By Imani Williams
It is rare that we get to hear a voice that reminds one of the work and commitment of sister Audre Lorde. When one picks up "The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry, 1980 to 2005," one doesn't have to guess whether or not Clarke is a genuine African-American lesbian or just an ally affirming same gender loving sisters from a distance. She makes it plain.
This book features not only the works of Clarke, but also others whom she has read and commented on on during her 30+year SGL journey.
Clarke was born in Washington D.C. in 1947 and graduated with a degree in English in 1969 from Howard University. She migrated to New Brunswick, New Jersey for graduate school where she earned graduate degrees in English and Social Work along with a PhD in English.
Clarke has resided in Jersey City since 1986.
"When I came out as a lesbian in 1973 I did so to a welcoming community," says Clarke, who came out in what she describes as the "height of gay liberation and gay pride on a New Brunswick college campus." Clarke was doing her graduate work at a place with the oldest gay alliance in the country, founded in 1969.
Clarke remembers the white community being very welcoming. She was also influenced by the black power and black arts movements and saw coming out as lesbian "light action" compared to coming out as a black person in the late 60s. She feels she has been fortunate not to have ever really been in a hostile environment.
Her take on today's movement and the younger generation is encouraging. "I don't think we should be too depressed, there are plenty of queer young people of color doing important work," she says. "They're doing work around AIDS, globalization, and immigration. They are also activists on their college and graduate school campuses."
Clarke sees younger people trying to continue some of the work older lesbians are still doing. She applauds younger lesbians for getting involved and making it easier for their peers to be out. She insists that younger people not succumb to identities that were important for older people who were doing it first.
"It was important for us to come out the way we came out," Clarke says. "I would not have been able to come out in the way I did if it weren't for the younger people who were coming out at that time."
Clarke recalls that her mentor was a sophomore in undergraduate school when she was a graduate student. He gave her book on homosexuality and liberation and it changed her thought process and gave her the courage to speak up and out. Until she read that particular book, Clarke says, she had not compared the gay liberation movement to the women's and black liberation movements. "I simply hadn't considered it within that context," she says. She remembers and misses her friend and mentor fondly. He was three years her junior and has since succumbed to AIDS.
Clarke understands that the younger generation has different identities. "I want them to see the big world and know that it is bigger than themselves," she says. "I want them to not get into the 'me' generation self-centered way of thinking and to not succumb to those Ethnocentric attitudes. That stops a lot of black people from forming coalitions with persons different from ourselves. My hope is that they would try and create a room that is radically changed from what we're living in now."
Clarke's earlier pieces on lesbians and active resistance demanded that SGL women declare themselves "lesbian." That has changed, she says. "I don't feel everyone should come out in the same way, nor do I feel everyone has to ID as a lesbian if she is in a relationship with a woman."
Clarke emphasizes, however, that communication is important between sexual partners and that safer sex needs to be discussed whether people are self-identifying or not. "If people can't be forthcoming about their sexual partners, then they need to slow down. We all have to have safer sex practices."
Clarke currently serves as a teaching administrator and Director of Social Justice Education for LGBT Communities at Rutgers University. She teaches in the women and gender studies program. This semester she is instructing a course in Feminism Theory and co-teaching a course on the Civil Rights movement.
