My desire is to engage her ideas in community that they might seed new ones, that her work might continue to flourish with meaning and power. I admire Kaye/Kantrowitz, but my purpose in writing about her extends beyond exaltation my desire is to make the life and work of Kaye/Kantrowitz visible to a community of LGBTQ readers.

Nor is this a tribute, an occasion of complete and unabashed adoration. I know her only through her writing and through work I do with Sinister Wisdom in the long shadow she cast. Nor is it a reminiscence I am narrating a story of the past, but I did not know Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz personally, as reminiscence suggests. Scholar Tim Retzloff amplifies the importance of obituaries in queer communities, and I share his passion, but this is not an obituary. An obituary tells the story of a life, written upon death. That opening paragraph suggests that this piece might be an obituary for Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz. Her parent adopted the surname Kaye prior to her birth she was born Melanie Kaye then later appended the family name Kantrowitz to Kaye, linking the two together with a slash to recognize the multiple histories within her family and within the larger experiences of diasporic Jews and other immigrants to the United States.

Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born in Brooklyn, New York, in 1945. Remembering the Life and Work of Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz

Nice Jewish Girls by Evelyn Torton Beck