Interview with Elana Dykewomon - lesbian activist, writer & teacher

Elana Dykewomon is a Jewish lesbian activist, writer and teacher based in USA. Her novel Beyond the Pale stands out in between her literary works - an example of an award-winning lesbian narrative - just like many other prose, poetry and essay works. Her work, in her own words, is to change the world, word by word. Here's the interview - and here's the interview, in Spanish too.

·You’re a Jewish lesbian activist, editor and writer. To many people, this word choice, these words put together, don’t make sense at all or seem to them like a contradiction, like an impossibility. But they aren’t – how does your being Jewish shape your lesbian experience, and vice versa? How did you first come to call yourself this way – to reconcile yourself with being both?

I'm a secular, atheist, spiritual Jew, so I didn't have to struggle with religious strictures once I was an adult (although my birth family was somewhat observant religiously, in a post-Holocaust you-should-know-your-people way). Perhaps it's a little more complicated – I knew I was a lesbian when I was a child, and had a profound sense of being an outsider among outsiders. The women's & lesbian movements saved my life. Many Jewish lesbians became activists then. I found, when I was writing my novel, Beyond the Pale, that Jewish women have been activists in the U.S. for as long as we've been here – and many of those women were clearly lesbians, particularly in the Progressive Era (1890-1920). Being Jewish shapes my sense of humor, my sense of difference – not unlike being a lesbian in many ways. I have written both novels and essays about this, and will be editing a new anthology of Jewish Feminist writing as an issue of Sinister Wisdom with Judith Katz in 2019.

·I’ve recently been reading on feminist theology – it was such a shock for me to find out there was a theology beyond the words and violence of religious men and their institutions. What role do you feel like feminist theology, and especially Jewish feminist theology, plays in the understanding of ourselves as spiritual yet rebellious women? And which are the main challenges faced by spiritual and religious feminists nowadays?

I know some religious Jewish feminists, many of whom locate their sense of spirituality in female presence, both in and out of scripture. Some of my friends believe in the sacred texts of Judaism, and have worked at re-interpreting & expanding them as both inclusive of and celebrating women. Poetry has always been what I look to for spiritual nourishment and direction – and the old texts are full of poetry as well as the violence and misogyny we have experienced. The challenges women face in religious institutions are primarily political, I think, as are our challenges everywhere in hierarchical organizations. If I were in charge of choosing "the" religious text, I would choose poetry and commentary by lesbians like Irena Klepfisz, Audre Lorde, Chrystos, Gloria Anzaldúa.

·As a lesbian, I so often feel like mainstream LGBTI activism focuses mainly on men’s experience of violence, prejudice and oppression. Nowadays there’s more of a focus on lesbian, bi, trans and intersex women’s History and identities, but I still feel like our needs are never met when it comes to the need for truly transversal and women-centric praxis and politics. How do you feel about this? What’s your insight on LGBTI people getting together to subvert the patriarchy and organize against its violence, meanwhile advocating for partial or even absolute lesbian separatism?

This is another book-length answer. My own desire and intelligence is fairly simple: I want to focus on women and lesbians because I believe we are worthy of each other's full attention. It is only within my lifetime that the word "lesbian" can be said out loud in public places – and still, not all that many. We have the right to know each other in each other's company – it's the first step to self-definition.

 I have also come to appreciate & participate in coalition work, and think coalitions are strongest where the participants in coalition come out of strong home-bases, whether we conceptualize those as separatist or not. I know we have to be aware of our enemies in an intersectional way (that is: constantly be alert to white-supremacy, colonialism, classism, ableism and misogyny). And it's clear that all those institutions of oppression exist within us, conscious or not. Being an activist means being alert to your own psyche, to grow and change. Yet I don't want reaction to oppression to be what defines my commitment. I want to work for a vision of a better world.

·You’re a prolific writer and editor. To me, like to many other women, culture is a weapon itself, or at least helps us make our own lived experiences and relationships into a weapon to fight the patriarchy. What’s the book scene like when it comes to being a woman who writes and edits, and especially when you’re unapologetically lesbian? What would your advice be for young lesbians like me out there who want to put their own words and art out there but are still scared and insecure about our own power?

The book scene – it depends which book scene in which country. In England, for instance, white lesbian writers have had quite a lot of mainstream success. In the U.S., not so much. But in the U.S., there are still a number of lesbian publishers – most successfully of genre fiction (mystery, romance, speculative), but also of "literary" fiction, non-fiction and poetry. There is one national conference a year specifically for lesbian writers (Golden Crown) and a number of regional ones. The LGBT literary conferences have been, in my experience, welcoming of lesbian participation. Getting published when you're starting out is a problem – and the proliferation of social media platforms makes it more complicated, harder to be heard in the general background noise.  

Advice to young lesbian writers: get into a writing support group of other lesbian writers (or any other writers with whom you feel kinship). Do not be afraid to share your ideas and inspirations with others, and start sending your work to journals and publications that reflect the communities you want to be part of. Some of my most wonderful friendships are with the lesbian writers I "came of age" with in the 1970s – we weren't often in the same place at the same time, but we shared the desire to write openly as lesbians about lesbian experience (as well as anything else we wanted to address).  Jewelle Gomez, Gloria Anzaldúa, Dorothy Allison, Irena Klepfisz, Chrystos – and the writers who came just before and after us – gave me a sense of the whole world. So – find your cohort, do your work, publish as soon as you can, be not afraid of what you think, nor of what others think of you. Do not be distracted by internet noise or a sense that you're not "getting enough out there." Writing is not easy work, but if it's what you experience as what you need to do, keep working.   

·Speaking of books, was there one what played a vital role in your own understanding of yourself as the person that you are nowadays, an unstoppable activist and creator?

The first novel I read  by a lesbian with "homosexual" themes was Nightwood by Djuna Barnes – a disturbing and clouded view of what happens to intimacy when people are despised. And then I read a lot of pulp fiction, in which lesbians always die or go straight. I guess these were formative in the sense that I determined to write a lesbian novel with a happy ending, and I was lucky to publish it with one of the first lesbian publishing houses, Daughters, Inc. in 1974. After that, Audre Lorde's Zami and Monique Wittig's Les Guérillères were critical to my development as a writer. I heard the  great bisexual poet, Muriel Rukeyser, read at an anti-Vietnam war rally in 1968 – the only woman among all the "cool" guys – and her moral determination and presence – an emissary of conscience from the world of women – had a profound affect on my ability to see myself as a poet & activist.

·Nowadays, it seems to me like social media is to everyone the main source of knowledge on politics and society, on our own identities and resistance too. We all tend to organize via social media, we raise awareness via social media and even call for action on there too. However, as a young lesbian mad woman with some experience with women’s organization in a former local feminist collective in my city, I feel like we should never forget the vital role that community meetings and actually getting together with other women-loving women to share our own experiences, to self-publish our own zines and to march and protest and even cry and rage together. What’s your insight on this? Is the political and activist scene much different to the way it was when you got started, and what do you think we’ve gotten better at and is there anything we’re losing track of?

See the end of my last answer about Muriel Rukeyser. It's important to show up in person. The internet is full of noise. Yes, it's much more possible to get the word out to many more people, and be aware of many more things at once. That's important. But it works against choosing – we are individuals with limited energy. We need to make conscious choices about where we want to put that energy and who we want to work with. Sometimes we get so overwhelmed by information that all we can do is sign petitions and witness from a distance. It's important to get together with others and work on specific things. No one can do everything, but everyone can do something. We tend to lose track of that – and it's one of the first lessons of activism: pick projects you can complete and feel proud of participating in.

·Last, I’m curious about your forthcoming projects and books. Could you tell us about anything you’re working on, and what’s the quote or mantra that stays with you when it comes to lesbian resistance?

I am currently working on a play about the moral dilemmas we face when those we're close to (partners, parents, siblings, friends) ask us to help them die. My spouse, Susan, developed Lewy Body dementia and a seizure disorder in the 25th year we were together – and died in the 27th. The play is inspired by my experience with her, and the experience of seeking counsel from many other women who have dealt in their own relationships with the right to die.  I am also going to edit an issue of Sinister Wisdom with Judith Katz on Jewish Lesbians next year. Those are my two main projects – I also have a book of poems or three on my hard drive, waiting to be organized.

A mantra? I've been stuck on this question for weeks. Because it's not a simple quote – it's a lifetime of gestures and interactions. It's Gloria Anzaldúa sitting on the floor of her house in Santa Cruz with me, drawing a picture of the Aztec god who was buried in dismembered pieces and rose again whole, to illustrate the challenge that we, as lesbian writers, faced. It's my partner Susan, after Lucy Jane Bledsoe came to the house the week Susan died, and gave us a private reading – raising her arms in joy, saying "So many Lesbians!" It's my first lover, from when we were 17, coming to my mother's funeral without my having to ask her. It's the delight of going to Jewelle Gomez's off-Broadway premiere of her play, Waiting for Giovanni.  It's my 40-year friendship with Dolphin, who spends most Friday nights with me since Susan died. It's all the connections – a litany of lesbian writers and friends with whom I've been privileged to be in conversation – and the depth of the kindness we have shown each other. No single quote covers it. But always keep the banners of friendship and kindness in view.