Lorraine Bethel facts for kids

Lorraine Bethel is an African-American feminist poet and author. She has written important essays and poems. She also helped lead a group called the Combahee River Collective. This group worked for fairness and equality for Black women.

What Lorraine Bethel Does

Lorraine Bethel went to Yale University. She has taught about Black women's literature and culture at different schools. Today, she works as a freelance journalist in New York City. This means she writes for many different publications.

Working with the Combahee River Collective

Lorraine Bethel was part of the Combahee River Collective. This group was a key part of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The Collective was started by Black feminists in Boston in 1974. They worked to fight against unfair treatment based on race, gender, and social class.

As a member, Bethel gave talks at colleges to share the Collective's ideas. For example, she and Barbara Smith spoke at Ithaca College in 1979. They explained that Black women often face many challenges at once. They talked about dealing with racism, even within the women's rights movement. They also discussed how Black men's fight against racism sometimes didn't include women's issues.

Her Feminist Writing

In 1979, Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith led a workshop at the 3rd World Writers Conference in New York City. Their workshop was called "Third World Feminist Criticism." They talked about what "criticism" means in writing. They also discussed how Black feminism was different from white feminism. They explored the idea of intersectional feminism. This means understanding how different parts of a person's identity, like race and gender, combine to create unique experiences.

Later that year, Bethel and Smith were guest editors for a special issue of Conditions: Five. This magazine was mainly for Black women writers. The issue was called "The Black Women's Issue." In the introduction, they wrote that this issue proved Black feminist writers existed. It also showed that these writers were important, especially in feminist publications.

Bethel's poem, "What Chou Mean We, White Girl? Or, The ... Feminist Declaration of Independence," was published in this issue.

Her essay, ""The Infinity of Conscious Pain": Zora Neale Hurston and the Black Female Literary Tradition," appeared in a very important book. The book was called All of the Women Are White, All of the Blacks Are Men, But Some of Us Are Brave: Black Women's Studies. In her essay, Bethel wrote that there is a special group of Black women writers. She believed their work was part of American literature, but also unique on its own.

List of Publications

• Bethel, Lorraine & Barbara Smith (eds.) Conditions (magazine): Five 2, no. 2: The Black Women's Issue (Autumn 1979)
• "What Chou Mean 'We', White Girl? Or, the ... Feminist Declaration of Independence (Dedicated to the Proposition that All Women Are Not Equal, i.e., Identical/ly Oppressed)", poem published in Bethel & Smith (eds, 1979), pp. 86–92.
• "'This infinity of conscious pain': Zora Neale Hurston and the Black Female Literary Tradition". In Hull, Gloria T., Smith, Barbara and Scott, Patricia Bell (eds.), But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies. Feminist Press, 1986.

See also

In Spanish: Lorraine Bethel para niños