Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology is a collection of Black lesbian

Lesbian

Lesbian is a term most widely used in the English language to describe sexual and romantic desire between females. The word may be used as a noun, to refer to women who identify themselves or who are characterized by others as having the primary attribute of female homosexuality, or as an...

 and Black feminist writing, edited by Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...

. The anthology was first published in 1983 by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press

Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press was an activist feminist press started in 1980 by author Barbara Smith at the suggestion of her friend, poet Audre Lorde.-Beginnings:...

, and was reissued by Rutgers University Press

Rutgers University Press

Rutgers University Press is a nonprofit academic publishing house, operating in Piscataway, New Jersey under the auspices of Rutgers University.-History:...

 in 2000 .

History

The book grew out of Conditions (magazine)

Conditions (magazine)

Conditions was a lesbian feminist literary annual founded in 1976 in Brooklyn, New York by Elly Bulkin, Jan Clausen, Irena Klepfisz and Rima Shore.-Publishing Collective:Conditions was a magazine which emphasised the lives and writings of lesbians, and, throughout its...

's November 1979 issue, (Conditions 5; the Black Women's Issue), originally edited by Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith

Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...

 and Lorraine Bethel

Lorraine Bethel

Lorraine Bethel is an African American lesbian feminist poet and author. She is a graduate of Yale University.Bethel has taught and lectured on black women's literature and black female culture at various institutions...

. Conditions 5 was "the first widely distributed collection of Black feminist writing in the U.S."

Contributors

• Cheryl L. Clarke
• Michelle Cliff
  Michelle Cliff
  Michelle Cliff is a Jamaican-American author whose notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.Cliff also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary criticism...
  
  
• Barbara Smith
  Barbara Smith
  Barbara Smith in Cleveland is an American, lesbian feminist who has played a significant role in building and sustaining Black Feminism in the United States. Since the early 1970s she has been active as an innovative critic, teacher, lecturer, author, independent scholar, and publisher of Black...
  
  
• Bernice Johnson Reagon
  Bernice Johnson Reagon
  Bernice Johnson Reagon is a singer, composer, scholar, and social activist, who founded the a cappella ensemble Sweet Honey in the Rock in 1973.-Early life and education:...
  
  
• Jewelle Gomez
  Jewelle Gomez
  Jewelle Gomez is an American author, poet, critic and playwright. She lived and worked in New York City for twenty-two years working in public television, theatre as well as philanthropy before relocating to the West Coast...
  
  
• June Jordan
  June Jordan
  June Millicent Jordan was a Caribbean American poet, novelist, journalist, biographer, dramatist, teacher and committed activist...
  
  
• Alice Walker
  Alice Walker
  Alice Malsenior Walker is an American author, poet, and activist. She has written both fiction and essays about race and gender...
  
  
• Audre Lorde
  Audre Lorde
  Audre Lorde was a Caribbean-American writer, poet and activist.-Life:...
  
  
• Luisah Teish
  Luisah Teish
  Luisah Teish is an author, storyteller, and priestess of the Ifá/Orisha faith from New Orleans, Louisiana.She is the founder and president of Ile Orunmila Oshun, and holds a chieftancy title in the Fatunmise lineage as head Oshun Priest in the United States...
  
  
• Toi Derricotte
  Toi Derricotte
  Toi Derricotte is an American poet and a professor of writing at University of Pittsburgh.At Wayne State University she earned a B.A. in 1965 and an M.A...
  
  

and others...

See also

• Lesbianism
• Black feminism
  Black feminism
  Black feminism argues that sexism, class oppression, and racism are inextricably bound together. Forms of feminism that strive to overcome sexism and class oppression. The Combahee River Collective argued in 1974 that the liberation of black women entails freedom for all people, since it would...
  
  
• Womanism
  Womanism
  The word womanism was adapted from Pulitzer Prize winning author Alice Walker's use of the term in her book In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose...
  
  
• Critical social theory
• African-American literature