Melanie Kaye/Kantrowitz was born in 1945 in Brooklyn, and worked in social change movements since the sixties. A graduate of CCNY, she went on to earn her PhD in Comparative Literature from the University of California at Berkeley. A writer, activist, and teacher, she lived in New York City where she was the director of Jews for Racial and Economic Justice. She is the author of We Speak in Code (Motheroot Press, 1980), My Jewish Face & Other Stories (Aunt Lute Books, 1990), The Issue Is Power (Aunt Lute Books, 1991), and The Color of Jews: Racial Politics and Radical Diasporism (Indiana UP, 2007); co-editor of The Tribe of Dina: A Jewish Women's Anthology (Beacon Press, 1986); and former editor and publisher of Sinister Wisdom, a lesbian/feminist journal. Her writings about violence and resistance, Jewish identity and anti-Semitism, race, class, and culture have been widely published. Kaye/Kantrowitz passed away in July 2018.