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remembering Lillian S. Robinson (1941-2006)
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Linda Hunt Beckman on life, work, and tributes 
Lynne Salter on life, work, and tributes Douglas Michael Mass… on life, work, and tributes
I finally got over my numbness enough to write, so here is an adapted excerpt from something I published elsewhere:
Lillian was the person on this earth I owe the most to after my mother, the person who had more to do with the formation of my consciousness as an adult than anyone. She taught me such Yiddish and Yinglish phrases as I know, and the ironic and hyperbolic sensibility behind them. She taught me the usefulness of class analysis and the inseparability under the present order of gender questions from questions not only of power but of race, class, and global economics. She was on the short list of people who challenged me to be the best poet I could be. It was Lillian who gave me my best approximation of the experience of parenthood. And most recently, her seemingly casual suggestion that I go back to school, and then her actual aid in doing it, may have saved me from an aimlessness that might well have devoured me by inches.
Lillian, you resolutely refused the comfort of belief in an afterlife. Let your mark on each of us in this life be your legacy, be our standard, be your continuing gift and challenge to, and presence in, this world.
Much love,
M.
Comment by Douglas Michael Massing — October 3, 2006 @ 9:26 pm
October 17, 2006
Life’s funny like that. I have one of Lillian’s books on sociology & was reading & thought WOW what a brilliant woman… maybe I should check her on the Internet so I can get the full gamut of her greatness. Then I found her obituary. Well to tell the truth- it brought tears to my eyes to think I have found the greatness of someone like Lillian and now have to imagine her as she would have been when alive- as a dynamic determined battler for women’s rights. Thankx- this web site is good & it’s nice to know she is loved and will be remembered.
Lynne Salter (Sydney, Australia)
[copied with permission from another site - DMM]
Comment by Lynne Salter — October 18, 2006 @ 4:28 pm
I knew Lillian from Cambridge when we were young activists in the women’s movement and the anti-war movement, and we reconnected around 1999. I learned a lot from her and am sorry that she is no longer in this world. Brilliant, funny, difficult, vital, compassionate, and generous, she will be missed by many.
Comment by Linda Hunt Beckman — December 10, 2006 @ 9:46 am