Crime Against Nature
by Minnie Bruce Pratt
Lavender Lit Book Club: October 2022
Lavender Lit Book Club is a monthly book discussion series curated by Women’s Program Curator Suyane Oliveira. Each month, we’ll be reading a new book by a queer woman or non-male-identified author to celebrate queer women and non-men in literature. Click here to learn more.
Book Discussion
October 19 | 6:30p (EST)
All Lavender Lit discussions are held in-person at the Center and virtually via Zoom. Register here to join us (it’s free!).
About the Book
Crime Against Nature is a composition of poetry and prose exploring the author’s experience of losing custody of her children in the 1970’s because she was an out lesbian.
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Thank You to Our Sponsors
About the Author
Minnie Bruce Pratt (she/her)
Minnie Bruce Pratt (b. September 12, 1946 in Selma, Alabama) is an U.S. educator, activist, and award-winning poet, essayist, and theorist. Pratt was born in Selma, Alabama, grew up in Centreville, Alabama and graduated with an honors B.A. from the University of Alabama (1968) and a Ph.D. in English literature from the University of North Carolina (1979). She is a Professor of Writing and Women’s Studies at Syracuse University where she was invited to help develop the university’s first Lesbian/Gay/Bisexual/Transgender Study Program. She emerged out of the women’s liberation movement in the 1970s and 1980s and has written extensively about race, class, gender and sexual theory. Pratt, along with lesbian writers Chrystos and Audre Lorde, received a Lillian Hellman-Dashiell Hammett award from the Fund for Free Expression to writers “who have been victimized by political persecution.” Pratt, Chrystos and Lorde were chosen because their experience as “a target of right-wing and fundamentalist forces during the recent attacks on the National Endowment for the Arts.”[1] Her political affiliations include the International Action Center, the National Women’s Fightback Network, and the National Writers Union. She is a contributing editor to Workers World newspaper. Pratt’s partner was the late author and activist Leslie Feinberg.