Her first novel was turned down by several publishers, then embraced by a feminist press. As an author, poet, playwright and activist, she has continued to claim space for queer storytellers
idley Scott’s Alien holds a special place in the heart of Jewelle Gomez, but not simply because Sigourney Weaver’s Ellen Ripley was just her type. “If you were going to come out, that was the movie to come out to,” she says with a chuckle over video call from her home office in San Francisco. The year was 1979, Gomez was 31, and her mother, Dolores, and grandmother, Lydia, were in New York City for a visit when they went to see the sci-fi horror at a cinema near Times Square.
The Gilda Stories’ vampire mantra of “we take blood, not life, and leave something in exchange” defined a new generation of supernatural storytelling. It also exemplified the tenets of inter-community solidarity that Gomez had become accustomed to as an activist in the Black Power, feminist and LGBTQ movements of the 70s and 80s. “Writing speculative fiction has been a political act for me,” she says.
Gomez knew she was lesbian at the age of 11 but it wasn’t until her sophomore year at her all-girls’ school that she experienced her first love affair with a classmate. “We saw each other and regularly stayed over at each other’s houses; I loved her,” she says. It was, of course, a secret relationship, yet the queer community was no secret to Gomez.
King’s death marked a turning point for Gomez, who soon began a work placement on Say Brother, a Black-focused programme for a Boston public TV station. “To work on an educational, cultural television show with a predominantly African American staff really did change my life socially,” she remarks. She was also developing her activist voice on campus as the editor of the Black student newspaper, and successfully campaigned for an African American student union building, but it wasn’t all work.
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