#michelle cliff

[makingqueerhistory]

Michelle Cliff — Making Queer History

“To reject speechlessness, a process which has taken years, and to invent my own peculiar speech with which to describe my own peculiar self

Michelle Cliff died in 2016 at the age of 69. Much of her legacy is still fresh within the global consciousness, so to look at her, there is a unique opportunity to gain help from her posthumously. As a writer, she left behind a lot of work, much of which is described as semi-autobiographical. When discussing her work, she often pointed out how many of the stories she told, while different in specific details, were mirror images of her life. One of the characters she relied most heavily on to work through her life story was Clare Savage, a character who appeared in two of Cliff’s novels, Abeng and No Telephone to Heaven.

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[blackqueernotables]

Michelle Cliff: novelist, essayist, and editor

[bookfirstlinetourney]

Round 1

It was a Sunday morning at the height of the height of mango season.

-Abeng, Michelle Cliff

Marley was dead, to begin with.

-A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens

Ding-dong. The doorbell rings. I go to the door, open it, and stand face-to-face with a kangaroo.

-The Kangaroo Chronicles, Marc-Uwe Kling

Which is the best opening?

Abeng

A Christmas Carol

The Kangaroo Chronicles

Voting ended onJul 23, 2023

[yourdailyqueer]

Michelle Cliff (deceased)

Gender: Female

Sexuality: Lesbian

DOB: 2 November 1946  

RIP: 12 June 2016

Ethnicity: Jamaican, white

Occupation: Writer, poet

[adesireforhealing]

No. She was not crazy. There would be plenty of time for that. She smiled to herself. No. She was lonely. She was angry. Yes. That was all.

from No Telephone to Heaven by Michelle Cliff

[femlib]

Abeng Michelle Cliff, 1984

Ever since Abeng was first published in 1984, Michelle Cliff has steadily become a literary force. Her novels evoke both the clearly delineated hierarchies of colonial Jamaica and the subtleties of present-day island life. Nowhere is her power felt more than in Clare Savage, her Jamaican heroine, who appeared, already grown, in No Telephone to Heaven. Abeng is a kind of prequel to that highly-acclaimed novel and is a small masterpiece in its own right. Here Clare is twelve years old, the light-skinned daughter of a middle-class family, growing up among the complex contradictions of class versus color, blood versus history, harsh reality versus delusion, in a colonized country. In language that surrounds us with a richness of meaning and voices, the several strands of young Clare's heritage are explored: the Maroons, who used the conch shell—the abeng—to pass messages as they fought a guerilla struggle against their English enslavers; and the legacy of Clare's white great-great-grandfather, Judge Savage, who burned his hundred slaves on the eve of their emancipation. A lyrical, explosive coming-of-age story combined with a provocative retelling of the colonial history of Jamaica, this novel is a triumph. (x)

Purchase OpenLibrary

[ahistoryofanxietyandanxietyand]

For I have seen them...for I come here often, Harry/Harriet went on. "Some of our people, girlfriend...some of our ancestors. Now the slave hospital, that is truly something. Built from limestone and brain coral-held together by molasses, you know. Is what dem use to seal the stones. Were you to see it, with your English education, you might think it was the wreck of a stately home, for even now, a shell, it is splendid, with its rondels and arches.  "Why a hospital Harry ? Why dem bother ?" "Tek a lot of smaddy fe grow cane, missis. Cyaan have smaddy dying off-not when dem cost so. No, girlfriend. ...T'ink of de duppy in such a place, eh ? Dem nuh mus' crash together in de night... ? But, you know, t'ings not so different now. Do you know what happens on this island, still ? The lives of cutters, of timekeepers ? Why ? Oh sweetie, I am sorry to preach, for me know is preach me preach, and you come with me today to have some fun, but is hard, missis. Were we to sleep on this beach we might hear more than the breeze rattling the stalks, and singing through the blades. We might feel more than its warmth. We might hear more than our people celebrating cropover."

from No Telephone to Heaven by Michelle Cliff

[mournfulroses]

​I have grown so weary of interrupted conversations. That is what death is. It breaks off words between people. It leaves you with a longing for one last talk, or two, or three. A chance to say, ‘I do love you. I always will.’

— Michelle Cliff, from If I Could Write this in Fire; “And What Would It Be Like,”