Walking Back Up Depot Street

It is rare that in today's world with all of our technological conveniences, obsession with communicating in every medium besides in person and indulgences in greed and pride, to be able to categorize an individual as a hero or heroine. It is almost impossible to find an icon that is a non-fictional human being, born with no super powers, just an extreme sense and passion for moral fiber. The modern definition for a hero or heroine is, "a person of distinguished courage or ability, admired for their brave deeds and noble qualities." It is within poet, activist, lesbian, mother and educator, Minnie Bruce Pratt, the citizens of today's evolving and competitive world can find the characteristics of a true heroine.

Born and raised in post World War II, Heart of Dixie, Pratt was given little opportunities to formulate her own opinions about life. As she grew up in Centreville, Alabama, the Yellowhammer State and attended both the University of Alabama and the University of North Carolina, she began to realize how drastically different her ideologies were from those who surrounded her:

I understood that I had been lied to by government leaders,

teachers, preachers and I dedicated myself to unlearning

what I had been taught. I set out to fight for my own liberation

and to be the best ally I could be to others targeted for

oppression under this unjust social and economic system.

With her extraordinary abilities to speak the truth, fight for justice and overcome so many personal obstacles, Minnie Bruce Pratt has made the world not just a better place, but has created a more open and friendly forum for the sexually, racially and gender oppressed.

Through her many pieces of work, Minnie Bruce has been able to address the numerous problems plaguing her since childhood. Her abundant collections of poems have been an outlet for her to express her opinions, suffering, hopes and dreams. Her works have influenced thousands of people and have brought great attention to the amount of oppression being distributed throughout all walks of our American communities. She has been nominated for a Pulitzer Prize, received the American Library Association's Gay and Lesbian Book Award for Literature, been a finalist for the Lamba Literary Award in Lesbian Poetry, a community writer-in-residence for the YMCA National Writer's Voice Program and held the Jane Watson Irwin Chair in Women's Studies at Hamilton College. As an educator and source of collegiate study, professors and institutions alike have found her work both personally and in literature ground breaking and worthy of both praise and analysis. Her ideals have made her an inspiration to all:

The struggle against racism and imperialism, the class

struggle, the struggle for liberation for women and for all

gender and sexually oppressed people, the struggle for

social justice is my life.

She is a leader in her communities, a pillar of strength and a solid source of encouragement. Minnie Bruce's positive effect on so many people and her continuing effort to fight for the American underdogs is what has earned her the title of a heroine.

Her collection of poems, Walking Back Up Depot Street, was titled Book of the Year by Foreword Magazine in the Gay-Lesbian category. Through the eyes of a character named, Beatrice, Pratt exploits the various forms of struggle African Americans and Gays and Lesbians have experienced. She illustrates the pain and torture these individuals have had to endure because of society's conservative standards. Specifically in her poem the White Star (Pratt, 36)

Not yet, except they'd been kicking some people out

on her street, not yet her, not yet, for skin or rent

money, but always perhaps if she forgot to draw her

curtains when she kissed the woman who was not her

sister, when they slow danced in the kitchen before

supper.

The amount of openness and courage that Pratt has displayed in her writing has made her a model for writers everywhere. The social, political and literary movements she has personally drafted have touched the lives of people across the board. People of all walks of life, straight, gay, bisexual, white, black, male and female can learn a great deal from the life and lessons of Minnie Bruce Pratt.

As she continues to "share a domain in life" with writer and activist Leslie Feinberg, Pratt has successful been able to defy the very set of social norms she was bred to live. Still passionately writing, her latest book released, The Dirt She Ate, and a current activist fighting against US imperialism abroad, Pratt's latest ventures are sure to continue to positively shape the world around her.

-Jennifer Alexander

Works Cited

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. Homepage Various entries. 10 November 2009.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. Walking Back Up Depot Street. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1999

"Minnie Bruce Pratt." 2004. The Academy of American Poets. 10 November 2009.

Minnie Bruce in Action

Minnie Bruce In Action:

1. A moment with a fan, 2. A portrait of a leader, 3. Squeezing in some family time, 4. A force to be reckoned with, 5. Picketing with a fellow activist and 6. Partner Leslie Feinberg sharing Minnie Bruce's passion for public speaking

S/HE: Gender in Our Society

Minnie Bruce Pratt is a writer, a poet, a mother, a lesbian. She was raised in a traditional southern family, where southern morals and behavior guided her every move. For years she played into this façade, marrying and having children with Martin E. Weaver. In graduate school, however, she met and fell in love with a woman named Leslie Feinberg and soon after came out as a lesbian. Weaver was outraged and attempted to sever ties between Pratt and her two sons with an ugly divorce. With the legal climate at the time, Pratt could be labeled as an “unfit” mother by the courts just for being a lesbian. In S/HE Pratt says that people told her she couldn’t be “both a mother – a good woman – and also a lesbian – a perverted woman (Pratt, 11).” As a result, she was forced to sign a less-than-favorable agreement which allowed Weaver to move the children to a different state.

Minnie Bruce Pratt’s Southern “proper” upbringing clearly outlined gender roles as male and female with no grey area. She references the “compulsory heterosexual quiz” she was forced to take in high school where there were “two ways to answer: straight or gay, heterosexual or queer. One choice would lead us into adulthood, the other directly to hell (Pratt, 13).” Pratt was forced to conform to society’s expectations when she was growing up, but as she matured these clear lines between the sexes began to blur. Her sexuality is very closely tied to her writing and seems to be an outlet, a way for her to make sense of the world; a world that is not defined by obvious categories of gender. As she says, “I began writing poetry again when I came out as a lesbian, not because of that specific sexuality, but because I came back to my body, after a time of terrible numbness and self-denial. It's hard to write poetry if you are completely alienated from your body. And coming out as a lesbian brought me back to physical experience in my own body (Rapp, 2).”
S/HE was published in 1995 and is a collection of poems that explore sexuality, desire and gender roles. Pratt identifies all the different ways in which a person can be a boy, a girl, a man, a woman and all those in the middle. Throughout the collection she highlights the “inconsistencies, the infinities, (and) the fluidity of sex and gender (Minnie Bruce Pratt, par.6).” Her poems bring to light the many facets of the queer community, specifically discussing what it means to be a transgendered person. In one poem labeled “Stripped” she comments on a story she read about a transgendered woman who was raped and murdered. The police labeled the victim as “it” and refused to take action. Pratt speaks about the author of the article and the police officers saying that to them “everything has to match – genitals, clothes, pronouns (Pratt, 174).” She also speaks from personal experience with her partner, Leslie Feinberg, who identifies herself as transgendered. In Stripped and other poems, Pratt delves into her fears and anxieties of the dangers and trials associated with living in a hostile, unwelcoming and rigid society.

While her books have won several awards, including a 1990 Creative Writing Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Arts, “S/He” has been labeled as “high risk.” Her poems push the boundaries and force people to question their own identities. With this kind of work she is exposing the limits of traditional ways of thinking and providing people of all types with a world they can identify with and live openly in. Pratt “’breaks traditions, restrictions, and taboos (Rapp, 2)’" by letting the reader into her personal life, unveiling the inner conflicts, emotions, beauty and love of lesbian women. By writing about her story and openly discussing issues of gender definition and sexuality, she is enacting change. As she said in relation to writing poetry, she is not only freeing herself from numbness and self-denial, she is encouraging others to break free of this conformity and be comfortable in their own skin.

"S/HE, issued by Firebrand Books in Spring 1995, was one of the five finalists in Non-Fiction for that year's American Library Association Gay, Lesbian, and Bisexual Book Award, as well as one of the three finalists for the Firecracker Award in Non-Fiction (Kriesel, par. 2)."

Geri Courtney-Austein

Works Cited

"Biography of Minnie Bruce Pratt." Minnie Bruce Pratt. March 2006. Web. 10 Nov 2009.
http://www.mbpratt.org/index.html

Kriesel, Deanna. "S/HE." Belles Lettres: A Review of Books by Women 11.1 (1996): 54+. General OneFile. Web. 8 Nov. 2009 http://find.galegroup.com.ezproxy2.library.arizona.edu/gtx/start.do?prodId=ITOF&userGroupName=uarizona_main

Linda. "Minnie Bruce Pratt." Literature. May 2008. glbtq, Web. 10 Nov 2009.
http://www.glbtq.com/literature/pratt_mb,2.html.

"Minnie Bruce Pratt." Poets. September 2007. Poetry Foundation, Web. 10 Nov 2009. http://www.poetryfoundation.org/archive/poet.html?id=81985.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. S/HE. First. Ithaca, New York: Firebrand Books, 1995. Print.

A "Crime Against Nature"

A good writer writes from experience.

Minnie Bruce Pratt evolved as a writer, mother, and individual after struggling through a difficult situation that significantly influenced her social and family life. Pratt had mixed feelings for both men and women since she was a young girl, and she was unsure of what to think or do about it. She felt different, as most members of the LGBT community do. Yet with the realization of homosexuality came the outburst of passionate, powerful writing that discovers lesbianism, gender roles, and the erotica of the human mind. This is her story.

Born in Selma, Alabama in 1946, Pratt realized something was missing from her life during high school. She always felt different, yet had no idea how to explain her feelings. In the South, it was expected that she was proper and lady-like, and she attended school and church regularly, where she was taught that there was no other option in love besides the relationship between a man and a woman.

In 1964, Pratt met Marvin E. Weaver at the University of Alabama, where the two shared a passion for writing and poetry. They were engaged and married while still in college, and soon after, Pratt had two boys, Ben and Ransom. Pratt entered a graduate program at the University of North Carolina studying feminism and women’s studies, and that is where she met Leslie Feinberg.

Pratt immediately fell for Leslie, but it was no piece of cake. Marvin was furious and attempted to remove Pratt’s parental rights from her two sons. He got Pratt’s mother involved, and even to this day, her mother refuses to support Pratt’s homosexuality and believes that Pratt is a disappointment. So, instead of dealing with a chaotic court trial that most likely would have ended with the removal of Ben and Ransom from Pratt’s custody altogether, Marvin agreed to just move away with his two sons. That way, Pratt could keep close contact with her boys, and she succeeded in maintaining a loving relationship between them.

Pratt is deserving of recognition because she never gave up hope. Throughout her difficulties, she was open and honest with everyone, sincerely detailing her relationship with Leslie. Even her young sons were aware that she was a lesbian and no longer romantically in love with Marvin. If Pratt continued to live a lie, she would have been in pain and suffered tremendously, and this would have affected her family life and romantic life to an even greater extent. Pratt never wanted to fight with her husband; all she wanted was to share her true feelings with him. This makes Pratt a hero. She never gave up hope. As with most members of the LGBT community, she was taunted and disrespected for her choices, actions, and feelings. It is never easy to come out to loved ones who expect something different of you, yet Pratt realized that it was necessary.

Pratt explores her journey of lesbianism and her relationship with her two sons after the divorce in the astounding book of poetry, “Crime Against Nature.” Published in 1990, the poems articulate in powerful words the emotions Pratt felt and the difficulties faced after she divorced her husband. She explores her recovery period and her honest and loving relationship with her two sons. Although it was hard, Ben and Ransom never treated her differently; they continued to treat her as a mother, and this helped speed Pratt’s healing process as she was away from them.

In “Crime Against Nature,” Section 5, Pratt writes:

“When I open my mouth, some people hear snakes slide out, whispering, to poison my sons' lives. Some fear I'll turn them into queers, into women" (Pratt).

Pratt is not afraid to write about her challengers. She openly writes about opponents' views on her, and she explains that she is simply being who she is. Her children will choose the route that is best for them. Their lives are not “poisoned;” moreover, their lives are cultured and sophisticated, bubbling with honesty and love. Ben and Ramson believe that Pratt made the right choice, and this bond between the three made their relationship strong and sincere.

In the poems, Pratt makes it clear that being a homosexual is not a crime against nature. A crime has nothing to do with love, even if that love is for an individual of the same sex. Many people may call homosexuality a sin, unnatural, and worth of banning. What Pratt discusses is that the crime against nature is actually the violence and oppression so many honest, sincere people are objected to. Being in a caring, loving relationship—this is love and good. Being cruel, oppressed, and hating life—this is both sad and terrible. People need to stop focusing on their negative view of gays and lesbians and they need to focus on the real issues in life. People are suffering, and this is where everyone’s focus should be. If people respect homosexuals as they do heterosexuals, the world will be a better place.

Pratt allows many members of LGBT to feel comfortable with themselves. Her story and works help prove that it is possible to succeed and live a happy life. It is possible to change.

“Crime Against Nature” was awarded the American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award for Literature in 1991. Today, Pratt is developing a LGBT program for Syracuse University, where she is a professor. She remains with Leslie, and her relationship with her two sons is as strong as ever.

~By: Lauren Inouye~

Works Cited/Bibliography

"Biography." Minnie Bruce Pratt/ Biography. Mar. 2006. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.mbpratt.org/bio.html>.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. Crime Against Nature. Ithaca, N.Y: Firebrand Books, 1990. Print.

Pratt, Minnie Bruce. Minnie Bruce Pratt. 2007. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.mbpratt.org/family.html>.

Rapp, Linda. "Glbtq literature Pratt, Minnie Bruce." Glbtq: the world's largest encyclopedia of gay, lesbian, bisexual, transgender, and queer culture. 2004. Web. 7 Nov. 2009. <http://www.glbtq.com/literature/pratt_mb,2.html>.

Interview with Minnie Bruce Pratt

This interview is slightly long (about 15 minutes), but it's worth a watch because Minnie Bruce describes her path in life, her transformations in society as a poor writer and "out" lesbian, and what she has learned from past experiences in the 20th century. The video clarifies her life's work and beliefs. It is very interesting, and her background and culture become apparent in her struggles for equality and love. If anyone watches, let us know what you think! The interview was shot in 2008, so it is very recent.

---------------->http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qE1yFNHeDzQ<----------------