Decades later, Terri Jewell’s work lives on at MSU

Almost 30 years ago, Terri L. Jewell, a Lansing Black lesbian poet and author, committed suicide at the age of 41. Her life is still memorialized in the Stephen O. Murray Keelung Hong Special Collections at Michigan State University, where her work is archived.

Jewell entered the literary world in 1993 with “The Black Woman’s Gumbo Ya Ya: Quotations by Black Women,” which is still sought out today. It is a compendium of inspirational quotes from 350 black women, both contemporary and historical. She followed that in 1994 with her collection “Succulent Heretic: Poetry,” which in essence discussed her own mental health.

She also published essays about being a survivor of incest and familial violence.

Jewell was well-known in lesbian poetry circles. She shared her advice and support with numerous other poets through letters and long phone conversations. She and Valerie Jean, another African American poet, sent supportive letters back and forth for more than five years.

Jewell grew up in Louisville, Kentucky, and graduated from Montclair State College in New Jersey. During her lifetime, she was a prolific writer of essays, publishing more than 70 anthologies and periodicals. She lived in Lansing for 20 years.

As a eulogy said, “To be a poet one must be wide open, and feel the world in all its power, beauty and joy, the terror and danger of it all,” “Between the Lines,” Michigan’s longstanding LGBTQ newspaper, said.

In 1991 Jewell wrote two poems, “Gracefully Afraid” and “Investment of Worth,” for the important book “When I am an Old Woman I Shall Wear Purple,” a collection of essays and photographs on women in their later years.

After Jewell shot herself, Jean wrote, “For those left behind, the word itself takes on an aching, overwhelming power, and becomes a poisoned legacy. Suicide is such a simple, sweet-sounding word, the ways its easy rhythm curls the lips, its syllables falling almost hypnotic.”

Eli Landaverde, MSU’s LGBTQ+ librarian, said the collection of Jewell’s work “is quite popular with MSU students.” In 2022, Special Collections hosted a popup of Jewell’s work, which also featured a look at her black and white photography and unfinished manuscripts. Before her death she was working on poetry relating to James Baldwin and a project on the hairstyles of black women.

Landaverde said Jewell’s works are often used for instructional purposes both locally and elsewhere.

Lee Andrew Michael Sayles, Jewell’s longtime friend, collected and donated her work to MSU Special Collections. The collection has a vast array of rare material pertaining to and documenting LGBTQ+ issues, including ephemera, pulp fiction, art and AIDS activism documents.

A cursory examination of Jewell’s work shows her future was bright, but it was fueled by a lifetime of joy melded with depression that overcame her at the end.

Her poem “HA’NT” appeared in “Succulent Heretic.’ Ha’nt is used to describe an appearance of a ghost in Southern culture.

“HA’NT”

“It was a full moon

when Grandma sorted

geodes in the field

placed them around

a birch tree statue

of skimmed knobs,

seared grooves. …”

A friend of Jewell from her Kentucky days wrote a poem following her death that expresses many of Jewell’s friends’  feelings about her loss.

It goes in part:

“If you’ll just come back

i’ll fix you red beans and rice…

we’ll watch movies

and eat my special popcorn… .”

Sayles, who grew close to Jewell, said they had met in the 1980s, “when we both were fairly young Black lesbians and we were out, so we gravitated to each other.”

“What made her special was she was a very talented writer with a love for life — a paradox since she committed suicide, but she had a love for life. She loved life. It was almost if she knew it was going to be short.”

“Her poetry was very much about who she was and her love for Black women. Back in the ‘80s, it was difficult for women. She was standing up for women and black women in particular,” Sayles said.

“I was her best friend and the first person the police called, so we had a week to clear her apartment. I stored some in the basement for a period, since I was honestly having trouble parting with it before donating it to MSU.”

Some 400 people attended Jewell’s memorial service.