Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born Melanie Kaye in Brooklyn, New York on September 9, 1945. She received a bachelor's degree from City College of New York and a Ph.D. in comparative literature from the University of California, Berkeley. She went on to teach the university's first women's studies class. She also taught urban studies, race theory, public policy, Jewish studies, and gender and queer studies at Hamilton College, Goddard College, and Norwich University.
She wrote several books including My Jewish Face and Other Stories; The Issue Is Power: Essays on Women, Jews, Violence, and Resistance; and The Colors of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism. She and Irena Klepfisz edited The Tribe of Dina, an anthology of Jewish women's writings. She edited and published the lesbian literary and art journal Sinister Wisdom in the 1980s and was the first director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice in the early 1990s. She died of Parkinson's disease on July 10, 2018 at the age of 72.
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