Elana Dykewomon, Author Who Explored Lesbian Lives, Dies at 72

The book found a loyal and enthusiastic audience: “Every lesbian of a certain age has a copy of ‘Riverfinger Women’ on her bookshelf,” Jennifer Brier, a professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois, Chicago and Ms. Dykewomon’s literary executor, said in an interview.

In the early 1980s, the author — who until then had been known by her birth name, Elana Nachman — made perhaps her most pointed statement of identity yet: She adopted Dykewoman, and later Dykewomon, as a pen name, jettisoning the “man” in both her old and new names. “I chose ‘dyke’ for the power and ‘womon’ for the alliance,” she wrote in an essay published in a 2017 anthology, “Dispatches From Lesbian America.”

(“I figured if I called myself Dykewomon,” she joked in an interview with J: The Jewish News of Northern California this year, “I would never get reviewed in The New York Times. Which has been true.”)

Her 1997 novel, “Beyond the Pale,” about Russian Jewish lesbian immigrants who work in New York’s notorious Triangle shirtwaist factory and survive its deadly fire to become trade unionists, won the Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction. In 2009, she published “Risk,” a novel about a struggling middle-age lesbian who turns to gambling as an escape.

Elana Michelle Nachman was born in Manhattan on Oct. 11, 1949, the oldest of three children of Harvey and Rachel (Weisberger) Nachman. Her father was a plaintiffs’ lawyer who moved the family to Puerto Rico in 1958 to open a practice. Her mother was a researcher for Life magazine and later a librarian in Puerto Rico.

It was a fiercely Zionist household. Her father, who had been a navigator in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, volunteered as pilot in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, her brother, Mr. Nachman, said, and her mother helped smuggle arms to Israel.

Ms. Dykewomon maintained a strong sense of Jewish identity, even if she was not religious as an adult. Regarding her name change, she once said, “If I had to do it all over again, I might have chosen Dykestein or Dykeberg,” according to an obituary in The Times of Israel.

Even before she was a teenager, Elana “knew she was somehow ‘different,’ but was told by doctors she couldn’t possibly be homosexual,” her brother said in an interview. Living in Puerto Rico from the age of 8, he added, she also felt “sharply alienated from the Latin macho culture and the sexual role-playing by women and men there.” Editors’ Picks 13 Really Easy Slow Cooker Recipes That Won’t Heat Up Your Kitchen The Old Men and the Sea Taking Out Trash That Was Someone’s Treasure Continue reading the main story

At 11, she attempted suicide, an experience she explored in her 2017 essay. She spent a year recuperating in the Johns Hopkins Hospital in Baltimore, and she later found a degree of peace and acceptance at the Windsor Mountain School, a progressive boarding school in Lenox, Mass., Mr. Nachman said.

After studying at Reed College in Portland, Ore., she received a bachelor’s degree in creative writing from the California Institute of the Arts, then a master of fine arts degree from San Francisco State University, where she later taught composition and creative writing for nearly two decades.

In addition to her brother Daniel, she is survived by another brother, David, and several nieces and nephews.

The afternoon she died, friends, neighbors, and family members viewed her play on Zoom before calling the authorities. When mortuary workers came for her body, they filed out silently behind them, Rhea Shapiro, a longtime friend who was present, recalled. As the body was placed in the van, those assembled broke into spontaneous applause.

“Mourning is the most difficult form of celebration,” Ms. Dykewomon wrote after Ms. Levinkind’s death. “But I am filled with the beauty of what I need to mourn.”

I thought you made up that name OP

Lesbian "culture" is such a bore. Dykewomon? Yawn. Was she buried with a nutloaf?

Women, gay or otherwise, are not a monolith, R3..

I assume her name provided the inspiration when years ago a DLer came up with the legendary persona of "Nan Michiganwomyn." We must mourn her just because of that.

She had kind eyes . Most lesbians are not this radical with shaved head and all .

Show me a gay guy named Elmer Faggy whose real name is Elmer Johnson but changed it to Faggy to fight the matriarchy.

R7, so true and lol . But majority of gay women are not like that

Too many are like that R8

What's with the uninformed, bigoted and nasty comments about lesbians and a lesbian pioneer? (Bias is NOT "pointless bitchery."

Cheers for Elana Dykewomon. RIP.

I have to say that is a perfect Michfest name.

R10, Thank you Phineas Pansymon for your support.

I find it odd they finished watching the play before calling authorities. Just sitting around a dead body like nothing.

[quote] I assume her name provided the inspiration when years ago a DLer came up with the legendary persona of "Nan Michiganwomyn."

That name is literally taken from the Michigan Womyn’s Music Festival.

Upon death, Dykewomon digivolve to... Angedykewomon!!

Point being, r14, that the phenomenon of lesbians giving themselves mystical names beginning back in the 1970s is what led Nan to her chosen name.

I assume since her birth surname included "-man," she felt compelled to change it.

R9 the ones who stick out are like that . I know a lot of gay women who blend

She had a cellulite-ridden ass, but couldn't live forever.

She looks like the woman who groomed our poodle when I was a child. She'd ring us up with a filterless cig parked in the side of her mouth. A more masculine man didn't exist. Her partner also worked there. My Mom told me they were sisters. But I knew that was bullshit.

Lesbians who say wymyn or womon or who constantly try to deconstruct gender are annoying, exhausting and childish. It's such immature behavior. It's like they're emotionally retarded. What kind of idiot changes her name to Dykewomon? Like that's going to destroy the patriarchy! Patriarchs are running scared everywhere because DYKEWOMON IS HERE! But these lesbians actually believe they're very brave and very scary. No, people are laughing at you. Your little childish games are pathetic.

Was Dykewomon her Sioux name? Did she run with cats?

The name is extremely attention-seeking.

Everyone on DL is old enough to remember a time when names like these were common enough in many different minority cultures, so cut the crap.

The irony of r21 calling someone else "emotionally retarded" is also duly noted.

[quote]Lesbian "culture" is such a bore.

Her name sounds like something a DLer came up with in a Michfest thread, but I'll take that culture, foreign as it is to me, over what is replacing it any day.

Can I have her cane and her Subaru?

^ Only if you promise to keep all of the bumper stickers on the Subaru.

R21, I agree . It’s also so unattractive

I’m convinced that many lesbians like this are on the spectrum

Eh women are expected to change their last name when they marry a man, but changing their name to suit themselves is somehow problematic?

And for goodness sakes why should she want or think that the new name is scary? It’s an affirmation. The fact that your mind would even go there R21 is bizarre.

Elder lez wears Birkenstocks and has hair cut like a marine . You hate your gender .

Ha! R143 I am actually wearing kitten heel sling backs with my Tahari skirt suit today. You are very wrong about the hair too, but thanks for playing.

Did they really break into applause as the body was carried out?

R31 not 143

She told us NOW so she did not have to tell us THEN

[quote] For seven years, starting in 1987, she was the editor of Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian literary journal.

Dark lesbians!

[quote] The name is extremely attention-seeking.

Bitch, no one asked you

[QUOTE] Bitch, no one asked you

Thank you for coming up for air from eating out your wife’s pussy to contribute to this thread, Nan.

ElderLez, I respect you and think you don't have to prove anything by stating what you're wearing.

[quote] while working to foster communities of “chosen families” at a far remove from the patriarchy among her fellow lesbians

Huh?

RIP, Elana.

Nobody named ElderLez wears high heels. Stop lying. You wear comfortable shoes. You have short hair and you don't wear makeup. You play the guitar and you have 12 cats. You're currently baking a nutloaf.

I remember her from my youth in the Bay Area! Thanks, OP! RIP Elana Dykewomon.

R7 - I think the name you’re looking for is “Elmer Fagman.”

R44 Faggy is sexier, don't you think?

R42, ElderLez said she’s wearing kitten heels. They’re a reasonable height and far more comfortable than an actual high heel.

It would be funny if "Dykewomon" were her birth name (or if she had a daughter with that surname) and turned out to be straight.

Are all lesbians this serious and po-faced about life and sexuality?

R47…

Or if she were a descendant of this famous woman

I used to work with a guy named Hordyk. And either way you pronounce the second syllable is problematic. (He used the "dyke" variation.)

I feel for the lesbians who are just attracted to women and don’t hate their gender/ sex. I think most political lesbians who look like men are asexual.

Well this thread escalated quickly....

OK R26, but I call dibs on her flannel and her nut loaf pans

Ol' Dykewomon really got you fellas wound up.

How come all these old lesbos look like nuns without their habits? Huh? Answer me!

R50 If he had a coworker with Tourette's then he'd probably be called Hordyk Slutpig!

Elmer Slutpigman

[quote]Show me a gay guy named Elmer Faggy whose real name is Elmer Johnson but changed it to Faggy to fight the matriarchy.

In the 1980s there was an AIDS activist named Luke Sissyfag. He would appear at events with T-shirts that said things like JESUS GIVES GOOD HEAD.

A few months ago I was in a store (okay, potshop) and two women were at the counter. Older, short hair, flannel shirts, and one was carrying a cane. I almost guffawed at the DL stereotype come to life....anyway, maybe Elana was one of the women at the shop

dykewomon?

was she a digimon?

or a pokemon?

[quote]It was a fiercely Zionist household. Her father, who had been a navigator in the United States Army Air Forces in World War II, volunteered as pilot in the Arab-Israeli War of 1948, her brother, Mr. Nachman, said, and her mother helped smuggle arms to Israel.

So a family of foreign-born terrorist who went to take from the inhabitants and it's treated like something admirable only in the case of these people

Totally sane individual and you're not allowed to say otherwise.

Do you really want to get into that here, R61?

Palestinian on The Land!

I will always have an affinity for Elana and other lesbians who chose to live outside male-dictated norms. These are the women who got shit done.

When I was coming up in the '80s and '90s, I met many lesbians like her. They ran small presses or newspapers, produced zines, ran nonprofits, delivered meals, volunteered at AIDS organizations, visited the dying in hospitals, took shifts in coops, marched on Washington, and protested like hell. All of us, male and female (even trans and enby) owe them deep, deep gratitude for rejecting male hegemony and for paving a new path toward acceptance and affirmation.

The other thing, contrary to DL lore, is that these women (at least all those I knew) had a sense of humor about themselves and their obscenely difficult mission (for lack of a better word). They would joke about U-Hauls and drinking domestic beer in cans and their haircuts and annual MichFest trips and pretty much everything else. They simply didn't give a fuck how others viewed them. That was a central tenet in rejecting the patriarchy.

I don't mean any of this as a lecture or even as a denial of DL humor at their expense -- I embrace that sort of self-deprecating fun! I simply want to provide a bit of backstory. As I age (I'm in my early 50s now), I encounter fewer of these ladies, which saddens me a great deal. Yes, they were a product of their times, largely the '70s through '90s, and yes, we have a somewhat tech-savvier, differently focused cohort in our current era, but, you know, nostalgia. I miss these women something awful.

R65 thank you for your post. I feel like people our age are kind of the rear guard of that generation and it is sad to see it start passing away.

A little rouge and a pretty hairstyle never hurt any dame!

At first I’d no idea why thus post was revived and then I read the lovely recent post. I lived in the Bay Area from 1981 - 1994 and knew many of these women. At first it was a shock that they didn’t defer to me, that was my messed up patriarchal bull but I expected that even as a gay men. They really “straightened” me out about that! Once I relaxed, I enjoyed their company and appreciate the world they created for themselves.

Thoughts and Bears, babe.

Bless hear heart, that gal never, ever missed a MichFest !

She'll be 4ever missed.