by Julie R. Enszer

In 1985, Tee Corrine wrote in off our backs, “I fear we are losing the fabric of our past.” She continued “in our grief, pain and anger over someone’s death, we do not take the time to write obituaries to ensure the survival of work, to honor the dead in ways that will be visible and available to succeeding generations.”


I reread this article recently and these sentences strike me as remaining true today. We collectively in lesbian and queer women’s communities are losing the fabric of our past, and there are not enough people dedicated to honoring our dead and doing the labor to continue their survival. There are many reasons for this situation—and many remedies. The loss of the ReviewLambdaLiterary.org now over two years ago means that there is not a public, highly trafficked website for obituaries of lesbian writers, and too often our luminary literary lesbians are not of interest to mainstream publishers of obituaries like The New York Times. At Sinister Wisdom, we publish obituaries and remembrances in the quarterly journal, but I know we do not dedicate enough pages or attention to this important work. Lesbian Connection is publishing obituaries valiantly. Their obituaries are wonderful and provide portraits of a wide range of lesbians and lesbian lives. If you are not receiving LC, I encourage you to sign up for either the print or PDF version of the magazine. It is a treasure trove of our past—and our present (and the futures we are creating).


Corinne misses not only obituaries but also a wide range of activities that keep a lesbian / queer woman’s life and work alive and meaningful to new generations. These activities include republishing books, excerpting books in new contexts, continuing to circulate art, and more. Corinne writes in the off our backs article “When Someone Dies” about June Arnold, who died in 1982, three years before the article was published. Corinne notes that many women attending the women in print conference in Berkeley, CA in 1985 “had never heard of” her and that “no one . . . is working on a biography.” There is still no biography of Arnold. Corinne continued, “This is common within our movement, and it is a disaster.”


One person doing extraordinary work to preserve our lesbian past particularly through biography is Tracy Baim who has published a biography of Vernita Gray and Barbara Gittings, among many other important lesbian history books. We need at least ten more Tracy Baims!


In the article, Corinne also mentioned Jeannette Foster, who Joanne Passet wrote about in the biography Sex Variant Woman, Natalie Barney, Dolly Wilde, and Sonny Wainwright. Corinne’s concluding words were, “Who is going to write Sonny Wainwright’s biography, keep her book in print, gather our memories of her life and work?”


Who indeed? Sinister Wisdom is doing some work to keep books in print and gather memories of lesbians' lives and works, but there is always more to do. I invite everyone to join in this work. Write obituaries; submit them to Lesbian Connection, to Sinister Wisdom and the Sinister Wisdom blog. Champion the work of our lesbian and queer women forbears. Edit them, publish them, keep them in our memories and on our shelves, give their work new contexts and new meaning. There is much work to do; it is incumbent on us all to contribute. Far exceeding the call of duty and obligation is what we gain in meaning and joy.

---

Julie R. Enszer is the editor of Sinister Wisdom.

a late bloomer's guide to chaotic lesbianism

By sparrow Gore

---

An ode to my messy dating life. To baby gays figuring things out. That we look upon ourselves with tremendous grace, kindness, and warmth.

---

First, you’ll need to start with a series of homoerotic friendships,

join a throuple to a hetero marriage that’s falling apart,

get your sense and leave,

fall for another bisexual woman looking to distract herself, then fall for three more after this one,

learn your god damn lesson (please),

go on a two-year long road trip, devote yourself to storytelling, and have meaningful, momentary connections with strangers all across the south of turtle island

have a few summer flings, dance wildly at clubs, make out in public,

move somewhere new. discover anarchy, and learn words like “abolition”, “food sovereignty”, “land back”. get rageful beyond what you knew your body could hold

move again. This time, stay a while…

block your sneaky link but text them over Venmo once you’re ovulating,

get so embarrassed that you start focusing on yourself again

find a way to stop killing your plants, talk to the soil,

work on your avoidant attachment style until you realize that there was never anything wrong with you to begin with. Until you realize that wounds are the only reaction to being cut.

Until you realize all you ever needed was patience,

and finally, finally, decide for yourself, what love is.

---

Love is not extractive. It multiplies, like expanding roots of a tree. Love is not extractive. It adds, like precious sunlight peeking through thick clouds on a winter solstice. Love is not extractive.

---

I heard somewhere that people who are afraid of commitment have nothing to offer a relationship. It was the first thing to ease my heart after I’d become infatuated with someone who wanted me close but not too close. And it was the last fantasy I entertained before I concluded I was worthy of secure, and emotionally safe connections.

Though I regard all bonds as a way of showing us something important about ourselves, there is a particular side of people that only reveals after time, after shared history and longevity. Now that I’ve met this person within myself, I’m enchanted.

I’m completely taken away with who I become, when I feel loved, seen, and valued. I am perceptive, generous, playful. I am trustworthy, protective, and intentional. And I think that’s where the real magic is. Love opens doors. Love clears paths to more love.

So yeah. Follow your heart even when it takes you to chaotic places. The more you listen, the clearer it becomes and eventually you find a place to settle in. And that place is yourself. You become a home to yourself. And you see that you were worth it, you were worth all the wandering.

---

---

sparrow Gore (they/them) is reimagining a softer planet. sparrow Gore is a lesbian Sudanese-American farmer, abolitionist and writer. sparrow’s work is informed by Black feminist tradition, and liberationists Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, bell hooks, and Octavia Butler ; who moved forward a sociopolitical movement that challenged the intersecting oppression and tactics of racial capitalism. sparrow seeks to make portals with their language, to take us to the hearts of reality and the limitlessness of Black queer imaginations.


Read more by sparrow Gore
Notes From a Wildly Intense and Sensitive Sapphic #1