Finding Solace and Motivation in Black Lesbian Literature

Our Communications pre-professional, Alicia Perez, takes a deeper dive into our collections and finds a gem that perfectly aligns with her current journey at this time in her professional and personal life:

Just a few days before my college graduation, I discovered Jewelle Gomez’s Forty-Three Septembers(1993) in our Jean Blackwell Hutson Research and Reference Division. I remain stunned by how significantly the book has inspired me as I move to the next phase of life. This has been a difficult time for me, as it is for many other graduating students, but reading Gomez’s collection of essays has made this journey so much easier.

Forty-Three Septembers helped me gain more confidence in the experiences I’ve had and all I’ve accomplished. As a young Afro-Latina student, there have been many times that I felt as if I was the only person struggling with feeling like an outsider as a woman of color. Then, I came across this affirming passage from Gomez’s book:

I am left to wrestle with who I’m for and speaking to. I keep faith with the idea that my life can have meaning for others just as the lives of those who went before me have meaning in my life. I must insist that the combination of factors that make me who I am are as natural as the two Hs and the O constituting water.

It is the deeply personal way Gomez, 68, details conversations she had in the 1960s about black female sexuality that drew me to this book. For example, another essay titled “In The Telling,” she writes about Aunt Irene and Moms Mable—strong black women who dared to carry their blackness with pride and speak loudly about their experiences.

​Gomez's work is always biting, frank, and eye-opening, but Forty-Three Septembers particularly moved me. “I Lost It At The Movies,” the first essay in the collection, explores the challenges of transitioning to adulthood, self-acceptance, and navigating the world as a black woman. She writes from her experiences as a young black lesbian at a time when black male homosexuality was becoming more acceptable. 

After reading Gomez’s seminal work, and as I prepare to enter the adult world without the nurturing protection of a collegiate atmosphere, I’ve realized that I need to be equally as confident in my own life. In writing about her journey as a young black lesbian woman, Gomez tackles issues of classism, racism, homophobia, and sexism—all while creating a riveting narrative that engages readers and transcends race, sexual orientation, and age. We all can learn something from her earnest words and courage to live out loud.