Pat Parker

Early life

Parker grew up working class poor in Third Ward, Houston, Texas, a mostly African-American part of the city. Her mother (born Marie Louise Anderson) was a domestic worker, and her father, Ernest Nathaniel Cooks retreaded tires.

When she was four years old, her family moved to Sunnyside, Houston, Texas.

She left home at seventeen, moved to Los Angeles, California, earning an undergraduate degree there at Los Angeles City College, and a graduate degree at San Francisco State College. She got married to playwright Ed Bullins in 1962. Parker and Bullins separated after four years. She later said that her ex-husband was physically violent and that she was "scared to death of him".

She got married a second time, to Berkeley, California writer Robert F. Parker, but decided that the "idea of marriage... wasn't working" for her.

Parker began to identify as a lesbian in the late 1960s, and, in a 1975 interview with Anita Cornwell, stated that "after my first relationship with a woman, I knew where I was going."

Work Life

Parker was involved in the Black Panther Movement, in 1979 she toured with the Varied Voices of Black Women, a group of poets and musicians which included Linda Tillery, Mary Watkins & Gwen Avery. She founded the Black Women's Revolutionary Council in 1980, and she also contributed to the formation of the Women's Press Collective, as well as being involved in wide-ranging activism in gay and lesbian organizing.

Parker worked from 1978-1987 as a medical coordinator at the Oakland Feminist Women's Health Center.

Writing

Parker gave her first public poetry reading in 1963 in Oakland. In 1968, she began to read her poetry to women's groups at Women's bookstores, coffeehouses and feminist events.

Judy Grahn, a fellow poet and a personal friend, identifies Pat Parker's poetry as a part of the "continuing Black tradition of radical poetry".

Cheryl Clarke, another poet and peer, identifies her as a "lead voice and caller" in the world of lesbian poetry. Designed to confront both black and women's communities with, as Clarke notes, "the precariousness of being non-white, non-male, non-heterosexual in a racist, misogynist, homophobic, imperial culture." Clarke believes that Parker articulates, "a black lesbian-feminist perspective of love between women and the circumstances that prevent our intimacy and liberation."

Pat Parker and Audre Lorde first met in 1969 and continued to exchange letters and visits until Parker's death in 1989. Their collaboration inspired many, including lesbian-feminist blues/R&B singer Nedra Johnson, whose song "Where Will You Be?" has become somewhat of a feminist anthem in the USA.

Womanslaughter

Parker's elder sister was murdered by her husband, and the autobiographical poem, Womanslaughter (1978) is based on this event.

In the poem, Parker notes that

The perpetrator was convicted of "womanslaughter", not murder; because

He served a one-year sentence in a work-release program. Parker brought this crime to the International Tribunal on Crimes against Women in 1976 in Brussels, vowing

Death

Parker died in 1989 of breast cancer at age 45. The national lesbian-feminist community mourned her loss, and several things have been named after her, such as Pat Parker Place, a community center in Chicago. She is survived by her long-time partner and two daughters, along with countless admirers and fans of her activism and poetry.

Tributes

Works

Where Will You Be?

Books

Non-fiction

Select anthologies