Jewelle L. Gomez

Jewelle Gomez (b. 1948 in Boston, Massachusetts) is an American writer and cultural worker.

Gomez was raised by her great grandmother, Grace, who was born on Indian land in Iowa to an African American mother and Ioway father. Grace returned to New England before she was 14 when her father died and was married to John E. Morandus, a Wampanoag and descendent of Massasoit, the sachem for whom Massachusetts was named.

Growing up in the 1950s and 1960s she was shaped socially and politically by the close family ties with her great grandmother, Grace and grandmother Lydia. Their history of independence as well as marginalization in an African American community are threaded throughout her work. Her high school and college years were ripe with Black political and social movements which is reflected in much of her writing. Subsequent years in New York City placed her at the heart of Black theatre including work with the Frank Silvera Writers Workshop and many years as a stage manager for off Broadway productions.

There she became involved in lesbian feminist activism and magazine publication. She was a member of the Conditions (magazine) Collective, a lesbian feminist literary magazine. More recent writing has begun to reflect her Native American (Ioway, Wampanoag) heritage. Her work lives at the intersection of these multiple ethnicities, the ideals of lesbian/feminism and class.

Gomez is the author of seven books, but is most known for the double Lambda Literary Award winning novel The Gilda Stories (Firebrand Books, 1991). This novel, which reframes the traditional vampire mythology, taking a lesbian feminist perspective, is an adventure about an escaped slave who comes of age over two hundred years. According to scholar, Elyce Rae Helford, "Each stage of Gilda's personal voyage is also a study of life as part of multiple communities, all at the margins of mainstream white middle-class America." (UTOPIAN STUDIES, 3.22.01)

She also authored the theatrical adaptation of the novel Bones and Ash which toured 13 U.S. cities performed by the Urban Bush Women Company (1996). The book, which remains in print, was also issued by the Quality Paperback Book Club in an edition including the play.

Her other books include

Don't Explain

, a collection of short fiction;

43 Septembers

, a collection of personal/political essays;

Oral Tradition

, poems collected and new.

Her fiction and poetry is included in over one hundred anthologies including the first anthology of Black speculative fiction,

Dark Matter: A Century of African American Speculative Fiction

, from Warner Books, edited by Sheree R. Thomas;

Home Girls: a Black feminist Anthology

from Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press and

Best American Poetry of 2001

edited by Robert Haas.

Gomez has written literary and film criticism for numerous publications including The Village Voice, The San Francisco Chronicle, Ms. Magazine and Black Scholar.

She's been interviewed in periodicals and journals over the past 25 years including Advocate, where writer Victoria Brownworth discussed her writing origins and political interests (September 21, 1993). In the Journal of Lesbian Studies (Vol. 5, #3) she was interviewed for an article entitled "Funding Lesbian Activism," which linked her career in philanthropy with her political roots. She's also interviewed in the 1999 film produced for Public Television, After Stonewall, directed by John Scagliotti.

Her newest work includes a forthcoming comic novel, Televised, which recounts the lives of survivors of the Black Nationalist movement and was excerpted in the anthology

Gumbo

edited by Marita Golden and E. Lyn Harris.

She is also authoring a play about James Baldwin being written in collaboration with Harry Wate