay Liberation Front and Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
Homotopia is a 2007 short film by Eric A. Stanley and Chris E. Vargas. The film talks about the politics of gay marriage and assimilation and highlights racism, colonialism, HIV/AIDS, and the State.
Fed Up Queers, or FUQ, was a queer activist direct action group that began in New York City. The group was made up mostly of lesbians such as Jennifer Flynn, though notable participants also included gay rights pioneer and Stonewall riots veteran Bob Kohler, and writer Mattilda Bernstein Sycamore. The activists who formed FUQ came together loosely for a few actions in 1998, but the first action attributed to Fed Up Queers was on World AIDS Day, December 1, 1998, when they visited New York State Assemblywoman Nettie Mayersohn's house in Queens at midnight to protest her stance on names reporting.
Chris Bartlett is an American gay activist, feminist, educator, and researcher who lives in Philadelphia, PA, and is the executive director of the William Way Community Center.
Founded in 2009, Against Equality (AE) is an online archive of writings and arts, and a series of books, by queer and trans writers that critique mainstream LGBT politics. AE has focused on issues regarding the institution of marriage, the U.S. military, and the prison-industrial complex via hate crime law.
Susan O'Neal Stryker is an American professor, historian, author, filmmaker, and theorist whose work focuses on gender and human sexuality. She is a professor of Gender and Women's Studies, former director of the Institute for LGBT Studies, and founder of the Transgender Studies Initiative at the University of Arizona, and is currently on leave while holding an appointment as Barbara Lee Distinguished Chair in Women's Leadership at Mills College. Stryker serves on the Advisory Council of METI and the Advisory Board of the Digital Transgender Archive. Stryker, who is a transgender woman, is the author of several books about LGBT history and culture. She is a leading scholar of transgender history.
CAConrad is an American poet, professor, and the author of seven books. They were based in Philadelphia and later Asheville, North Carolina and Athens, Georgia.
Queens Liberation Front (QLF) was a homophile group primarily focused on transvestite rights advocacy organization in New York City. QLF was formed in 1969 and active in the 1970s. They published Drag Queens: A Magazine About the Transvestite beginning in 1971. The Queens Liberation Front collaborated with a number of other LGBTQ+ activist groups, including the Gay Activists Alliance and the Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries.
| International | |
|---|---|
| National | |
| Other | |
