Michelle Cliff

  
As
of 1999, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner,
poet Adrienne Rich. The two have been partnered since 1976.

Michelle
Cliff (born 2 November 1946) is a Jamaican-American author whose
notable works include No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng and Free Enterprise.

This
is the eighty-fourth post in a series highlighting the best gay and
lesbian authors from the 20th century (with a few before and after that
period) who have recorded in fiction, and nonfiction, the history of gay
people telling what life is, and was, during an important time of
history.

Cliff
also has written short stories, prose poems and works of literary
criticism. Her works explore the various, complex identity problems that
stem from post-colonialism, as well as the difficulty of establishing
an authentic, individual identity despite race and gender constructs.
Cliff is a bisexual who grew up in Jamaica.

Cliff
was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New
York City three years later.[1] She was educated at Wagner College and
the Warburg Institute at the University of London. She has held academic
positions at several colleges including Trinity College and Emory
University.

Cliff was a contributor to the Black feminist anthology Home Girls.

As
of 1999, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner,
poet Adrienne Rich. The two have been partnered since 1976.


Fiction
1998: The Store of a Million Items (New York: Houghton Mifflin Company). Short stories
1993: Free Enterprise: A Novel of Mary Ellen Pleasant (New York: Dutton). Novel
1990: Bodies of Water (New York: Dutton). Short stories
1987: No Telephone to Heaven (New York: Dutton). Novel (sequel to Abeng)
1985: Abeng (New York: Penguin). Novel

Prose poetry
The Land of Look Behind and Claiming.
1980:Identity They Taught Me to Despise.

Editor
1982: Lillian Smith, The Winner Names the Age: A Collection of Writings (New York: Norton).

Other
1982:
"If I Could Write This in Fire I Would Write This in Fire", in Barbara
Smith, ed., Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology (New York: Kitchen
Table: Women of Color Press).
1994: "History as Fiction, Fiction as History", Ploughshares Fall, 1994; 20(2-3): 196-202.
1990:
"Object into Subject: Some Thoughts on the Work of Black Women's
Artists," in Gloria Anzaldua, ed., Making Face, Making Soul/Haciendo
Caras: Creative and Critical Perspectives by Women of Color (San
Francisco: Aunt Lute) pp. 271-290.