We are sad to learn of the passing of writer and teacher Jane Lazarre earlier this month at the age of 81. Lazarre was the author of several books with the Press.

We first published Lazarre’s Beyond the Whiteness of Whiteness: Memoir of a White Mother of Black Sons in 1996, and brought out a twentieth-anniversary edition in 2016. Alice Walker called the book “an important affirmation of a white woman’s love of her Black sons.” Originally published in 1976, we brought a new edition of The Mother Knot into print in 1997. Adrienne Rich said of the classic, “I cannot imagine a woman who would not be moved, or a man who would not be enlightened.”…

Read More:
https://dukeupress.wordpress.com/2025/06/27/farewell-to-jane-lazarre/

Writer Jane Lazarre is no stranger to the pages of Lilith; an excerpt from her provocative and resonant novel, Inheritance, appeared in the Summer 2009 issue, and her memoirs The Communist and the Communist’s Daughter and The Mother Knot were both the subjects of previous conversations with Lilith’s editors.

Now Lazarre (author of ten previous books and creator of the undergraduate writing program at Eugene Lang College at the New School) is back, this time with a collection of poetry—her first—entitled Breaking Light (Hamilton Stone Editions, $16.95) and she once again talks to Fiction Editor Yona Zeldis McDonough about some of her recurring themes and the role of the poet in the world today.

Read More:
https://lilith.org/2021/08/jane-lazarre-on-how-this-age-of-crisis-affects-our-inner-worlds/

“Jane Lazarre’s memoir about her father is at once an intimate look into a rocky father-daughter relationship and an account of the fascinating life of a leader in the American Communist Party….the personal narratives offer a picture of the Party that cannot be found in more scholarly treatments of the Party, and this sets this book apart….This is one of those books that deserves many audiences. And for that I am grateful, as I believe its appeal, like that of Lazarre’s earlier memoirs, makes an important contribution to understanding aspects of American history and social consciousness that are not explored nearly enough.”

Emily E. LB. Twarog, Labor Journal

Read Review:
http://janelazarre.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/09/Lazarre_CommunistsDaughter_Labor.pdf

Deborah Kalb sits down with Lazarre to discuss her latest book

Q: Why did you decide to write this memoir about your father, and how long did it take you to complete it?

A: I decided to write this memoir about my father over 40 years after his death for many reasons – some formal and intellectual, and some in Toni Morrison’s words, “deep story” reasons.

Public Seminar:
https://publicseminar.org/2018/09/interview-with-jane-lazarre/