Lorraine Bethel facts for kids

Lorraine Bethel is an African-American poet and author. She is known for her important work in feminist writing, especially focusing on the experiences of Black women.

Early Life and Career

Lorraine Bethel is a graduate of Yale University. She has taught and given talks about the writings and culture of Black women at many different schools. Today, she works as a freelance journalist in New York City. This means she writes for different publications without being tied to one specific company.

Working with the Combahee River Collective

Bethel was part of the Combahee River Collective. This group was an important part of the Women's Rights Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The collective was a group of Black feminists started in Boston in 1974. They worked hard to fight against unfair ideas about race and unfair treatment based on social class.

Important Feminist Writings

Lorraine Bethel has made big contributions to feminist writing. In 1979, she and Barbara Smith led a workshop at a conference for women writers. In their workshop, called "Third World Feminist Criticism," they talked about different kinds of criticism. They also discussed how Black feminism was different from white feminism. They explored how different parts of a person's identity, like race and gender, can affect their experiences. They also talked about bringing Black women writers together.

Later that year, in November 1979, Bethel and Smith were guest editors for "The Black Women's Issue" of Conditions: Five. This was a special edition of a literary magazine. In the introduction, they wrote that this issue proved that Black women writers existed. It also showed that their voices were important and needed to be heard, especially in feminist publications. Bethel wrote a poem for this issue called "What Chou Mean We, White Girl? Or, The Cullud Lesbian Feminist Declaration of Independence."

Bethel also wrote an essay called ""The Infinity of Conscious Pain": Zora Neale Hurston and the Black Female Literary Tradition." This essay appeared in a very important book titled 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 explained that she believed there is a special and clear tradition of Black women writers. She felt this tradition existed both within and separately from American, African-American, and American female writing traditions.

List of Publications

• Bethel, Lorraine & Barbara Smith (editors). Conditions (magazine): Five 2, no. 2: The Black Women's Issue (Autumn 1979).
• "What Chou Mean 'We', White Girl? Or, the Cullud Lesbian Feminist Declaration of Independence (Dedicated to the Proposition that All Women Are Not Equal, i.e., Identical/ly Oppressed)", poem published in Bethel & Smith (editors, 1979), pages 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 (editors), But Some of Us Are Brave: All the Women Are White, All the Blacks Are Men: Black Women's Studies. Feminist Press, 1986. ISBN: 0-912670-95-9

See also

In Spanish: Lorraine Bethel para niños