Molly Crabapple on Irena Klepfisz

“Her verses on rebel womanhood, violent histories, queer love, and dissident, diasporic identity are urgent reading for the present.”

“I asked Irena: What makes up our Goldene Kayt on the feminist left? “I think you have to find it,” she replied. “The links are there, but you have to put it together into a chain.” She spoke to me about the attempts that feminists and lesbians made to find their forebears and write a history of their own. “We discovered all these women that we never heard of. They were there. They lived. They made an imprint on the world. It’s just that they were never put together. The Goldene Kayt is there. We just have to fashion it.””