The interdisciplinary Intercollegiate Women’s Studies program of the Claremont Colleges presents the poet, author, and activist Minnie Bruce Pratt, in a lecture titled “At the Intersection of Oppression and Resistance: Changing Identities, Changing Lives,” on Monday, April 17 at 7:00 p.m. in Balch Auditorium, on the Scripps College campus, at 1030 Columbia Avenue. This talk is free and open to the general public. A reception and book signing following the talk will take place in the Hampton Living Room of the Malott Commons. This event is co-sponsored by the Malott Commons Office.
Pratt will explore her journey of identity from being a white Southerner raised under segregation to becoming an anti-racist, anti-war, lesbian activist and writer. After receiving her Ph.D. in English Literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Pratt was a contributing editor and writer for many feminist and gay and lesbian publications. She was a finalist for the 1995 American Library Association Gay, Lesbian and Bisexual Book Award and co-authored Yours in Struggle: Three Feminist Perspectives on Anti-Semitism and Racism (1988), voted “one of the 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books of all time” by the Publishing Triangle in 2004.
Among Pratt’s five books of poetry, The Dirt She Ate received the 2003 Lambda Literary Award for Poetry and the Poetry Society of America’s Lucille Medwick Memorial Award. Her critically acclaimed poems often speak of Pratt’s personal experience as a lesbian mother and member of the gay and lesbian community.
Minnie Bruce Pratt appears as part of the Intercollegiate Women’s Studies series of lectures and film screenings on the topic “Changing Lives: Stories of Transformation.” More than 150 faculty members in the humanities, sciences, and social sciences are affiliated with Intercollegiate Women’s Studies. While encouraging alternative pedagogies and fostering the development of new paradigms of knowledge, this interdisciplinary program explores the study of women as a source of personal, institutional and social transformation.