Dear ONES:

I promised myself once that I would not write you a letter of any kind until I could stick in five bucks, at least, However, those five bucks have invariably turned into remittances for orders of back copies and other items from your precious publications service. Needless to say it became a Peter or Paul situation UNTIL I decided to take my sorry little penny jar seriously. The discipline involved has been a marvellous by-product for me; and the material results of the original intention are enclosed herein! And the jar is already rising again.

And now that I have won for myself the right to write to you at last, what is there to say? I faithfully read the issues quite like that hungry fox (or rather, vixen; the world cares about that distinction business so much). And the letters which you print make me feel that my feelings about all of you and the work you are doing is not terribly different from what others have said in their letters, one way or another. Your articles and stories cause me anger, confusion, inspiration, encouragement, and every other emotion I can think of. A thousand different points of criticism, praise, argument and pure discussion occur to me in the course of a single issue, but as I read the letter columns, sooner or later someone else writes about it, or you have an editorial about it, and I am spoken for.

For a long time I thought almost all of the fiction (back in the troubled days, uncertain days when I was not sure you ought even exist, that seems a very long time ago now) was pretty lousy; and the layout peculiar. I still get pretty restless with some of the fiction, but am pleased and more than pleased with other of it. I also think you look better and better. I suppose that both ONE and I have changed. I have grown particularly fond of Mr. Pedersen's intellect and Miss Prentiss' wit (as in a certain review of a book) and I suspect that it must be frightening to meet anyone quite as talented as Miss Elloree (and as attractive, if one can believe Mr. Barr's early enthusiasm on the subject!) anyhow, God bless every one of you.

Friends, if there be any special thing I can tell you that might be of particular interest, I suppose it might only be this:that I am one of these people in the world who enjoins more different kinds of oppression in my single being than most people ever even think about consciously in a lifetime. I am a woman, a Negro, an artist, and a lesbian. Stop wincing. Dear friends, it has made me mellow. It is quite as if I have achieved a magic window with which to peer at my fellows and the tragi-comic pains they go through to despise one another. My professional proletarians include some of the worst antiegghead" sorts you can imagine; some of my male egghead friends have still not permitted themselves to believe that, when all is said and done (and they say a great deal about everything) women are also people; then there are the multitudes which you know about who simply do not take me seriously as a human being by virtue of my color. I cannot tell you which has been the funniest or/and the saddest.

น

I do not belong to any political organization or party of any kind, but one has only to speak these days to find out that mere ideas can be a reason for losing one's job, for instance. This you also know, I am sure. And what has been most interesting has been the slow coming awareness that there is only one real untouchable left in the social atmosphere of our country. Most white Americans I find, at least out of the South, find the national attitude to Negroes embarrassing at this point, and are becoming downright conscious and outspoken on questions of overt oppression; most men have gotten into a corner where they feel it safer to speak only of the DIFFERENCE between men and women, rather than old-fashioned "inferiority"; and the eggheads, for their part, actually saw one of their number up for presidential election; and now and again one hears that a capital-C-type communist has been allowed to speak on this or that campus once again and so it goes. And it is all good, good, good! So one tries now and then to raise the question of this final minority to find that there is still a group about whom most people have few

one