Sublime

One treated them like poor girls and made the bare business offer. The other put a woman in charge—a motherly, dignified, capable woman. They did business in her name. They used her picture. She signed all ads and letters. She wrote to these girls like a friend.

Later, at the mortuary, the director told Strong that though she was paying for the funeral, she had no right to make decisions, “a family member must do it.” Fleming’s death certificate stated she was unmarried.3 Charlene Strong, who hadn’t been a gay rights activist before, became one.

In Savannah, she recommended that members of the writing workshop eat at the Grey Market, where she worked part-time. It is a New York bodega-inspired offshoot of the Grey, Mashama Bailey’s fine-dining Savannah restaurant. Bailey, a Black woman who moved between Georgia and New York throughout her childhood, learned to cook first from the women in

1946 revue film The Ziegfeld Follies, “A Great Lady Has an Interview