Collection context
Summary
Background
- Scope and content:
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The collection contains Cypress’ art, photography, writing, and journals, as well as various personal documents, subject files, and biographical material compiled by her friends. GSSO linked terms: http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_000381; http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_001590; http://purl.obolibrary.org/obo/GSSO_008520
- Biographical / historical:
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Cypress (Susan Rosenthal Glick), 1943-1997, was a working-class, disabled Jewish writer, photographer, and political activist who alternately identified as lesbian and bisexual. From early adulthood, she lived on Social Security due to a mental health diagnosis described at different points in the collection as depression, schizophrenia, and a generic emotional disability. She devoted her life to activism, subsistence gardening, and creativity. She was active in the women’s back-to-land movement in the 1970s and 1980s and in the movement for the legalization of cannabis, as well as being a founding member of the Berkeley Women’s Refuge. Cypress traveled widely and was a longtime resident of Oakland and Sonoma County; she died of breast cancer in 1997.
- Acquisition information:
- The collection was donated to the GLBT Historical Society by Adrienne Lauby in 2001.
Access and use
- Restrictions:
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Collection is open for research, except for three folders relating to Cypress’ medical condition, her mother’s medical condition, and her Social Security benefits, which have been restricted until 2047, fifty years after Cypress’ 1997 death. (Her mother’s exact date of death is unknown, but it is known that Cypress survived her.)
- Preferred citation:
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Cypress papers. GLBT Historical Society
- Location of this collection:
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989 Market Street, Lower LevelSan Francisco, CA 94103, US
- Contact:
- (415) 777-5455