 |
Rachel Pollack | |
|---|---|
| Born | August 17, 1945 New York City, U.S. |
| Died | April 7, 2023 (aged 77) Rhinebeck, New York, U.S. |
| Education | New York University Claremont Graduate University |
| Occupation | Author |
| Notable work | Unquenchable Fire Doom Patrol (issues 64–87) |
| Style | Magical realism |
| Spouse(s) | Edith Katz (m. pre 1971-1990s) Zoe Matoff (m. 2022) |
Rachel Grace Pollack (August 17, 1945 – April 7, 2023) was an American science fiction author, comic book writer, and expert on divinatory tarot.
Pollack was born on August 17, 1945, in Brooklyn, New York to an Orthodox Jewish family. At age 15, she was diagnosed with cancer, which was later found out to be calcium deposits, with her seeing it as a miracle influenced by her parents' prayers. She earned an honours degree in English from New York University and a master's in English from Claremont Graduate University. After getting her master's, Pollack secured a teaching job at the State University of New York at Plattsburgh and married a woman named Edith Katz (the marriage ended by the 1990s ). 1971 was a pivotal year for Pollack, who in the same year sold her first short story ("Pandora's Box"), discovered Tarot and came out as a trans woman.
After Rachel's coming out, the couple moved to London, where they became active in radical lesbian feminist scene. Pollack was instrumental in founding the transgender wing of the UK Gay Liberation Front, who in 1972 published the trans manifesto titled “Don’t Call Me Mister You Fucking Beast,” written by Pollack, Roz Kaveney and others. Kaveney described Rachel as "a crystallising force in the trans movement" and "perpetually an inspirational figure." In the same year Rachel and Edith experienced "sudden" rejection from their lesbian feminist peers, whose “political ideology had shifted” to a transphobic one, causing the couple to move to Amsterdam.
Pollack's later work on spirituality continued to be influenced by women’s spirituality movement and second-wave feminism. Pollack's essays on spirituality also often had a transfeminist angle, such as in her essay Aphrodite: Transexual Goddess of Passion (1995), in which she describes Aphrodite as a trans figure. In TransSisters Issue 1 she elaborates: "Aphrodite is the transformation of the male sky God. Her femaleness comes out of this maleness, and comes out of the removal of the male genitals."
In the 1990s, Pollack helped lead a conference focused on post-op trans women's experiences, named the New Woman Conference (later renamed as the Rite of Passage conference due to controversies around the name). She became a regular contributor to TransSisters, the Journal of Transsexual Feminism.
Pollack also created the first mainstream transgender superhero, Kate Godwin, in DC's Doom Patrol series.
In 1980 Pollack published 78 Degrees of Wisdom, a book on Tarot card reading that has been commonly referenced by Tarot readers. Pollack wrote the 1985 book Salvador Dali's Tarot, an exposition of Salvador Dalí's Tarot deck, comprising a full-page color plate for each card, with her commentary on the facing page. She created her own Tarot deck, Shining Woman Tarot (later Shining Tribe Tarot). She also aided in the creation of the 1995 Vertigo Tarot Deck with illustrator Dave McKean and author Neil Gaiman, and she wrote a book to accompany it. Gaiman sometimes consulted Pollack on the tarot for his stories.
Pollack wrote for the comic book Doom Patrol, on DC Comics' Vertigo imprint, from 1993 to 1995. Her run of issues (64–87) was a continuation of a 1960s comic which had recently become a cult favorite under Grant Morrison. Pollack took over the series in 1993 after meeting editor Tom Peyer at a party, telling him it was the only monthly comic book she would want to write at the time, and sending him a sample script. Towards the end of Morrison's run, Pollack began writing monthly "letters to the editor" in what she describes as a "gee-whiz fangirl" voice asking to take over the book when Morrison was finished. In the final letter, she claims that she had already told her mother that she had been given the job. Peyer then used that response to that letter to officially announce that Pollack was, in fact, taking over the book.
During her tenure, Pollack dealt with such rarely addressed comic book topics as menstruation, sexual identity, and transgender issues. This included writing the first mainstream transgender superhero, Kate Godwin (Coagula). Her run ended two years later, with the book's cancellation.
In addition to Doom Patrol, Pollack wrote issues of the Vertigo Visions anthology featuring Brother Power the Geek (1993) and Tomahawk (1998), the first 11 issues of the fourth volume of New Gods (1995), and the five-issue limited series Time Breakers (1996) for the short lived Helix imprint.
In 2019, it was announced that Pollack was reuniting with Doom Patrol artist Richard Case and letterer John Workman to create a short story—titled "Snake Song"—for the Kickstarter funded "music-themed horror anthology" Dead Beats.
In 2024, DC Comics published "DC Pride: A Celebration of Rachel Pollack" reprinting issue 70 of "Doom Patrol" and issue 1 of "Vertigo Visions: The Geek #1 'Homelands of the Dolls'" as well as an introductory tribute by Stuart Moore and a new story, "Shining Through the Wreckage" revisiting Pollack's Doom Patrol character Coagula written by Joe Corallo.
Three of Pollack's novels won or were nominated for major awards in the science fiction and fantasy field: Unquenchable Fire won the 1989 Arthur C. Clarke Award; Godmother Night won the 1997 World Fantasy Award, was shortlisted for the James Tiptree Jr. Award, and was nominated for a Lambda Literary Award for Transgender Literature; while Temporary Agency was nominated for the 1995 Nebula Award and the Mythopoeic Award, and shortlisted for the Tiptree.
Her magical realism novels explore worlds imbued with elements pulled from a number of traditions, faiths, and religions. Several of her novels are set in an alternative reality that resembles modern America, but an America of Bright Beings, where magic and ritual, religion and thaumaturgy are the norms.
Her short work "Burning Beard: The Dreams and Visions of Joseph ben Jacob, Lord Viceroy of Egypt" was published in 2007 in the anthology Interfictions: An Anthology of Interstitial Writing, edited by Theodora Goss and Delia Sherman. It was reprinted online in Lightspeed in May 2014.
Pollack's book The Body of the Goddess is an exploration of the history of the Goddess and her relation to locality and landscape. Pollack uses the image of the Goddess in many of her works.
For 32 years, Pollack taught seminars with tarot author Mary K. Greer at the Omega Institute for Holistic Studies, in Rhinebeck, New York. She also did seminars for several years in California in conjunction with Greer, and she co-presented a breakthrough seminar with author Johanna Gargiulo-Sherman on tarot and psychic ability, using her own Shining Tribe Tarot and Gargiulo-Sherman's Sacred Rose Tarot. Pollack was also a popular lecturer at tarot seminars and symposiums such as Los Angeles Tarot Symposium, Bay Area Tarot Symposium, and the Readers Studio.
She was a professor of creative writing in the Masters of Fine Arts program of Goddard College. She taught English at State University of New York.
Pollack was Jewish, and frequently wrote about the Kabbalah, most notably in The Kabbalah Tree.
She was a trans woman and wrote frequently on transgender issues. In Doom Patrol she introduced Coagula, a trans lesbian character. She also wrote several essays on transness, attacking the notion that it is a "sickness", instead saying that it is a passion. She emphasized the revelatory aspects of transness, saying that "the trance-sexual [sic] woman sacrifices her social identity as a male, her personal history, and finally the very shape of her body to a knowledge, a desire, which overpowers all rational understanding and proof."
A Secret Woman features a police detective who is transgender and Jewish. The detective utters the prayer, "Blessed art thou oh G-d who made me not a woman. Double blessed is Doctor Green who has." Pollack created the characters known as 'the bandage people' for her Doom Patrol run. The bandage people are 'sexually remaindered spirits' who died in sexual accidents. The initials SRS came from the medical term 'sex reassignment surgery'. Pollack's essay "The Transsexual Book of The Dead: Osiris and the Trance Man", written for the anthology Phallus Palace, addresses the Osiris myth and "reconfigures Egyptian mythology into a multi-layered map for transsexual experience."
Fairy tales such as the Brothers Grimm influenced many of Pollack's writings. Her book Tarot of Perfection is a book of fairy tales based on the tarot.
In 1971 Pollack moved to London, however only stayed there for 6 months. Pollack and Katz returned to the US for three months after coming out to their families. When they returned to the UK they found their community had turned hostile to trans people, and moved to Amsterdam in 1972. Pollack lived in Amsterdam for up to a decade, where she completed the majority of her medical transition. She later moved back to the US
In July 2022, Pollack revealed via Facebook that, after seemingly overcoming Hodgkin lymphoma several years earlier, she had been diagnosed with a different variant of lymphoma and would be undergoing chemotherapy. In August, Pollack's wife Zoe Matoff and Patricia Nolan announced that Pollack was in an intensive care unit and started a GoFundMe fundraiser for her medical expenses. Those who shared the fundraiser on Twitter included Neil Gaiman, Shelly Bond, Gail Simone, and DC Comics editors Chris Conroy and Andrea Shay, while prominent donors included Rachel Gold, Al Ewing, Kieron Gillen, Kim Newman, Brett Booth, and Cliff Chiang, ultimately raising over $28,000 against a $15,000 goal by September.
On March 12, 2023, Gaiman announced on Instagram and Mastodon, at the behest of Pollack's wife, that Pollack was in hospice care and nearing the end of her life. This led some outlets to mistakenly report that Pollack had already died.
Pollack died from Hodgkin lymphoma on April 7, 2023, at the age of 77.
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: others (link){{cite book}}: CS1 maint: date and year (link) CS1 maint: multiple names: editors list (link)Notably, the book includes a reunion of Doom Patrol alums Rachel Pollack and Richard Case, working together for the first time in more than 25 years!
We are also absolutely thrilled to announce that our Doom Patrol reunion just got even bigger! Legendary and award winning comics letterer John Workman, whose work includes having lettered Doom Patrol for all of Grant Morrison and Rachel Pollack's runs, will be lettering Rachel Pollack and Richard Case's story in Dead Beats, Snake Song! He's excited to be part of this reunion and we hope you're excited he's on board too!
{{cite book}}: CS1 maint: publisher location (link)