“Almost every woman I have ever met has a secret belief that she is just on the edge of madness, that there is some deep, crazy part within her, that she must be on guard constantly against ‘losing control’ — of her temper, of her appetite, of her sexuality, of her feelings, of her ambition, of her secret fantasies, of her mind.”
– Elana Dykewomon, Sinister Wisdom 36: Surviving Psychiatric Assault & Creating Emotional Well-Being in Our Communities.
The news that activist and author Elana Dykewomon passed away on August 7 has broken the hearts of supporters, loved ones and lesbians everywhere. The cause of death remains private.
Elana Dykewomon was born Elana Nachman on October 11, 1949, in New York City, to Jewish parents. She studied fine art and creative writing at the California Institute of Arts, San Francisco State University and Reed College in Portland, Oregon.
Elana was an acclaimed lesbian activist, author, editor and teacher. In 1974, the then-21-year-old had her first novel Riverfinger Women published by the women’s press, Daughter’s, Inc.
According to Anna Livia, “One of [Elana Dykewomon’s] aims was to show the ordinary heroism of lesbian relations.
“Though [Riverfinger Women] deals with sexual violence, sadism, humiliation, and prostitution, with sometimes searing directness, these typify heterosexual relationships, a sordid background against which the lesbian heroine stands out as a troubled seeker with a warm and comprehending heart.
“Written as an open text in which continual reference is made to the act of creation, and laced with documents of the 1970s–an army recruiting ad, letters from the “Women’s Page” of a local newspaper–Riverfinger Women shows reality itself to be problematic and easily appropriated.”
Riverfinger Women was one of the first lesbian novels with a happy ending. The “combination of lesbian content and hippie setting…assured its success.”
While Riverfinger Women was published under her birth name, Elana Nachman, her second book, They Will Know Me By My Teeth (1976) was published under her then-chosen name: Elana Dykewoman. She had yet changed “woman” to “womon.”
The change in surname was a testament to her life’s mission. “Elana changed her surname to “Dykewoman,” at once an expression of her strong commitment to the lesbian community and a way to keep herself “honest,” since anyone reading the book would know the author was a lesbian.”
They Will Know Me By My Teeth (1976) was a collection of stories and poems written within the lesbian community. “[The book addressed] such issues as surgical breast reduction, masturbation, class, inventing creation myths, and mythic lesbian communities.”
Elana’s surname changed from Dykewoman to Dykewomon with the publication of her third book, Fragments From Lesbos (1981). She did so “to avoid etymological connection with men.”
Fitting for the book’s connection to Sappho’s homeland, Fragments From Lesbos (1981) was a collection of poems. “Many of the poems are love poems, poems of the aching contentment of sex, but also the pleasures of solitude. It is a visual, sensuous collection describing the thoughts of a traveler, a cross-country driver as she considers the meteorological, the geographical, the material.”
Elana Dykewomon’s writing made the personal political. “”The real fat womon poems” and “Traveling Fat” deal movingly with fat oppression, making the radical connection between social sanction of stomach stapling in twentieth-century America and Chinese foot binding,” Livia wrote.
“Throughout her work, poetry or prose, novel or essay, the same themes recur: the lesbian as active, dynamic hero on center stage, a counter to the supposed heterosexual universal; the need for honesty, however difficult or painful; and a belief that breaking silence will strike a common chord in other women. In each genre, there walks the figure of the outsider: the Jew, the fat woman, the woman moving between communities.”
Dykewomon became the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a journal “for the Lesbian imagination in the Arts and Politics,” in 1987. She received the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction in 1998.
Elana Dykewomon passed away just as her play, “How to Let Your Lover Die,” aired at Bay Area Playwrights Festival.
Elana’s loved ones and supporters have come forth to express their condolences. Author Sonja Franeta wrote on Twitter: “Elana Dykewomon died. Look at her name and it says so much. Writer, activist, teacher, lover, leader, warm and sensitive person. Thank you for all you’ve given us. Sorry you had to go as your first play aired. Her great novel Beyond the Pale is about what she struggled for.”
