Alum Dawn Lundy Martin: The Long Road to Angela Davis' Library

THE NEW YORKER -- I got a job as a “bottles girl” at Club Q, a queer dance party on Divisadero. One night, I met a woman, the woman who became my girlfriend for the next four years, Shakira, while picking up other people’s liquor refuse. Shakira was taking a course taught by Angela Davis at San Francisco State University, the school where I would end up getting a Master’s degree in poetry writing. She and Angela became friends in the way that professors and students become friends, weighted with reverence and with that built-in barrier against too much knowing or intimacy. Shortly after Shakira and I began seeing each other, Angela needed a dog-sitter. She asked Shakira, and I tagged along.