GLR January-February 2023

the subject of the 2018 documentary, The Gospel According to André . An openly gay man, his death from Covid was followed by an outpouring of tributes from his many friends and fans. W RITERS AND S CHOLARS R ED J ORDAN A ROBATEAU , writer and artist, died on November 25th, 2021, at age 78. Born in Chicago of Honduran and African-American heritage, he was raised as a female and ini tially identified as a lesbian. Later, he identified as bisexual and transgender. His voluminous output of short stories, novels, plays, art catalogs, and poetry began in the 1970s. In his early years he was published by small presses and sold his writings in lesbian bars, bookstores, and on the street. He was one of the first trans persons of color to document LGBT street life. He appeared in several documentaries, including Transgender Tuesdays: A Clinic in the Tenderloin (2012). Nightboat Books will publish two of his books posthumously. He is survived by his partner, Dalila Jasmin.

manities and religion from the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco and taught at a number of colleges. He moved to the San Francisco area in 1978, becoming a member of BayArea Gay Liberation and campaigning against the Propo sition 6 Briggs initiative. His main scholarly interest was West ern paganism and its LGBT subtexts. His Blossom of Bone: Reclaiming Connections between Homoeroticism and the Sa cred (1993) was reviewed in this magazine. He is survived by his husband David Hatfield Sparks. T ERRANCE D EAN , writer and educator, died on August 11th at age 53. He was born in Detroit to a mother who later succumbed to complications from AIDS, as did two of his brothers. After college at Fisk University, he moved to New York and worked his way up at MTV, becoming an executive producer. He came out publicly in his 2008 memoir Hiding in Hip Hop: On the Down Low in the Entertainment Industry—from Music to Hol lywood , which shed light on the gay hip-hop subculture and down-low sex parties, at which he was a participant-observer. He later received a doctorate from Vanderbilt and served as as sistant professor of Black Studies at Denison University in Granville, Ohio. E LANA D YKEWOMON , writer, educator, and activist, died onAu gust 7th at age 72. Born in New York City, her family relocated to Puerto Rico when she was eight. She received an MFA from San Francisco State, where she later taught. Her first novel, Riverfinger Women (1974), published under her birth name (Elana Nachman), is No. 87 on the Publishing Triangle’s list of the 100 greatest gay and lesbian novels. She served in editorial

L EO B ERSANI , scholar, cul tural critic, and philosopher, died on February 20th at age 90. Born in the Bronx, he re ceived his doctorate in com parative literature from Harvard and taught at several universities, moving to UC Berkeley in the early 1970s. He spent the remainder of his career there, starting out as chair of the French depart ment. He wrote extensively

positions at the journal Sinister Wisdom from 1987 to ’95. She took the name Dykewomon, in the words of one critic, “to avoid ety mological connection with men.” She died moments before the streaming presentation of a staged reading of her play about her late spouse, Susan Levinkind, titled How to Let Your Lover Die .

about French writers and philosophers, becoming close friends with Michel Foucault. His 1987 essay “Is the Rectum a Grave?,” published in the journal October , was a provocation and much discussed. His 1995 Homos, a critique of queer the ory, was praised by some and disparaged by others. One of his most recent books was Thoughts and Things (2020), an essay collection. He is survived by his husband, Sam Geraci. M ARIE -C LAIRE B LAIS , novelist, playwright and poet, died on November 30th, 2021, at age 82. The oldest of five children in a working-class family in Québec City, she was forced to drop out of high school at age fifteen to help support her family. Moving to Montréal, she took a night course in creative writing, where her talent was immediately noticed. After her first novel La Belle Bête (1959) was championed by critic Edmund Wilson, she won a Guggenheim grant. Her best-known book was Une saison dans la vie d’Emmanuel (1965), though she may be bet ter known to lesbian readers for Les nuits de l’underground (1978), a study of Montréal’s lesbian scene in the 1970s. One of Canada’s most celebrated writers, she lived part-time in Key West for many years. She was predeceased by her partner, painter Mary Meigs. R ANDY P. C ONNER , writer and activist, died on May 5th at age 70. He received a master’s in English literature from the Uni versity of Texas at Austin, and in the ’70s he instituted the first gay and lesbian workshop there. He received a doctorate in hu January–February 2023

L ARS E IGHNER , author of the memoir Travels with Lizbeth , died on December 23rd, 2021, at age 73. He was remembered by Ray mond-Jean Frontain in the May-June 2022 issue. &BOOKLOVERS READERS ATTENTION Tim’s UsedBooks 242 Commercial Street, Provincetown, MA timsusedfilms@gmail.com | 508-487-0005 | Open year-round. Are TIM’S USED BOOKS of Provincetown has been traveling throughout the Northeast since 1991, buying book collections, large and small. Scholarly, gay interest, the arts—all genres. Immediate payment and removal.

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