Michelle Parkerson | |
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 Michelle Parkerson reading at a tribute to Essex Hemphill, Mt. Pleasant Library, Washington D.C., 2014 | |
| Born | November 1, 1953 Washington, DC, US |
| Occupation(s) | Filmmaker and academic |
Michelle Parkerson is an American filmmaker and academic. She is an assistant professor in Film and Media Arts at Temple University and has been an independent film/video maker since the 1980s, focusing particularly on feminist, LGBT, and political activism and issues.
Michelle Parkerson was born and raised in Washington, DC. [1] In the early 1980s, Parkerson and Essex Hemphill, a poet, activist, and friend of Parkerson's, would often perform spoken word poetry in D.C. coffeehouses and theaters. [2] They received a grant from the Washington Project for the Arts in 1983 to produce an "experimental dramatization" of their poetry entitled Murder on Glass. [2]
Parkerson majored in TV and film production and graduated in 1974 with a B.A. in Communications from Temple University with the short Sojourn, a collaboration with Jimi Lyons, a cinematographer; the film won a Junior Academy Award. [3] [4] She is an alumna of the American Film Institute (AFI) Workshop for Women Directors, Class of 1989-91, where her classmates included Rita Mae Brown and Lyn Goldfarb. [5]
Parkerson currently heads her own DC-based production company, Eye of the Storm Productions. [6] [7]
Parkerson has received grants from the Independent Television Service, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and the AFI as well as a fellowship from the Rockefeller Foundation. She was awarded the Prix du Public at the Festival International de Créteil Films de Femmes and the Audience and Best Biography Awards at the San Francisco International Film Festival. [8] Her films are distributed by Women Make Movies and Third World Newsreel.
She is assistant professor in Film and Media Arts at Temple University. [9]
She published a volume of poetry, Waiting Rooms, in 1983. [10]
Parkerson was featured in the 2008 documentary black./womyn.: conversations with lesbians of African descent .
Gibson describes Parkerson as "a visionary risk taker". [11] Gibson describes Parkerson's films as being identity-related: "highlight[ing] the identities of black women as performers and social activists… serv[ing] as a major contributor to the development of a black documentary style that seeks a holistic approach to African-American life". [12]
Her documentaries feature major African-American figures: jazz musician Betty Carter, musical group Sweet Honey in the Rock, Stonewall riots activist Stormé DeLarverie and writer Audre Lorde, with a particular focus on sexuality and LGBTQ activism in the latter two. Her fiction short Odds and Ends is a lesbian Afrofuturist science fiction story. [13]
Parkerson's "love note never sent" to Lorde in The Feminist Wire reflects the activist motivation of her own filmmaking:
The zen of Audre Lorde is in vogue. But the tangible impact of your activism will keep surfacing internationally and for generations to come as long as communities of color are still under siege, as long as a woman remains voiceless and abused, as long as the lesbian love that dared "speak its name" is threatened with sequester. [14]
Audre Lorde was an American writer, professor, philosopher, intersectional feminist, poet and civil rights activist. She was a self-described "Black, lesbian, feminist, socialist, mother, warrior, poet" who dedicated her life and talents to confronting all forms of injustice, as she believed there could be "no hierarchy of oppressions".
Womanism is a term originating from the work of African American author Alice Walker in her 1983 book In Search of Our Mother's Garden, denoting a movement within feminism, primarily championed by Black feminists. Walker coined the term "womanist" in the short story Coming Apart in 1979. Her initial use of the term evolved to envelop a spectrum of issues and perspectives facing black women and others.
Cheryl Dunye is a Liberian-American film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress. Dunye's work often concerns themes of race, sexuality, and gender, particularly issues relating to black lesbians. She is known as the first out black lesbian to ever direct a feature film with her 1996 film The Watermelon Woman. She runs the production company Jingletown Films based in Oakland, California.
Anita Cornwell was an American lesbian feminist author. In 1983, she wrote the first collection of essays by an African-American lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America.
Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press that was closely related to the National Black Feminist Organization (NBFO) which was started in 1980 following a phone conversation between Barbara Smith and at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde. Beverly and Barbara Smith and their associate Demita Frazier together cofounded the Combahee River Collective (CRC). The Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was most active beginning in 1981, but the Press became inactive soon after Audre Lorde's death in 1992. Smith explains how the motivation for starting a press run by and for women of color was that "as feminist and lesbian of color writers, we knew that we had no options for getting published, except at the mercy or whim of others, whether in the context of alternative or commercial publishing, since both are white-dominated."
The Audre Lorde Project is a Brooklyn, New York–based organization for LGBT people of color. The organization concentrates on community organizing and radical nonviolent activism around progressive issues within New York City, especially relating to LGBT communities, AIDS and HIV activism, pro-immigrant activism, prison reform and organizing among youth of color. It is named for the lesbian-feminist poet and activist Audre Lorde and was founded in 1994.
Sinister Wisdom is an American lesbian literary, theory, and art journal published quarterly in Berkeley, California. Started in 1976 by Catherine Nicholson and Harriet Ellenberger (Desmoines) in Charlotte, North Carolina, it is the longest established lesbian journal, with 128 issues as of 2023. Each journal covers topics pertaining to the lesbian experience including creative writing, poetry, literary criticism and feminist theory. Sinister Wisdom accepts submissions from novice to accredited writers and has featured the works of writers and artists such as Audre Lorde and Adrienne Rich. The journal has pioneered female publishing, working with female operated publishing companies such as Whole Women Press and Iowa City Women's Press. Sapphic Classics, a partnership between Sinister Wisdom and A Midsummer Night's Press, reprints classic lesbian works for contemporary audiences.
Conditions was a lesbian feminist literary magazine that came out biannually from 1976 to 1980 and annually from 1980 until 1990, and included poetry, prose, essays, book reviews, and interviews. It was founded in Brooklyn, New York, by Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, Irena Klepfisz and Rima Shore.
Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (1983) is a collection of Black lesbian and Black feminist essays, edited by Barbara Smith. The anthology includes different accounts from 32 black women of feminist ideology who come from a variety of different areas, cultures, and classes. This collection of writings is intended to showcase the similarities among black women from different walks of life. In the introduction, Smith states her belief that "Black feminism is, on every level, organic to Black experience." Writings within Home Girls support this belief through essays that exemplify black women's struggles and lived experiences within their race, gender, sexual orientation, culture, and home life. Topics and stories discussed in the writings often touch on subjects that in the past have been deemed taboo, provocative, and profound.
Pat Parker was an American poet and activist. Both her poetry and her activism drew from her experiences as an African-American lesbian feminist. Her poetry spoke about her tough childhood growing up in poverty, dealing with sexual assault, and the murder of a sister. At eighteen, Parker was in an abusive relationship and had a miscarriage after being pushed down a flight of stairs. After two divorces she came out as lesbian "embracing her sexuality" and said she was liberated and "knew no limits when it came to expressing the innermost parts of herself".
Stormé DeLarverie was an American woman known as the butch lesbian whose scuffle with police was, according to DeLarverie and many eyewitnesses, the spark that ignited the Stonewall uprising, spurring the crowd to action. She was born in New Orleans, to an African American mother and a white father. She is remembered as a gay civil rights icon and entertainer, who performed and hosted at the Apollo Theater and Radio City Music Hall. She worked for much of her life as an MC, singer, bouncer, bodyguard, and volunteer street patrol worker, the "guardian of lesbians in the Village". She is known as "the Rosa Parks of the gay community."
Erika "Ika" Hügel-Marshall was a German author and activist. She was active in the Afro-German women's movement organization ADEFRA. Her autobiography, Daheim unterwegs. Ein deutsches Leben, discusses racism in Germany and her search for a family identity. She was influenced by and praised the work of her friend, American activist Audre Lorde. She and her partner Dagmar Schultz worked with Lorde.
Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches is a collection of essential essays and speeches written by Audre Lorde, a writer who focuses on the particulars of her identity: Black woman, lesbian, poet, activist, cancer survivor, mother, and feminist. This collection, now considered a classic volume of Lorde's most influential works of non-fiction prose, has had a groundbreaking impact in the development of contemporary feminist theories. In fifteen essays and speeches dating from 1976 to 1984, Lorde explores the complexities of intersectional identity, while explicitly drawing from her personal experiences of oppression to include sexism, heterosexism, racism, homophobia, classism, and ageism. The book examines a broad range of topics, including love, self-love, war, imperialism, police brutality, coalition building, violence against women, Black feminism, and movements towards equality that recognize and embrace differences as a vehicle for change. With meditative conscious reasoning, Lorde explores her misgivings for the widespread marginalization deeply-rooted in the United States' white patriarchal system, all the while, offering messages of hope. The essays in this landmark collection are extensively taught and have become a widespread area of academic analysis. Lorde's philosophical reasoning that recognizes oppressions as complex and interlocking designates her work as a significant contribution to critical social theory.
Your Silence Will Not Protect You is a 2017 posthumous collection of essays, speeches, and poems by African American author and poet Audre Lorde. It is the first time a British publisher collected Lorde's work into one volume. The collection focuses on key themes such as: shifting language into action, silence as a form of violence, and the importance of history. Lorde describes herself as a "Black, lesbian, mother, warrior, poet", and addresses the difficulties in communication between Black and white women.
Dagmar Schultz is a German sociologist, filmmaker, publisher and professor.
Black lesbian literature is a subgenre of lesbian literature and African American literature that focuses on the experiences of black women who identify as lesbians. The genre features poetry and fiction about black lesbian characters as well as non-fiction essays which address issues faced by black lesbians. Prominent figures within the genre include Ann Allen Shockley, Audre Lorde, Cheryl Clarke, and Barbara Smith.
Angela Bowen was an American dance teacher, English professor, writer, and a lesbian rights activist. She was also the subject of an award-winning 2016 documentary.
Terri Lynn Jewell was an American author, poet and Black lesbian activist. She was the editor of The Black Woman’s Gumbo Ya-Ya, which received the New York City Library Young Persons Reading Award in 1994.
Gloria Ida Joseph was a Crucian-American academic, writer, educator, and activist. She was a self-identified radical Black feminist lesbian writer who synthesized art and activism in her work. Joseph's scholarship centered race, gender, sexuality, and class. She is known for her pioneering work on Black feminism and her activism on issues concerning Black women across the diaspora, including in the South Africa, Germany, and Caribbean.
Joseph Fairchild Beam was an African-American gay rights activist, writer and poet.
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