Лоррейн Бетел: афроамериканская поэтесса, феминистка и активистка

African American lesbian feminist poet and author
Lorraine Bethel is an African American lesbian feminist poet and author.

She is a graduate of Yale University. Bethel has taught and lectured on black women's literature and black female culture at various institutions. She currently works as a freelance journalist in New York City.

She participated in the Combahee River Collective, an organization that was part of the Women's Liberation Movement in the 1960s and 1970s. The Combahee River Collective was a black feminist group founded in Boston in 1974. It fought against racial, sexual, heterosexual, racial stereotypes and class oppression.

In an issue of off our backs, a feminist news journal, a participant recounts her experience in the 3rd World Lesbian Writers Conference on February 24, 1979 at New York City's Women's Center, in which Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith moderated one of the five workshops available. In their workshop, called "Third World Feminist Criticism", Bethel and Smith discussed various topics such as the definition of "criticism", criticism as a "creative" art, white feminism versus black feminism, intersectional feminism, and the unification of black lesbians. Later that year, in November 1979, Lorraine Bethel and Barbara Smith guest edited "The Black Women's Issue" of Conditions: Five, a literary magazine primarily for black lesbian women. In the introduction, it is stated that the issue "disproves the 'non existence' of Black feminist and Black lesbian writers and challenges forever our invisibility, particularly in the feminist press." Bethel wrote the poem, "What Chou Mean We, White Girl? Or, The Cullud Lesbian Feminist Declaration of Independence", which was published in this issue.

ISIS. "Herstory in the Making." Off Our Backs Apr 30 1979: 20. ProQuest. Web. 22 May 2016
McDowell, Deborah E. Black American Literature Forum 16.2 (1982): 77–79. Web. Philyaw, Deesha. "Conditions: Five." Bitch Media, 5 May 2009. Web. 21 May 2016.