SaraEllen Strongman presents "Our Own Magazine": Building Black Lesbian Community in Azalea, 1977-1983

Talk Abstract

The third world lesbian feminist literary magazine Azalea: A Magazine by Third World Lesbians was a site for the production of both black lesbian literature and black lesbian life. This talk analyzes how the magazine's pages and the two Third World Lesbian Writers conferences it hosted in 1979 and 1980 affirmed black lesbian identity and desire. By platforming writing by black lesbians, Azalea made clear its community of readers and writers were not alone and built a life-sustaining community.

About SaraEllen Strongman

SaraEllen Strongman is an interdisciplinary scholar working at the intersection of Black Studies and Gender and Sexuality Studies. She researches and writes about Black feminisms, Black women's political and cultural history, and African American literature. She received her Ph.D. in Africana Studies from the University of Pennsylvania. Prior to joining DAAS as an assistant professor, SaraEllen spent two years as an LSA Collegiate Postdoctoral Fellow. Her first book project The Social Life of Black Feminism traces how the development of Black feminist thought during the1970s and 1980s was a communal and deeply social project. I trace how Black women worked alongside each other, if not always together, to build the body of thought we now know as Black feminism. Specifically, I argue that these social relationships were routed through the textual forms and can be found and traced via literary culture. I analyze multiple sites and scales of Black feminist sociality and literary culture, ranging from bibliographies, to letters, to ground-breaking conferences. Her work has been published in American Studies Quarterly, Feminist Theory, Feminist Studies, Sinister Wisdom, and The Washington Post.