Minnie Bruce Pratt

Minnie Bruce Pratt (September 12, 1946 – July 2, 2023)

Early life and education Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, on September 12, 1946, and grew up in Centreville, Alabama. Her parents were Virginia Brown Pratt, a social worker, and William Luther Pratt Jr., a clerk. She graduated with a BA from the University of Alabama (1968) and earned a PhD in English literature from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (1979).

Professional career During and shortly after her PhD, Pratt taught at Fayetteville State University and Shaw University, two historically Black universities. In 1977, Pratt helped to found WomanWrites, a Southeastern lesbian writers conference. As the group's last public action, they participated in civil disobedience at the 1987 protest of the Bowers v. Hardwick sodomy law decision made by the U.S. Supreme Court, becoming the first group to be arrested at this protest. Her political affiliations included the International Action Center, the National Women's Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union; she also served as managing editor of the Workers World Party newspaper.

Pratt's 1984 essay entitled "Identity: Skin Blood Heart" published in the anthology Yours in Struggle is an early and exceptional example of intersectional analysis, particularly notable because Pratt wrote about racism from her perspective as a white feminist, at a time when very few white feminists were addressing racism. Julie Enszer wrote in 2023: "That essay was very popular in women’s studies circles... Reading this early essay of Pratt’s, I find many of the hallmarks of Pratt’s work: a profound commitment to feminism as an intersectional practice committed to addressing structural inequality through attention to people’s material lives."

Pratt wrote the 1990 book Crimes Against Nature, in which she described losing custody of her children because of her lesbianism. In 1991, the book won the Stonewall Book Award for Literature.

Pratt wrote extensively on race, class, gender, and sexual theory. Along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, she received a 1991 Hellman/Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers "who have been victimized by political persecution".

Pratt appeared in Rosa von Praunheim's 1996 film, The Transexual Menace, named after the eponymous transgender rights organization, The Transexual Menace.

Pratt served on the faculty of the distance education school Union Institute & University.

Pratt joined Syracuse University in 2005 in the writing and women's studies departments. She helped launch the university's LGBTQ studies program in 2006. She was also an affiliated faculty member with the disability studies department and consulted on the Future of Minority Studies Project and Stone Canoe journal. She retired in 2015.

She has published several poetry collections, including S/HE (1995), a meditation on gender fluidity and identity, and Inside the Money Machine (2011), which critiques capitalism and economic oppression. In 2022, Pratt released Magnified, a poetry collection born out of the loss of her longtime partner, Leslie Feinberg, a trans lesbian activist and communist revolutionary.

Personal life Pratt divided her time between Syracuse, New York and Centreville, Alabama. She was the widow of author-activist Leslie Feinberg, who died in November 2014 at age 65. Feinberg and Pratt married in New York and Massachusetts in 2011.

Pratt had two sons, Ben and Ransom Weaver, by a previous marriage to poet Marvin E. Weaver II, which started while she attended college.

Published works

Chosen for the 100 Best Lesbian and Gay Nonfiction Books, by the Publishing Triangle, 2004.

American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award in Literature 1991, The Lamont Poetry Selection of The Academy of American Poets, 1989.

Best Gay and Lesbian Book of the Year by ForeWord: Magazine of Independent Bookstores and Booksellers, 2000.

Chosen Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Poetry, 2003.

Honors and awards 1989 - Lamont Poetry Selection of the Academy of American Poets for Crime Against Nature 1990 - Creative Writing Fellowship in Poetry, from the National Endowment for the Arts

1991 - American Library Association Gay and Lesbian Book Award in Literature for Crime Against Nature

2002 - Lucille Medwick Memorial Award from the Poetry Society of America, "Picking Up a Job Application" 2003 - Lambda Literary Award for The Dirt She Ate 2005 - Fellowship in Poetry, New Jersey State Council on the Arts