I would say to young people about putting your body on the street, having never done that myself in any way that endangered my life, assess the purpo… - Cheryl Clarke

For a woman to be a lesbian in a male-supremacist, capitalist, misogynist, racist, homophobic, imperialist culture, such at that of North America, is an act of resistance.

As I said often about the Black Power/Black Arts Movements: we need our history, our culture, our literature. And this is what a whole multicultural generation of lesbians engaged in the 1980’s – creating cultural institutions so that we could live our lives with determination, decision, and yes, of course, pride.

When I read Homosexual: Oppression and Liberation by Dennis Altman in 1972, I came to understand the relationships among systems of oppression, issues of power over and enforced powerlessness–like my friend in her abusive marriage; or like African-Americans living in Mississippi particularly prior to World War II; or gay people trying to avoid detection in a government job during the McCarthy fifties. I got more involved in feminist thinking when I first came out as a lesbian in 1973, when I met up with black lesbians in a group called Salsa Soul Sisters, and through white lesbian friends of mine in New Brunswick, N.J.