Poet, academic and activist Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, New York. Her parent adopted the surname Kaye prior to her birth; she later appended the family name Kantrowitz to Kaye, linking the two together with a slash to recognize the multigenerational and ethnic histories within her family and within the larger experiences of diasporic Jews and other immigrants to the United States.
Heritage
She described her Jewish-American upbringing and how it fostered a passion in her for racial and economic justice during her college years at Barnard College in New York City. In 1966, she left New York for graduate school at the University of California, Berkeley. She joined the Harlem Civil Rights Movement during her sophomore year of high school. She taught the first women’s studies course at Berkeley.
Activism
Kaye/Kantrowitz’s devotion to social activism began when she was 17. It was 1963, and she joined the Harlem Education Project. The Project was intended to offer cultural education to young people and to help them find work; at the time, many employers refused to hire African Americans.
Kaye/Kantrowitz, who was thoroughly committed to intersectional activism, taught in Urban Studies, Race Theory, Public Policy, Gender and Queer Studies, and Jewish Studies. She also published poetry and essays examining her identities as a Jewish lesbian.
Sinister Wisdom
Ms. Kaye/Kantrowitz, who came out as a lesbian in the early 1970s, went on to edit and publish a magazine called Sinister Wisdom that featured writings and art by lesbians.
In 1983, Kaye/Kantrowitz joined Michelle Ucella as co-editors of Sinister Wisdom, and held this position until 1987. In 1990, she became a founding director for Jews for Racial and Economic Justice.
Kaye/Kantrowitz died on July 9, 2018, of Parkinson’s disease. She is survived by her partner of 21 years, Leslie Cagan.
You can read a bit more about Kaye/Kantrowitz in Contemporary Lesbian Writers of the United States A Bio-Bibliographical Critical Sourcebook by Sandra Pollack and Denise D. Knight.
