Anita Cornwell (September 23, 1923 – May 27, 2023) was an American lesbian feminist author. In 1983, she wrote the first collection of essays by an African-American lesbian, Black Lesbian in White America.[1]
Cornwell's early writings, published in The Ladder and The Negro Digest in the 1950s, were among the first to identify the author as a black lesbian.[7] Other publications where her work has appeared include Feminist Review, Labyrinth, National Leader, the Los Angeles Free Press, Azalea: a Magazine for Third World Lesbians, and BLACK/OUT (published in Philadelphia by the poet Joe Beam).[5][8]
She was a member of the Daughters of Bilitis, and was a founding member of the Philadelphia chapter of Radicalesbians, a progressive activist group for lesbians.[5]
Published on October 1, 1983, Cornwell's first book Black Lesbian in White America, which includes her essays and an interview with activist Audre Lorde, is widely noted as the first collection of essays by a black lesbian. The book's foreword was written by fellow Philadelphia-based African-American lesbian writer Becky Birtha, who details Cornwell's acute analysis of the racial, sexual and gender oppression faced by lesbians and how to address their internalized homophobia and sexism.[5]
Cornwell interviewed various prominent Black women writers, such as Pat Parker, Barbara Smith, and Audre Lorde.[9] Her writing was mostly unpublished as she received a number of rejection letters from publishing houses, stating that her work did not match the publications' purported image.[9] Cornwell's writings explored the concepts of intersectionality and misogynoir, long before those terms appeared in the literary and social lexicon.[9]
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