Barbara Smith, from Changing The World: Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press, from Happy Endings: Lesbian Writers Talk About Their Lives And Work, by Kate Brandt, the Naiad Press, 1993:
["Kitchen Table also is committed to readers, as well as to writers, of color. "I think that every organization, to be successful, has to have a focus" Smith notes. "And we chose, as our target audience, the most difficult audience to reach. Because it's not going to be any problem for us to get our books to white feminists, to lesbians, and to gay men. What will be a real challenge is to get the books and the ideas to people of color who may have never related to the women's movement, who may indeed be homophobic— those are the people we really want to shake up. So, of course, we're going to put more effort into that.
Still, Smith says, "I think it's important for white women to read about the experiences of people who are different from themselves. If you only read books by people who look exactly like you, and who have the same identities that you do, then you are participating in intellectual or literary segregation. I feel that books are great windows. I think that they can be a way for people to begin to see, as real, people vey different from themselves, and to take us seriously and to connect with us in some very important ways, both politically and emotionally.
"[But] it's not enough merely to read. There [are] some white women I've seen who think they're experts on women of color because they've read all the right books. If they are not trying to challenge Apartheid U.S.A. in a very visceral and daily way, in tandem with other people, going into those places in their communities where other people are fighting racism as well as other oppressions— if they're not doing that, they can read all the books in the world— [that's not enough]!"
But while Smith believes that knowledge from books needs to be accompanied by work in political movements, she does not favor activism without some intellectual foundation. "Anybody who is serious politically better be reading something!" Smith exclaims. "There's an integral relationship between activism and ideology, and activism and theory. [Activists] at least need to read movement history, and find out about other times when people really got together to make a difference."
To Smith, "Good writers capture the consciousness of a historical era, of a movement, of a people. But they put it down in a form that allows people to respond to that lived reality in a way that no other form can. I know that the visual media has completely taken over as far as most people's way of getting information. But I think that well-thought-out prose and poetry will always have an impact in a society. Everyone needs to be literate, and we need to provide things for our children to read.”
Smith is very specific about what it is she'd like to see people reading. "I'd like to see writers [with] the kind of power and politics that have characterized the work of people like Audre Lorde, Pat Parker, and perhaps myself," Smith explains, "because I think that it really is that political and radical revolutionary stance that gives the writing of those other two women, and hopefully myself, the power."
"I really am not into belles lettres, and I'm not into careerism, and I'm not into light reading. I really feel that literature, if it's going to do its work, should be about changing the world and changing consciousness on an incredibly profound level. It's not enough just to have a lot of writing available."
Not that Smith necessarily sees "a lot of writing available" by women of color. "When I go into women's bookstores, looking for writing by women of color— particularly lesbians of color— I don't see very much," Smith declares. "The situation of most lesbians of color is quite hampered by the realities of economic oppression, racism, sexism, and homophobia. That combination of oppressions really mitigates against [having] the time to be a full-time, or even a half-time, professional writer, and it also can cut into people's confidence about their capacity to do that."
[...] What about Smith's own writing? What would she be writing if Kitchen Table didn't take up so much of her time? "I have never stopped writing!" Smith points out. "[But] the major thing I haven't been able to do is concentrate on writing fiction. I want to complete a collection of short stories. I guess I'm probably a slow writer as far as fiction is concerned. But I really know that I can't be bogged down with the details of running the press on a daily basis [and still write]."]
