Name Michelle Cliff | Role Author | |
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Nominations Lambda Literary Award for LGBT Nonfiction Books No Telephone to Heaven, Abeng, Free enterprise, If I Could Write This In Fire, The store of a million items Born 2 November 1946 (age 69), Kingston, Jamaica Died 12 June 2016 (aged 69) | ||
Life of Michelle Cliff
Michelle Carla Cliff (2 November 1946 – 12 June 2016) was a Jamaican-American author whose notable works included Abeng, No Telephone to Heaven, and Free Enterprise.
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Cliff also wrote 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 was a lesbian who grew up in Jamaica.
Biography
Cliff was born in Kingston, Jamaica, in 1946 and moved with her family to New York City three years later. 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 1983 Black feminist anthology Home Girls.
From 1999 on, Cliff was living in Santa Cruz, California, with her partner, poet Adrienne Rich. The two were partners from 1976; Rich died in 2012.
Cliff died of liver failure on 12 June 2016.
Fiction
Prose poetry
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Feminism
in 1981, Cliff became an associate of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press.