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Kimberly N. Ruffin
Dixon, Melvin (1950–1992)
Writer, poet, educator, translator, and activist Mel-
vin Dixon was born in Stamford, Connecticut, in
- Dixon’s writing explores what it means to be
both an African-American male and gay. Writing
was a freeing agent that allowed Dixon to tackle
issues that had been ignored in contemporary
African-American literature. His work is straight-
forward and unashamedly honest. He set the stage
for such writers as E. LYNN HARRIS and JAMES EARL
HARDY, whose work also explores identity and
sexuality.
Dixon began a love affair with the power of
language at an early age. Dixon graduated from
Wesleyan University with a B.A. in American stud-
ies (1971), and went on to receive his Ph.D. from
Brown University (1975). By this time, Dixon’s
thirst for writing had been established. He traveled
to the Caribbean, Paris, West Africa, Haiti, and
Europe, researching such notable writers as James
Wright, Jacques Roumain, and Leopold Senghor,
the former president of Senegal. As his writing tal-
ent developed, Dixon received various accolades,
including a French Government Fellowship, a
Ford Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowship, and a
Scholar-in-Residence Fellowship from the Schom-
burg Center for Research in Black Culture.
Establishing himself as an educator early on,
Dixon accepted a position as assistant professor
of English at Williams College (1976). After his
tenure there, he accepted a position in the English
department at Queens College, City University of
New York (1980), where he taught until his death
(1992).
During his time as an educator, Dixon wrote
poems, stories, novels, essays, and critical studies
and even translated French literature. He trans-
lated and published Drumbeats, Masks, and Meta-
phor: Contemporary Afro-American Theatre (1983)
and The Collected Poems of Leopold Sedar Senghor
(1991). Dixon’s Climbing Montmartre (1974) ex-
amines the black American expatriate experience
in France. He published another book of poetry
titled Change of Territory (1983).
Love’s Instruments (1995) was published after
Dixon’s death. The work displays Dixon’s talents
as a lyrical poet and establishes him as an intel-
lectual. He courageously writes about his struggle
with AIDS. The seminal poem in the book, “Aunt
Ida Pieces a Quilt,” is a loving tribute to the lives
lost in the AIDS epidemic. The story is told from
the point of view of a grandmother who is gath-
ering the belongings of her great-nephew, who
has died. She is piecing together a panel to send
to the AIDS Memorial in Washington, D.C. In the
introduction to the book, Elizabeth Alexander
writes that these poems “accrue further meaning
in the context of both the literature of this plague
and the premature loss of their author.” MICHAEL
HARPER adds, “Dixon’s poems are receptacles and
illuminations, anodynes and tropes, the distilla-
tions of a fully lived and truncated life of study
and experience.”
Dixon’s novels articulate his interest in and un-
derstanding of the African-American experience.
His first novel, Trouble the Water (1989), for which
Dixon won the Nilon Excellence in Minority Fic-
tion Award, deals with black life in the South. This
historical journey to uncover the pain of this past
life for African Americans was most likely based142 Dixon, Melvin