Pearl Cleage
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Pearl Cleage (born 7 December 1948) is an American poet, essayist, and journalist living in Atlanta, Georgia. An activist on issues including AIDS, women's rights, and black life, her first novel, What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997), was an Oprah Book Club selection and appeared on the New York Times best-seller list for nine weeks.
[edit] Biography
Cleage (pronounced "cleg") was born in Springfield, Massachusetts, the younger daughter of Doris Graham and Albert B. Cleage Jr. She grew up in Detroit, Michigan, where her father was a church pastor and played a prominent role in the civil rights movement.
After graduating from the Detroit public schools in 1966, Cleage enrolled at Howard University in Washington, D.C., where she majored in playwriting and dramatic literature. In 1969 she moved to Atlanta and enrolled at Spelman College, graduating in 1971 with a bachelor's degree in drama. She later joined the Spelman faculty as a writer and playwright in residence and as a creative director. In 1969 she married Michael Lomax, an Atlanta politician and educator and the current president of the United Negro College Fund. They have one daughter, Deignan Njeri. The marriage ended in divorce in 1979. Cleage married Zaron W. Burnett Jr., writer and director for the Just Us Theater Company, in 1994.
[edit] Writing
In her writing Cleage is zealous with regard to issues of black life she feels need a forum for discussion, and promotes practical education whenever possible. In the essay collection Deals with the Devil and Other Reasons to Riot (1993), she discusses sexism and domestic abuse. Of particular interest in this nonfiction volume is a section entitled "Mad at Miles" (which previously appeared in a self-published volume, Mad at Miles: A Blackwoman's Guide to Truth, in 1990) in which she criticizes jazz musician Miles Davis for brutality to women and draws parallels to abusive male behavior in everyday relationships. Among other topics, she also writes about the controversial hearings for Clarence Thomas's nomination to the U.S. Supreme Court as well as the controversies sparked by the film director Spike Lee and his work.
The novel What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day (1997) deals with the ins and outs of living a truthful life. After television personality Oprah Winfrey chose Cleage's first novel for her TV book club in September 1998, Cleage's work became known to a huge national audience.
In particular Cleage focuses on the issues of sex, drugs, and pregnancy, aiming to keep her message centered on black youth while presenting mature perspectives on coming to grips with good and bad life choices. In I Wish I Had a Red Dress (2001) Cleage returns to the characters from What Looks Like Crazy, focusing on the challenges modern-day black women face. Joyce, a minor character in Cleage's first novel, in I Wish I Had a Red Dress confronts the tragic elements of her past.
Set in southwest Atlanta, Cleage's third novel, Some Things I Thought I'd Never Do (2003), portrays utopian black Atlanta neighborhoods in pragmatic terms. Her trademark readable style that imparts a sense of immediacy is in evidence, as are characters who are flawed yet generous, sharing an Atlanta community's hopes and desires. Cleage highlights such Atlanta landmarks as Paschal's Restaurant, Lenox Square Mall, and Stone Mountain, as well as coastal Tybee Island. Using political themes Cleage addresses some of the same issues found in earlier works while grappling with newer ones, including reactions to the September 11, 2001, attacks on the World Trade Center in New York City. Continuing the inspirational, idealistic, and spiritual themes she explored in Red Dress, Cleage weaves in the themes of mysticism and reincarnation in Some Things.
[edit] Public life
Throughout her career Cleage has often been in the public eye. She worked as press secretary and speechwriter in the 1970s for Maynard Jackson, the first black mayor elected in the South after the American Civil War. Since then, her contribution to the Atlanta community has been intense and steady—finding expression in columns in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution and the Atlanta Tribune, in the pages of Catalyst, a literary journal she cofounded and edited, and in her work as a faculty member at Spelman.
Cleage's recent theatrical works include Bourbon at the Border, a full-length drama commissioned and premiered at the Alliance Theatre in 1997 under the direction of Kenny Leon, her frequent collaborator and then artistic director of the Alliance. Their previous collaborations include Blues for an Alabama Sky (1995) and Flyin' West (1992), both of which were also commissioned for and first performed at the Alliance Theatre. An anthology of her plays, Flyin' West and Other Plays (1999), offers a penetrating look at the African American experience over the past hundred years.
Blues for an Alabama Sky was performed in Atlanta as part of the 1996 Cultural Olympiad in conjunction with the 1996 Olympic Games. Since its opening, Flyin' West has had more than a dozen productions across the country, including one at the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. Cleage's work has also appeared in such anthologies as Double Stitch, Black Drama in America, New Plays from the Women's Project, and Contemporary Plays by Women of Color. Cleage has received numerous awards in recognition of her work, including the Bronze Jubilee Award for Literature in 1983 and the outstanding columnist award from the Atlanta Association of Black Journalists in 1991.
