Works by
Cheryl Clarke
(Poet, Writer)

• Narratives: Poems in the Tradition of Black Women (1982)

• Living As a Lesbian: Poetry (1986)

• Humid Pitch: Narrative Poetry (1989)

• Experimental Love: Poetry (1993)

• After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement  (2005)
  The politics and music of the sixties and early seventies have been the subject of scholarship for many years, but it is only very recently that attention has turned to the cultural production of African American poets.

  In "After Mecca," Cheryl Clarke explores the relationship between the Black Arts Movement and black women writers of the period. Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Jayne Cortez, Alice Walker, and others chart the emergence of a new and distinct black poetics and its relationship to the black community’s struggle for rights and liberation. Clarke also traces the contributions of these poets to the development of feminism and lesbian-feminism, and the legacy they left for others to build on.

  She argues that whether black women poets of the time were writing from within the movement or writing against it, virtually all were responding to it. Using the trope of "Mecca," she explores the ways in which these writers were turning away from white, western society to create a new literacy of blackness.

  Provocatively written, this book is an important contribution to the fields of African American literary studies and feminist theory.

• The Days of Good Looks: The Prose and Poetry of Chery Clark -- 1980-2005 (2005) -- Finalist, 2006 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry
  Lauded by luminaries such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Adrienne Rich, and Joy Harjo, among others, the work of African American lesbian poet Cheryl Clarke has spoken on behalf of the black, feminist and gay movements for more than 25 years. Her writing has earned her distinction as a contemporary black feminist icon in the tradition of June Jordan. In fact, few writers have tackled hot-button issues of race and sexuality with as much force or fearless humor as Clarke. The Days of Good Looks — her first new book of poetry in a decade — collects the author's most popular poems and essays along with an array of new unpublished writing.

• Corridors of Nostalgia: Poetry by Cheryl Clarke (2007 release)

See also:

• This Bridge Called My Back: Writings By Radical Women Of Color (1984) by Cherrie Moraga and Gloria Anzaldua

• Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology by Barbara Smith (1983)

• Bluestones and Salt Hay: An Anthology of Contemporary New Jersey Poets (1990)

• Gay and Lesbian Poetry in Our Time (1989) by Carl Morse and Joan Larkin

• The Persistent Desire: A Femme-Butch Reader (1992) by Joan Nestle; (Nestle, ed.)

• Dangerous Liaisons: Blacks, Gays, and the Struggle for Equality (1999) by Eric Brandt

• Black Like Us: A Century of Lesbian, Gay, and Bisexual African American Fiction (2002), Devon W. Carbado, Donald Weise, Dwight A. McBride, and Evelyn C. White, eds.