Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Contents

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz is a lesbian essayist, poet, activist and academic, born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York.[1]

Early life

Her grandparents emigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe, Poland and Russia.[2]

Kaye/Kantrowitz was active in the Harlem Civil Rights Movement as a teenager.

When she was 17, she worked with the Harlem Education Project, a project of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee. About this she says “It was my first experience with a mobilizing proud community and with the possibilities of collective action.”[3]

She associates her activism with her Jewish upbringing, stating that it was related to her family's Jewish cultural and political heritage “as much as the candles we lit for Hanukkah, or the Seders where bread and matzoh shared the table.’ She states in her essay, To Be a Radical Jew in the Late 20th Century that her “parents had not pushed (her) into activism, yet clearly they raised (her) to do these things.”[2]

In 1966 Kaye/Kantrowitz left New York for Graduate School in Berkeley, California. From there, she moved to Portland, Oregon, remaining there until 1979. She then spent a couple years in New Mexico.[4]

Activism

Kaye/Kantrowitz has described herself as a “Conscious Jew”.[1]

Along with Nancy Bereano, Evelyn T. Beck, Bernice Mennis, Irena Klepfisz and Adrienne Rich, Kaye/Kantrowitz was a member of Di Vilde Chayes (English: The Wild Beasts), A Jewish feminist group that examined and responded to political issues in the Middle East, as well as to antisemitism.[5][6]

In 1990, she acted as a founding director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice a progressive Jewish organization focused mostly on anti-racist work and issues of economic justice.[7][8]

Around that time, she also co-founded Beyond the Pale: The Progressive Jewish Radio Hour, a radio program aired weekly on WBAI (99.5 FM) which “mixes local, national, and international political debate and analysis, from a progressive Jewish perspective with the voices and sounds of contemporary Jewish culture”.[1]

Kaye/Kantrowitz has also served on the steering committee of the group New Jewish Agenda.[9]

Academia

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz taught the first Womens studies course at the University of California at Berkeley. She has also taught at Hamilton College, Brooklyn College/CUNY, and Vermont College,[1] and currently teaches at Queens College in Jewish Studies, History and Comparative Literature.

Publications

Published works include:

Kaye/Kantrowitz has also contributed to anthologies like:

She also edited the Lesbian periodical Sinister Wisdom from 1983 to 1987.[10]

References

  1. ^ a b c Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz. ‘’The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology’’, 1986, ISBN 0931103029, p324
  2. ^ a b Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz. ‘’The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology’’, 1986, ISBN 0931103029, p264
  3. ^ Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz. ‘’The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology’’, 1986, ISBN 0931103029, p266/286 note
  4. ^ Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz. ‘’The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology’’, 1986, ISBN 0931103029, pp267-8
  5. ^ Kaye/Kantrowitz, Klepfisz. ‘’The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women’s Anthology’’, 1986, ISBN 0931103029, p7
  6. ^ Mankiller, Wilma Pearl. The Reader's Companion to U.S. Women's History, Houghton Mifflin, 1998, ISBN 0618001824, p339
  7. ^ Dykewomon, Elana. ‘’Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz: Phone Interview from NYC, Nov. 27, 1993”, ‘’Sinister Wisdom’’ Issue 52, Allies, Spring/Summer 1994, p27
  8. ^ "Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz". Jewish Women and the Feminist Revolution. Jewish Women's Archive. http://jwa.org/feminism/?id=JWA040. Retrieved 2008-07-02. 
  9. ^ Barrington, Judith. ‘’An Intimate Wilderness: Lesbian Writers on Sexuality’’, The Eighth Mountain Press, 1991, ISBN 0933377096, p289
  10. ^ Masthead ‘’Sinister Wisdom’’ Issue 52, Allies, Spring/Summer 1994, interior cover page