Minnie Bruce Pratt was born September 12, 1946, in Selma,
Alabama, in the hospital closest to her hometown of Centreville. She graduated
from Bibb County High School when it was racially segregated and entered
the University of Alabama in Tuscaloosa a year after George Wallace "stood
in the schoolhouse door." Here in Tuscaloosa, she earned her B.A.
in English with membership in Phi Beta Kappa and Chi Omega sorority, married
and gave birth to her first son. While completing her Ph.D. in English
Literature at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, she also
received her education into the great liberation struggles of the 20th
century through grass-roots organizing with women in the army-base town
of Fayetteville, North Carolina, and through teaching at historically
Black universities.
For five years she was a member of the editorial collective of
Feminary:
A Feminist Journal for the South, Emphasizing Lesbian Visions.
Together with Elly Bulkin and Barbara Smith, she co-authored
Yours
In Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives On Anti-Semitism and Racism,
which has been adopted for classroom use in hundreds of college courses.
She has published five books of poetry,
The Sound of One Fork,
We Say We Love Each Other,
Crime Against Nature,
Walking Back Up Depot Street, and
The Dirt
She Ate: Selected and New Poems, recently issued by Pitt Poetry
Series.
Pratt's latest book,
The Dirt She Ate is described by the
New
York Times Book Review as "original, startling," and by
Publishers Weekly as "hard-edged and provocative," dealing
"directly and explicitly with issues of anger, shame, sexuality,
and injustice." Reviewer Joy Parks in
Gay Content Link says,
"If you read only one book of poetry this year,
The Dirt She Ate
should be it."
Recently Pratt served as the Jane Watson Irwin Chair in Women's Studies
at Hamilton College. She is also a member of the graduate faculty of The
Union Institute and University, a non-residential, alternative, Ph.D.-granting
university. Her areas of concentration there are Women's Studies, Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/
Transgender Studies, and Creative Writing. She lives with her partner,
transgender activist and writer Leslie Feinberg, in Jersey City, New Jersey.
For many years when I taught my "Women in the South" class at
the University of Alabama, I asked students to write an essay in which
they explored the question Pratt addressed in her essays, "Identity:
Skin Blood Heart" and "Rebellion": What has been done in
my name that I would like to challenge and/or change? Because this lecture
series is the first act done in my name that I can truly celebrate, I
asked that Minnie Bruce Pratt inaugurate the series. I knew the Inaugural
Rose Gladney Lecture on Justice and Social Change would set the tone and
the standard for subsequent lectures. In the power and beauty of her writing
and in her unfailing commitment to social justice activism in her own
life, Pratt exemplifies the standards which this lecture series is designed
to encourage. She understands that social justice does not come simply
through a change in 'attitudes'; real social justice requires changing
"the underlying economic structure of capitalism that constantly
re-invents prejudices and stereotypes." She is involved in fighting
U.S. imperialism at home and abroad. If you will explore all the links
of her webpage -
www.mbpratt.org - you will find more than I can tell
you; you will find a place where you can join the action.
I first met Minnie Bruce and heard her read her poetry in the late 1970s
in the conference rooms of an Atlanta hotel where we were among those
laying the groundwork for the first Women's Studies conference in
the Southeast. As I read her newest poems, once again I find her taking
us into a new place, demanding that we look with unflinching eyes, that
we see in the faces and bodies of our nearest neighbors the stories yet
to be written, that we hear in their words, the voices all around us –
on the streets where we live, the tongues, the hands, the backs, the language
we turn from or choose not to hear; hear the beauty in it, as well as
the pain, the anger; see what actions we must take in our own lives, where
we live every day, to bring about social justice. In welcoming her tonight,
I dare to borrow her metaphors: Come on sister, give us your words; slide
the stone from the cave's mouth; take us into the darkness; help
us advance toward the oracle of ourselves.
In establishing the context for the lecture series, Rose Gladney has written:
"This great experiment in democratic governance which we call America
draws strength from multiple human struggles to create not only a more
physically comfortable life, but also a just and equitable society. I
am fortunate to have grown into adulthood in the midst of the 20th century's
greatest examples of such struggle: the African-American liberation movement,
the women's liberation movement, and the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender
liberation movements—all symbols and symptoms of the larger human
struggle for justice and social change.
"For thirty-five years, my teaching and research reflected my
study of—as well as my participation in—these movements. In establishing
this lectureship on justice and social change, my colleagues, students,
family, and friends demonstrate their own commitment to the work that
gives our lives purpose, meaning, and great hope. I can think of nothing
more honorable to be done in my name. I am truly humbled and deeply
grateful."
