Black Lesbian Literary Legacies: Penny Mickelbury
/My new blog series, Black Lesbian Literary Legacies, begins with Penny Mickelbury: writer, playwright, and award-winning journalist. Recently, I had the pleasure of speaking with Penny, and she shared with me a wealth of knowledge and wisdom about writing and identity. I’m honored to share our conversation with you here.
Penny Mickelbury is a pioneering newspaper, radio and television journalist, based primarily in Washington, DC, who also is a teacher of both children (at a Los Angeles Charter Middle School) and adults (in the Los Angeles Public Library’s Adult Literacy Program.) She is an award-winning writer of stage plays and a co-founder of Alchemy: theatre of Change, a young people’s acting company. She is the recipient of the Audre Lorde Estate Grant and she was a resident writer at the Hedgebrook Women Writers Retreat.
She is author of a collection of stories, God’s Will and Other Lies, which joins her catalog of eleven published mystery novels in three successful series: The Mimi Patterson/Gianna Maglione Mysteries (two-time Lambda Literary Award finalists); the Carole Ann Gibson Mysteries (winner of a Gold Pen Award by the Black Writers Alliance); and the Phil Rodriquez Mysteries; and the novel of historical fiction, Belle City.
Stephanie (SAA): You are a novelist, playwright, and journalist with a career spanning decades. Can you tell the children how your writing career got started?
Penny (PM): I always, always, always wanted to write! I initially wanted to be a playwright (and that’s a passion I still feed at every opportunity), but coming of age in the South I saw how powerful the Press was in documenting the Civil Rights Movement and decided I wanted to be a reporter, that I wanted to do the kind of writing that made a difference. Long story short, I became the first Black reporter at the Athens (Georgia) Banner-Herald newspaper. From there I was hired into the Washington Post internship program for the Summer of 1971, after which I was hired as a staff reporter. From the Post I transitioned to a radio reporter, then to a television reporter, and then into management as the Assistant News Director. Finally, after almost 20 years as a journalist, I re-embraced my dream of being another kind of writer and moved to New York in November of 1987 to become a starving artist. I sold my first novel to Naiad Press in the early 1990s.
SAA: Were you ever a part of any writing communities? And if so, can you describe your experience?
PM: Once: In Atlanta I belonged to Working Title Playwrights, a play development organization designed to offer feedback and constructive criticism to playwrights with works in progress. One of my plays, Hush Now, was chosen to receive a staged reading at the Alliance Theatre’s Black Box performance space--a very big deal which was supposed to have resulted in a full production somewhere. Never happened. I was also commissioned to write a 10 minute play to inaugurate what was to be a new theater to showcase the work of “women of a certain age”-- actors, writers, directors--all theatre professionals. That didn’t happen, either. My work was also chosen and highlighted three years in a run for the One Minute Play Festival, a national event with Atlanta being just one of the cities. Again, no further progress. So endeth my involvement with writing communities. Was my being Black and female a factor? Almost certainly.
SAA: I met you a few years ago at a conference for lesbian writers, and we were introduced by one of my other Black lesbian literary foremothers, Jewelle Gomez. I was so very excited to meet you, and I’ll admit I was a little mad at myself for not discovering your work sooner, given my obsession with Black lesbian writing. Have you ever faced any challenges in the publishing industry based on your identity as a Black lesbian? If so, would you share an example with us?
PM: My first novel, a mystery, was published by Naiad Press, a lesbian publisher, so... My mysteries also were published by Simon and Schuster because mysteries were “the thing” for a while. But I believe the difficulties I experienced when I tried to broaden my horizons--to write outside the mystery genre--were due to my unapologetic Blackness. White publishers prefer to have Black stories told...filtered...through the eyes of white writers. The current brouhaha over the white woman who wrote a novel about the trials and tribulations of a Mexican immigrant mother is an excellent example of that: Instead of all the anger about whether she should have written such a story, the bigger and better question is how many Brown writers had their manuscripts rejected, because I’m almost certain that some immigrant from Mexico or Guatemala has written her or his story and had it rejected. And let me add this note, Stephanie: In my youth, in my coming of age, there was no such thing as a Black Lesbian. Of course there were Black women who loved women--I’m not disputing that--but a Black Lesbian as a social or political or cultural entity? No. Most if not all corporations had a morals clause in their contracts, and homosexuality was, at best, immoral, if not outright illegal. Additionally, the word “lesbian” was a pejorative that conjured up all manner of sick thoughts and images in the minds of the culture minders. Consequently, one could be summarily dismissed from one’s job, evicted from one’s residence, banished from public places--and from one’s family--if homosexuality was even suspected. It wasn’t until the very late 1980s that the gay rights movement claimed ownership of the terms used to describe and define us, especially the most hateful ones like lesbian and queer and homo.
From left: Reporters Michael B. Hodge, Ivan C. Brandon, LaBarbara A. Bowman, Leon Dash, Penny Mickelbury, Ronald A. Taylor; Richard Prince and attorney Clifford Alexander, March 23, 1972, at Metropolitan AME Church in Washington. (Credit: Ellsworth Davis/Washington Post)
SAA: Last year, you were inducted into the National Association of Black Journalists Hall of Fame. Can you tell those that don’t know a little about the Washington Post Metro Seven and your work as a journalist?
PM: I still find it hard to believe that a significant percent of the population has never read a newspaper. Not only did everyone I knew read the newspaper, we read two of them because most cities had morning and evening papers. That changed after most people began watching evening news on TV, but that aside, being a newspaper reporter was a very big deal, and being a reporter at The Washington Post was a HUGE big deal. Only The NY Times was a bigger deal. Both papers, and several others, were national and international in scope, and along with the wire services, they had reporters all over the US and the world. It is important to understand that there also were Black newspapers, both daily and weekly, and most Black people read the Black newspapers because the “other” papers didn’t cover us unless crime was involved. The Civil Rights Movement changed all that. Black people in the US and around the world couldn’t get enough information about what was happening on that front, and unfortunately the Black press couldn’t afford to have six or seven reporters AND photographers at every demonstration in several different states at the same time.
The big papers had started hiring Black reporters in the 1960s when they realized that was the only way they’d get the story because there were places white reporters couldn’t go, there were people who wouldn’t talk to white reporters… and the white racists often targeted white reporters for beatings along with the beatings given Black demonstrators and protestors. By the time I was hired at the Post in 1971 covering the Civil Rights Movement wasn’t on the front burner, but for Black reporters, covering the rampant racism still faced by Black citizens was still a front burner issue--a hot one. The Post had eight Black reporters on the Metro Desk. Though the Maryland and Virginia suburbs were majority white, D.C. was majority Black and we believed there should be more Black reporters, not to mention Black editors. Long story short, Post management was intractable. There was a feeling that we should be grateful to be working for such a prestigious institution--and a LIBERAL one at that. We disagreed, hired a lawyer (Clifford L. Alexander, who would be Army Secretary under Pres. Jimmy Carter) and filed a complaint with the EEOC. Only seven of the eight reporters on the Metro Desk participated, ergo the name Metro 7. We were all in our early-to-mid 20s and had no realization that our actions would change the racial composition of newsrooms across the country when we won--which we did. Our actions also prompted women at the Post and at newspapers across the country to push for greater representation in the reporting and editorial ranks. Until the National Association of Black Journalists inducted us into the Hall of Fame we had not known how many Black reporters credited our action for opening doors for them. Of course there are many young Black reporters who’ve never heard of the Washington Post Metro Seven, so...
SAA: I really love your novels of historical fiction, but you’ve also been writing mystery for a quite a while. What prompted you to write historical fiction? I’m particularly interested in learning more about Two Wings to Fly Away.
PM: My first published historical novel, Belle City, was a labor of love. It was a story that I’d wanted to tell for years, though it frightened me: It was so big!! And though I stopped and started several times before I completed it, I absolutely loved the experience, because I love Black history. What eventually became the novel, Two Wings, began as a short story that I never finished. I was feeling the urge to do something historical and Salem West at Bywater was open to the idea. Then there was this bolt of lightning: Why not revisit that unfinished short story--which was about a Black man working as a Pinkerton’s agent--and make the character a woman! That idea roamed around inside me for months...a woman secret agent (after all, Harriet Tubman was a spy for the Union Army)... a woman fighting slave catchers...a woman aiding the Underground Railroad. I had so many thoughts and feelings...and imaginings. Runaway slaves and free Blacks. Philadelphia was the logical place for them to co-exist. And the reality was that Blacks needed the assistance and protection of whites if they wanted to rock boats in the 1850s...and again Philadelphia was the perfect place for that to happen--a stronghold of the Abolitionist movement, home of Richard Allen and Absalom Jordan and the birthplace of the AME Church, a stop on the URR. The idea strengthened and grew, characters presented themselves, plots came with them, and this book came into being. And there are more historical novels in my writing future! I love them!
SAA: Let me be totally transparent: I LOVE your short stories, and I knew when you sent me your manuscript of short fiction that I wanted to work with you. So many of those stories are set in the Deep South, and I’d love to hear more about your inspiration for some of these characters.
PM: I love history. I love mystery. But most of all, Stephanie, I love Black people--our lives, our stories, our ways of doing and being. Because I’m a Southerner I know the Southern ways of us doing and being. And oh, yes: I love women. So Black women doing and being--well, there you are. Because of the patriarchy that still overlays women’s lives, I feel that Black women’s stories have been received short shrift in publishing. So I am especially grateful to and for you: Your willingness to review my stories, and your embrace of them, opened a long-closed space within me: Like most writers I began with the short story, but I stopped because I didn’t think I was any good at writing them...AND because I discovered that I was pretty good at writing stage plays. So when you encouraged me to write short stories--WHEN YOU TOLD ME I WAS GOOD AT IT--I felt like a kid again, like a new writer embarking on a new journey. How I wish God’s Will and Other Lies had sold thousands of copies--a deserving reward for the leap of faith you took with me. Those Southern Black women in that collection are women I have known. And because most are women “of a certain age,” they are me and women and I know still. They are the women upon whose shoulders I stand, and their strength and courage--the lives they lived--gave me shoulders strong enough to support my Sisters who need to stand on them.
SAA: What advice do you have for aspiring Black women writers?
PM: It is important to know where you come from--WHO you come from. Know your history. I was doing a book club when Belle City came out--this was in Atlanta and the club was comprised of young professionals--15 or 20 very impressive young Black women. One of them said to me that she hadn’t wanted to read the book because she thought “it was about all that slavery stuff and I’m tired of hearing about that!” I didn’t hesitate in responding, “Just imagine how they felt having to live it.” The room went silent, but I didn’t. I told her that if those Black slaves hadn’t endured what they had endured, none of them would be in the beautiful home of their book club member, dressed so beautifully, and holders of the professional degrees that made it possible for them to live so well in the still racist south. Young Black writers need to read history, and they most certainly need to read Black women writers--from Nella Larsen and Dorothy West to Zora Neale Hurston and the Grimkes, to Gwendolyn Brooks, Lucille Clifton, Nikki Giovanni, Audre Lorde and everybody in between. Know who Ida Wells Barnett was and why she was important. And don’t just read their words--read their lives. You’re here because they were. You can want to be a writer because they were. But they also were LIVERS!!! Despite the racism that they confronted in their daily lives, and the sexism they faced from their own men as well as from white men, those women LIVED. And don’t just know the writers--know the painters and the dancers and the musicians. Despite the narrative we learn, Black American Arts and Culture exists because of the contributions of Black women. You must know these things in order to be WHOLE as a writer.