Beacon Mourns the Passing of Two Authors: Don Belton and Mary Daly

A note from Beacon Press director Helene Atwan:

This holiday was a sad one for the press: we lost two very powerful voices. Don Belton was a courageous advocate for gay men in the black community and a bold, even irreverent, writer. We were proud to publish his landmark anthology, Speak My Name, and had hoped to be able to offer his memoir; perhaps some drafts will be discovered among his papers. 

Mary Daly was famous for rocking the patriarchal firmament. I had known of her before I was privileged to come to know and work with her, and she did not disappoint. I once made the terrible mistake of describing her work as "seminal" while introducing her at a lecture; I haven’t used the word since. She taught me a great deal about the insidious power of language, about helping an author make her point without daring to shape it in any way, about being a supporter without being a sycophant. Like anyone calling herself a feminist, I will miss her.

Mary Daly obituary at the Catholic Reporter

Mary Daly's Beacon Press books

Indiana University press release about the death of Don Belton

Don Belton: 1956-2009 by Reginald Harris at his blog, Noctuary

Speak My Name: Black Men, Masculinity and the American Dream

Comments

[Rev. Martha Simmons]

There are so few who write with wisdom, courage, passion and impecable scholarship. Dr. Mary Daly did. All women, especially those in the academy owe her a debt that we must at least attempt to repay by continuing to write as she wrote (especially using courage) and especially if the subject is religion or justice for women. The world can no longer afford frightened, go-along-to-get-along women scholars or clergy.

With deep appreciation,

Rev. Martha Simmons, President and Publisher,
The African American Pulpit Journal

[Susanna J. Sturgis]

Mary's Gyn/Ecology blew the top of my head off. It introduced me to mythologies and histories I hadn't known. It rearranged my perceptions and expectations of the mythologies and histories I thought I already knew. Probably most important, it changed my relationship to my native tongue. It encouraged me to look more closely, delve more deeply, and play with the wildest abandon I could (or maybe couldn't) manage.

I reviewed the book for off our backs. I helped produce a SRO lecture by Mary in Washington, D.C., where I was living at the time. And I came out to my mother while we were discussing Mary Daly. No, it was because we were discussing Mary Daly. Even in the late 1970s it wasn't all that common for lesbians to discuss Mary Daly with their mothers, but my mother, the late Chiquita Sturgis, was working for Beacon Press at the time.

Here's a link to my blog about Mary's passing.

Susanna J. Sturgis
West Tisbury, Mass.

[Audrey]

Mary Daly was my all time lesbian feminist heroine.
I can think of no other woman who influenced my intellectual life more! And she was born in the same city as my Mother! How great is that!
Mary Daly never let the lesbian feminist dream of a country of our down. She was there for us 100%, through the most incredible attacks by Boston College, through the later feminists who never really had the courage to sin as big as Mary.

I heard her lecture a couple of times, both times so memorable that words fail me. She did us proud!

[Francesco Sinibaldi]

Springtime's dream.

When the
breath disappears
in the pallor
of an eternal
dream I see
beautiful skies
on the sound
of a springtime.

Francesco Sinibaldi