{"id":56290,"date":"2018-04-24T13:49:38","date_gmt":"2018-04-24T13:49:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=56290"},"modified":"2018-04-24T14:11:43","modified_gmt":"2018-04-24T14:11:43","slug":"writing-in-fire-honoring-the-life-legacy-of-michelle-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=56290","title":{"rendered":"Writing in Fire: Honoring the Life & Legacy of Michelle Cliff"},"content":{"rendered":"

Writing in Fire: Honoring the Life & Legacy of Michelle Cliff<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Yomaira C. Figueroa, Ph.D.<\/a>
\n2017-06-28<\/p>\n

Yomaira C. Figueroa<\/strong><\/a>, Assistant Professor of Global Diaspora Studies
\nMichigan State University<\/em><\/p>\n

<\/a><\/p>\n

Michelle Cliff<\/a><\/strong> (Nov. 2, 1942-June 12, 2016) was an award-winning Jamaican novelist, essayist, critic, poet, scholar, and teacher. An influential author in Caribbean, feminist, and lesbian writings, some of her notable works include: Abeng<\/em><\/a>, No Telephone to Heaven<\/em><\/a>, Claiming an Identity They Taught Me to Despise<\/em><\/a>, Free Enterprise<\/em><\/a>, If I Could Write This In Fire<\/em><\/a>, and The Land of Look Behind<\/em><\/a>. Cliff’s work reflected many parts of her identity, contemporary sociopolitical concerns stemming from colonialism, and a critical investment in the Caribbean<\/a> and her diasporas. Her works examine the complexities of identity politics, lesbianism, colorism<\/a>, colonialism\/post-colonialism and revolution \u2013 both of the personal variety and the political. On June 22, 2017, we gathered at the Caribbean Philosophical Association Annual Meeting<\/a> in NYC<\/a> to honor her life and writing. This post includes the work of the roundtable participants. The roundtable, titled “‘Writing in Fire’: Honoring the Life & Legacy of Michelle Cliff” marked the second year that the Chair of Afro-Diasporic Literatures (me) and the Chair of the Initiative on Gender, Race, and Feminisms (Xhercis Mendez<\/a>) joined together to propose roundtables to honor Caribbean women writers at the CPA (at the 2016 we celebrated the 10th\/11th publication anniversary of M. Jacqui Alexander’s<\/a> Pedagogies of Crossing<\/em><\/a>). This year two Ph.D. students – Keishla Rivera<\/a> (Rutgers Newark) and Briona Jones<\/a> (Michigan State) – joined moderator Xhercis Mendez and I to reflect on the rich inheritance Michelle Cliff has left us. Below are excerpts from the reflections which engendered a powerful and generative dialogue across several topics, fields, and interests…<\/p>\n

Read the entire article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Michelle Cliff (Nov. 2, 1942-June 12, 2016) was an award-winning Jamaican novelist, essayist, critic, poet, scholar, and teacher.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,21,666,1196,8,25],"tags":[28560,80,28561,28559,2755,28558,28556,28557],"class_list":["post-56290","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-latincarib","category-gaylesbian","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","category-women","tag-briona-jones","tag-jamaica","tag-keishla-rivera","tag-m-jacqui-alexander","tag-michelle-cliff","tag-xhercis-mendez","tag-yomaira-c-figueroa","tag-yomaira-figueroa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56290","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=56290"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56290\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":56294,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/56290\/revisions\/56294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=56290"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=56290"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=56290"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}