Pat Parker

Pat Parker (January 20, 1944 – June 19, 1989 Houston, Texas) was an African-American lesbian feminist poet.

Parker grew up working class poor in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, a mostly African-American part of the city. Her mother (born Marie Louise Anderson) was a domestic worker, and her father, Ernest Nathaniel Cooks retreaded tires.

When she was four years old, her family moved to Sunnyside, Houston, Texas.

She left home at seventeen, moved to Los Angeles, California, earning an undergraduate degree there at Los Angeles City College, and a graduate degree at San Francisco State College. She got married to playwright Ed Bullins in 1962. Parker and Bullins separated after four years. She later said that her ex-husband was physically violent and that she was "scared to death of him".

She got married a second time, to Berkeley, California writer Robert F. Parker, but decided that the "idea of marriage... wasn't working" for her.

Parker began to identify as a lesbian in the late 1960s, and, in a 1975 interview with Anita Cornwell, stated that "after my first relationship with a woman, I knew where I was going."

Parker was involved in the Black Panther Movement, in 1979 she toured with the Varied Voices of Black Women, a group of poets and musicians which included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins & Gwen Avery. She founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council in 1980, and she also contributed to the formation of the Women's Press Collective, as well as being involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizing.

Parker worked from 1978-1987 as a medical coordinator at the Oakland Feminist Women's Health Center.

Parker gave her first public poetry reading in 1963 in Oakland. In 1968, she began to read her poetry to women's groups at Women's bookstores, coffeehouses and feminist events.

Judy Grahn, a fellow poet and a personal friend, identifies Pat Parker's poetry as a part of the "continuing Black tradition of radical poetry".

Cheryl Clarke, another poet and peer, identifies her as a "lead voice and caller" in the world of lesbian poetry. Designed to confront both black and women's communities with, as Clarke notes, "the precariousness of being non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual in a racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperial culture." Clarke believes that Parker articulates, "a black lesbian-feminist perspective of love between women and the circumstances that prevent our intimacy and liberation."

Pat Parker and Audre Lorde first met in 1969 and continued to exchange letters and visits until Parker's death in 1989. Their collaboration inspired many, including lesbian-feminist blues/R&B singer Nedra Johnson, whose song "Where Will You Be?" has become somewhat of a feminist anthem in the USA.

Parker's elder sister was murdered by her husband, and the autobiographical poem, Womanslaughter (1978) is based on this event.

In the poem, Parker notes that

The perpetrator was convicted of "womanslaughter", not murder; because

He served a one-year sentence in a work-release program. Parker brought this crime to the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in 1976 in Brussels, vowing

Parker died in 1989 of breast cancer at age 45. The national lesbian-feminist community mourned her loss, and several things have been named after her, such as Pat Parker Place, a community center in Chicago. She is survived by her long-time partner and two daughters, along with countless admirers and fans of her activism and poetry.

• The The Pat Parker/Vito Russo Center Library in New York City is named in honor of Parker and fellow writer, Vito Russo.
• The Pat Parker Poetry Award is awarded each year for a free verse narrative poem or dramatic monologue by a black lesbian poet.

Where Will You Be?

Books

• Child of Myself (1972) The Women's Press Collective
• Pit Stop (1973) The Women's Press Collective
• Womanslaughter (1978) Diana Press
• Movement in Black (1978) Crossing Press
• Jonestown & Other Madness (1989) Firebrand Books
• Movement in Black: The Collected Poetry of Pat Parker, 1961–1978 (includes work from Child of Myself and Pit Stop), foreword by Audre Lorde, introduction by Judy Grahn, Diana Press (Oakland, California), 1978, expanded edition, introduction by Cheryl Clarke, Firebrand Books (Ithaca, New York), 1999.
• Also contributor to
  • Plexus
  • Amazon Poetry
  • I Never Told Anyone
  • Home Girls
  • This Bridge Called My Back: Writings by Radical Women of Color, edited by Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, Women of Color Press, 1981
  • other anthologies, magazines, and newspapers.

Non-fiction

• Unleashing Feminism: Critiquing Lesbian Sadomasochism in the Gay Nineties (1993) (with Anna Livia Julian Brawn and Kathy Miriam)

Select anthologies

• Where Would I Be Without You? The Poetry of Pat Parker and Judy Grahn 1976 Sound Recording Olivia Records
• Lesbian Concentrate Sound Recording 1977 Olivia Records
• Revolution: It's Not Neat or Pretty or Quick This Bridge Called My Back Cherríe Moraga and Gloria Anzaldúa, eds. Watertown, Massachusetts: Persephone Press, 1981.