Newsday from New York, New York • 133

1 i -V 1 117 3 THE NEW YORK NEWSDAY INTERVIEW WITH JOAN NESTLE Saluting Feminism and Queer Courage demic field? JL Im a co-founder of a grassroots organization in existence since 1973, so part of me is suspicious of the sort of fashionable academic seizing of these subjects. There are so many brilliant people from the gay community who have brought new insights to gender and the deconstructionist perspective, that theres a rich source of good minds for the field. But I question how long our being in intellectual favor will last. I also see sometimes a distancing from our daily lives in the convoluted if ARcimt Ql Youre giving the first annual David R. Kessler Lecture at the Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (CLAGS) tomorrow.

What is the occasion, and how were you chosen for this honor? JL Its inaugurating a series, endowed by Kessler, a San Francisco psychoanalyst and a generous donor, to honor lifelong commitment to the gay and lesbian community. Im totally surprised to be the recipient, but I look forward to it as a chance to raise some issues about doing lesbian and gay history work from a race and dess perspective, and as a time to keep alive the spirit of Mabel Hampton, an 87-year-old African-American lesbian who died two years ago in October. Q. How does Mabel Hampton fit in with your dedication, as a co-founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives, to preserving the histories of lesbian lives? IL Mabel Hampton was a domestic worker and, from time to time, an entertainer in Harlem and in the Village in the 1920s. She lived with another woman for 45 years in the Bronx.

She represents whats at the heart of the archives. In most traditional cultural institutions, her life would pass from our view, but we believe any woman who has the courage to touch another woman is a famous lesbian. Mabel Hamptons life suggests another paradigm for doing history not around coming out or bar culture, but around daily survival as a worker and an African-American woman who never apologized for her sexual life. Q. How did you know Mabel Hampton? JL When I was 12 years old, she came to work for my mother.

That relationship ended quickly because of our own familial instability. But she and mother went on to bond largely over their shared love of the racetrack! I had my own relationship with Mabel because she was the first lesbian I knew. When I was coming out at 18, she encouraged me to pursue my passion. We stayed friends, and after her lover died in 1978, she lived in my apartment off and on. After she had a stroke, she came to live with my lover and me for two years.

I HsH a chance to reverse the caretaking roles, and to learn how deeply embedded the racial script of black women taking care of white women is in our culture. People in my building couldnt understand seeing a white woman pushing a black woman in a wheelchair. Q. Will your talk, entitled I Lift My Face to the Hill: The Life of Mabel Hampton As Told By a White Woman, address race and class issues? JL We all need an integration of work and love and cultural expression its the concept of bread and roses. Im basing my talk on the documents Mabel left.

They were hard to come by- She had to work a long time to get a birth certificate. She came from Winston-Salem, N. C. Her history begins with the Middle Passage the shipment of slaves from Africa to America, where so much African ancestry was lost. These documents take on a poignancy Mabel striving to put herself in history by valuing documents that testified to what she managed to wrestle from life: bread and beauty.

She kept programs from the National Negro Opera, from a Paul Robeson concert. All my work is based on collages like this, piecing together the fabric of a life with excerpts from oral histories, letters, documents and research to put them in a historical context. Q. CLAGS is a research center based at the City University of New York. A number of universities around the country are offering courses in gay and laahian studies.

What do you think of this new aca JL Right up to the 70s, to be gay meant to be under state surveillance. The places we went were under vice squad or police watch. The most profound symbol of that was how one had to dress to prevent the state from taking away ones liberty. If the police could prove a woman was dressed in mens clothing, she would be arrested for transvestism. So you have these poignant scenes of, for instance, a butch woman sewing lace on her socks.

Its a powerful symbol of womens courage its both feminism and queer courage. That woman definitely belongs in the pantheon of feminist heroes. Q. Are you interested in addressing straight audiences? JL Understanding gay and lesbian history and culture is not just important for gays and lesbians. It realty transforms history; its always a current running in a different direction.

If you take the 50s and how that period is neatly perceived as an era of conformity and then go in dose, you see the gay and lesbian community in the heyday of a public bar community. Its not just a period of men and women running to get married. My feeling is, if you bring the historical lens in close to any marginal community, you will find the typically perceived patterns broken. Enlarging the scope of whos important makes our understanding of human life more profound. Q.

Youve also co-edited a volume of lesbian fiction called Women on Women, which came out in 1990 and Bold 27,000 copies. Now youve been asked to do a second volume, to be published next June. Did it surprise you that a mainstream publisher New American Library was interested in a lesbian anthology? JL Theyre finding were profitable! The success of the book is a good message to publishers. Q. Tell me more about the Lesbian Herstory Archives.

JL Its the first and largest collection of lesbian documents in the world. It began in my apartment, much like the Schomburg I Center for Research in Black Culture started in Arthur A. Schomburgs home, and for much the Bame reason: He was told blacks have no history. Coming from the 50s, when we were dirty jokes or criminals, or subjects of penal codes, I derided we had to leave a different legacy. Through a national campaign, we managed to raise enough money to buy a building in Brooklyn to be the archives permanent home.

We hope to open in December. Q. How big is the collection, and what does it comprise? JL There are 50,000 books. Plus journals, periodicals, unpublished manuscripts, posters, crafts, T-shirts, buttons, documents and objects of all sorts relating to lesbian life. Ql Gays and lesbians were a target of attack by Republicans in the recent presidential campaign.

As an activist in the community for more than 30 years, what do you make of these renewed attacks? JL My sense is that were in a battle for our lives, and during the four years Clinton is in, fundamentalist movements of all kinds will continue in small steps and subtle takeovers. Using gays as scapegoats is an effective organizing force for them. That makes things like our archives and our cultural centers even more important. Q. How does the mood compare to the 50a? JL Its scarier now.

In the 50s we knew how to survive underground. Joan Nestle is an activist and. founder of the Lesbian Herstory Archives in Brooklyn. Alisa Solomon for jNew York iNewsday 1 -I. i 1 language of academic theory.

Thats another reason I chose to speak about Mabel Hampton. Q. Why is this movement toward gay and lesbian studies happening now? JL Partly its our own impetus: were demanding it. Theres a great desire in our own community to leave a legacy because of the aging of the community as a movement and because of AIDS. Another factor is the whole stressing of multi culturalism, which has offered some nod in our direction, recognizing us as an original and different contributory voice.

And its profitable. There are a lot of gay and lesbian graduate students and, more generally, a lot of curiosity about gender and sexuality mid these are the courses that get heavy enrollment. As suspicious as I might be, I want us to make the best use of this opening as we can. Q. You recently edited an anthology called The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader.

Is this part of the new discourse? JL My experience predates the discourse. Im fascinated by how real, lived experience becomes mythological and becomes theory. I think thats whats happening. Anything that questions a given is healthy. But thats not the same thing as an actual womans life in the 50s, when she had to wear three pieces of womens clothing to avoid being arrested.

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