Sister Spit

Last updated

Sister Spit was a lesbian-feminist spoken-word and performance art collective based in San Francisco, signed to Mr. Lady Records. They formed in 1994 and disbanded in 2006. Founding members included Michelle Tea and Sini Anderson, Other members included Jane LeCroy and poet Eileen Myles. The group were noted for their Ramblin' Roadshow, performing at feminist events such as the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival. The Boston Phoenix described it as "the coolest (and cutest) line-up of talented, tattooed, pierced, and purple-pigtailed performance artists the Bay Area has to offer." [1]

Contents

The Independent Weekly magazine described the group as a "literary celebration of outspoken and courageous feminists". [2] Sister Spit performed on numerous occasions at the Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, as well as on multiple tours across the United States, chiefly to LGBT audiences, including the Castro Street Fair, Pride and Ladyfest in San Francisco. [3] They played at such locations as Boston, Cambridge, Massachusetts and Buffalo, New York. [4]

Michelle Tea revived the tour in April 2007, calling the new incarnation Sister Spit: The Next Generation. The new group includes original Sister Spitters Eileen Myles and Ali Liebegott, as well as younger writers such as Cristy Road, Nicole Georges, and Rhiannon Argo. [5]

For a month on the road, Sister Spit: The Next Generation traveled across the U.S. and Canada, and occasionally through Europe, performing mainly at universities and art centers. In order to reflect changes in gender identity and sexual orientation, the line-up no longer includes only women. Performers have included Nicole Georges, Cristy Road, Eileen Myles, Beth Lisick, Blake Nelson, Justin Vivian Bond and Ariel Schrag.

In 2017, the 20th Anniversary Sister Spit tour included Denise Benavides, Virgie Tovar, Maya Songbird, Celeste Chan, Cathy de la Cruz, Juliana Delgado Lopera and Joshua Jennifer Espinoza. [6]

Sister Spit and City Lights Publishers

In 2012 Sister Spit made the long-desired leap from promoting and supporting up-and-coming queer, feminist writers to actually shepherding them into print via a collaboration with City Lights Publishers. The new imprint, City Lights/Sister Spit, began by publishing the anthology Sister Spit: Writing, Rants and Reminiscence from the Road. Subsequently, it has published works by Ali Liebegott, Beth Lisick, and others. In their 40th-anniversary issue, Ms. magazine named the anthology a "great read" of the season that honors the cultural institution that is the Sister Spit roadshow.

The mission of the City Lights/Sister Spit imprint is to publish primarily but not exclusively writings that are informed by a queer, feminist outsider perspectives. [7] Editor Michelle Tea wishes to nurture work from people who struggle to find a place. [8]

Membership

Sister Spit had a rotating membership. Members for many or all shows included [9]

Releases

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michigan Womyn's Music Festival</span> Feminist music festival

The Michigan Womyn's Music Festival, often referred to as MWMF or Michfest, was a feminist women's music festival held annually from 1976 to 2015 in Oceana County, Michigan, on privately owned woodland near Hart Township referred to as "The Land" by Michfest organizers and attendees. The event was built, staffed, run, and attended exclusively by women, with girls, young boys and toddlers permitted.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Transfeminism</span> Branch of feminism

Transfeminism, or trans feminism, is a branch of feminism focused on transgender women and informed by transgender studies. Transfeminism focuses on the effects of transmisogyny and patriarchy on trans women. It is related to the broader field of queer theory. The term was popularized by Emi Koyama in the The Transfeminist Manifesto.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Alix Olson</span> American poet (born 1975)

Alix L. Olson is an American poet who works exclusively in spoken word. She uses her work to address issues of capitalism, racism, sexism, homophobia, heterosexism, misogyny, and patriarchy. She identifies as a queer feminist.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Eileen Myles</span> Writer (born 1949)

Eileen Myles is a LAMBDA Literary Award-winning American poet and writer who has produced more than twenty volumes of poetry, fiction, non-fiction, libretti, plays, and performance pieces over the last three decades. Novelist Dennis Cooper has described Myles as "one of the savviest and most restless intellects in contemporary literature." The Boston Globe described them as "that rare creature, a rock star of poetry." In 2012, Myles received a Guggenheim Fellowship to complete Afterglow, which gives both a real and fantastic account of a dog's life. Myles uses they/them pronouns.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mr. Lady Records</span> Independent record label

Mr. Lady Records was a San Francisco-based lesbian-feminist independent record label and video art distributor. Artists on the label included Le Tigre and The Butchies. OutSmart magazine noted that Mr. Lady was "queercore's strongest label."

Women's music is music by women, for women, and about women. The genre emerged as a musical expression of the second-wave feminist movement as well as the labor, civil rights, and peace movements. The movement was started by lesbian performers such as Cris Williamson, Meg Christian and Margie Adam, African-American musicians including Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins, Gwen Avery and activists such as Bernice Johnson Reagon and her group Sweet Honey in the Rock, and peace activist Holly Near. Women's music also refers to the wider industry of women's music that goes beyond the performing artists to include studio musicians, producers, sound engineers, technicians, cover artists, distributors, promoters, and festival organizers who are also women.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Michelle Tea</span> American writer

Michelle Tea is an American author, poet, and literary arts organizer whose autobiographical works explore queer culture, feminism, race, class, sex work, and other topics. She is originally from Chelsea, Massachusetts and has identified with the San Francisco, California literary and arts community for many years. She currently lives in Los Angeles. Her books, mostly memoirs, are known for their exposition of the queercore community.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Lynn Breedlove</span> American musician, writer, and performer

Lynn Breedlove is an American musician, writer, and performer who was born in Oakland, California.

Ali Liebegott is an American writer, actor, and comedian. She is best known for her work as a novelist and a writer/producer on the Amazon original series Transparent. Liebegott has taught creative writing at University of California, San Diego and Mills College. She is a recipient of a Poetry Fellowship from the New York Foundation for the Arts. She is the author of The Beautifully Worthless; The IHOP Papers; and Cha-Ching!. Liebegott resides in Los Angeles and recently finished her fourth book, The Summer of Dead Birds.

Lenelle Moïse is a poet, actress and playwright born in Port-au-Prince, Haiti. Currently based in the United States, she performs at colleges throughout the country, presenting work about race, gender, class, immigration and sexuality. Her spoken word CD Madivinez won the 2007 Patchwork Majority Radio Album Award for Best Solo Album. Moïse was a member of the permanent ensemble cast in the Culture Project's premiere production of Rebel Voices, a play by Rob Urbinati based on Howard Zinn and Anthony Arnove's book Voices of a People's History of the United States. In 2008, she developed a two-person vocal musical about art, infamy and race called EXPATRIATE, also at the Culture Project, in which she co-starred with Karla Cheatham-Mosley. When she was a junior at Ithaca College, Lenelle co-wrote Sexual Dependency, a feature film by Bolivian filmmaker Rodrigo Bellot who was a schoolmate at the time. The film went on to win the International Film Critics' Award at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland. Moïse also wrote and starred in Mara Alper's short experimental video "To Erzulie" which premiered at the Berlin Sommerfest der Literaturen in July 2002. She has completed her own experimental shorts "Blue Passersby Eyes" and "Atlantic Soul." Her homemade music video Pied Piper was an official selection of the International Museum of Women 2007 Online Film Festival. Her essays and poems are published in a number of anthologies, most recently Word Warriors: 35 Women Leaders of the Spoken Word Revolution. Her debut book Haiti Glass, part of the Sister Spit series, is a collection of verse and prose. She experiments with collage as a form of meditative practice and nonlinear storytelling.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Meliza Bañales</span> American writer, performer, and slam poet

Meliza Bañales is an American writer, performer, and slam poet. She has lived in the San Francisco Bay Area, Santa Cruz, and Los Angeles.

Kris Kovick was an American writer, cartoonist, and printer based in California.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Nicole Georges</span> American illustrator, writer, zinester, podcaster, and educator

Nicole J. Georges is an American illustrator, writer, zinester, podcaster, and educator. She is well known for authoring the autobiographical comic zine Invincible Summer, whose individual issues have been collected into two anthologies published by Tugboat Press and Microcosm Publishing. Some of her other notable works include the graphic memoirs Calling Dr. Laura and Fetch: How a Bad Dog Brought Me Home. In addition to this, Georges creates comics and teaches others how to make them, produces the Podcast Sagittarian Matters, and illustrates portraits of animals. She currently divides her time between Los Angeles, California and Portland, Oregon.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Katastrophe (rapper)</span> American rapper

Rocco Kayiatos, known professionally as Katastrophe and in some later releases as Rocco Katastrophe, is an American rapper.

Sini Anderson is an American film director, producer, performance artist, choreographer, dancer and poet, from Chicago, Illinois. Anderson is widely known for directing The Punk Singer (2013), a documentary about riot grrrl musician Kathleen Hanna's legacy and experience with late-stage Lyme disease.

Cristina Carrera, otherwise known as Cristy C. Road is a Cuban-American illustrator, graphic novelist, and punk rock musician whose posters, music, and autobiographical works explore themes of feminism, queer culture, and social justice. She primarily works as an illustrator and graphic novelist, but also published a long-running zine about punk music and her life as a queer Latina. She performed on the Sister Spit roadshow in 2007, 2009, and 2013 and was the lead vocalist and guitarist for the queercore/pop-punk band, The Homewreckers. She currently sings vocals and plays guitar in Choked Up. She has published three books and one collection of postcards, as well as numerous concert posters, protest flyers, book covers, and logos. Road has worked as a professor at the Center for Documentary Studies at Duke University.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Myriam Gurba</span> American novelist

Myriam Gurba Serrano is an American author, editor, and visual artist. She is best known for her true crime memoir, Mean, and her review, in Tropics of Meta, of American Dirt. She is a co-founder of the grassroots campaign #DignidadLiteraria which "greater inclusion of Chicanx and Latinx authors, editors, and executives, and to combat the exclusion and erasure of Latinx and Chicanx literature within the publishing industry in the USA".

Julián Delgado Lopera is a queer Colombian writer and performer. They are the author of ¡Cuéntamelo! an illustrated collection of queer immigrant histories in the United States during the 1980s. They use creative expressions, such as writing, queer literary performance, and bilingual poetry to advance LGBT activism projects across the Bay Area. Delgado Lopera serves as the Executive/Artistic director for the nonprofit organization Radar Productions since 2015.

Womyn's land is an intentional community organised by lesbian separatists to establish counter-cultural, women-centred space, without the presence of men. These lands were the result of a social movement of the same name that developed in the 1970s in the United States, Australia, New Zealand, and western Europe. Many still exist today. Womyn's land-based communities and residents are loosely networked through social media; print publications such as newsletters; Maize: A Lesbian Country Magazine; Lesbian Natural Resources, a not-for-profit organisation that offers grants and resources; and regional and local gatherings.

References

  1. ↑ "Great expectorations: San Francisco's Sister Spit heads east" Archived 2006-10-20 at the Wayback Machine , Boston Phoenix , July 1997.
  2. ↑ "Feminist/Queer Entrepreneurs: Mr. Lady Music and Videos", Independent Weekly , June 27, 2001.
  3. ↑ Lynnee Breedlove's CV Archived 2007-02-09 at the Wayback Machine , includes Sister Spit festival appearances.
  4. ↑ "Eileen Myles is an unregenerate punk at 50". Article on Sister Spit in the Village Voice .
  5. ↑ "Quirky women spice up literary reading at Jake's" [ permanent dead link ]. Article on Sister Spit in The Olympian .
  6. ↑ "Sister Spit - Performance" (Press release). University of California, Riverside. 2017-03-13. Archived from the original on 2017-03-04. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  7. ↑ Jessa Crispin "Sister Spit: Writings, Rants & Reminiscence from the Road", Kirkus Reviews , 9/18/12.
  8. ↑ Adam Rathe Tea and Spit- Out , 9/4/12.
  9. ↑ Michelle Tea shrine, features line-up of Sister Spit.
  10. ↑ Holman, Bob. "Mouth Almighty Records" . Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  11. ↑ "Sister Spit's Ramblin' Road Show - Greatest Spits". Discogs.org. 29 May 2001. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
  12. ↑ "Kriss De Jong" (PDF). Killer Banshee Studios. Retrieved 2017-03-28.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.