Karen Williams (comedian)

Karen Williams is a stand-up comedian who first took the stage in the 1980s. She set a new standard for representation as the first openly gay Black comedian. Across nearly forty years of comedy, Williams has remained true to herself through it all; she spends ample stage-time discussing her sexuality, race, and femininity, not allowing any part of herself to go unnoticed. Williams, though not mentioned in most mainstream comedy circles, Williams was featured in the 2003 documentary Laughing Matters alongside friends and fellow lesbian comedians Marga Gomez, Kate Clinton, and Suzanne Westenhoefer. She has also spent much of her career finding a way to blend comedy with healing and activism and has not faltered in that goal even today.

Early Life

Childhood

Karen Williams’ birth date and birth year are not public knowledge, but what is known is that she was born in the Bronx, NY. Her parents were 18 when they had Karen, and Williams has said that her mother had six kids by the age of 29, giving Williams five other siblings. She has been very open about how her family grew up poor and how that affected her, joking that “if you laugh through dinner, you forget you were supposed to be eating.”

At some point in her childhood, Williams’ parents separated. Her mother was forced to raise six kids as a single mother, while her father remarried a white woman. Williams has said that her father’s second marriage taught her about the importance of love and breaking boundaries – whether they be boundaries of race, gender, etc. Meanwhile, Williams praises her mother teaching her about the strength of women as she was growing up.

Growing up, Williams remembers herself as being an avid reader and a gifted student.

She has two awakenings as a child. The first, her lesbian awakening, involved kissing girls at summer camp when she was 9. But equally important at age 9 was her comedic awakening, wherein she told her family an inappropriate joke and saw their amusement at her words, which inspired her to make people laugh for the rest of her life.

Higher Education

It is not known what year Karen Williams first went to college, but she attended Cleveland State University, creating a self-determined major in “Humor and Healing,” which focused on the combination of comedy and wellness. She continued her education with CSU from 1995 until 2000, at which point she earned her Master’s in Education, specializing in Adult Learning and Development. While working towards her M.Ed, Williams worked as an adjunct professor and taught a course at CSU on Stand-up Comedy in the school’s Dramatic Arts Department. This class was the only one of its kind across the nation. As of 2020, Williams set her sights back on college, choosing to earn her PhD in Social Gerontology at Miami University.

Professional Career

1980s-1990

Karen Williams took the stage in July of 1983. She explained in a documentary how frustrated she was as a Black lesbian woman and a single parent, because no one was talking about her type of life. So, she chose to become the person who would talk about that kind of life.

Her first performances were at Bay Area Black comedy competitions, and she continued to work traditional circuits in Oakland for a short time before realizing that the mainstream circuits were not her style. Williams has gone on the record about how the “traditional” male circuits were often offensive and bigoted, and she did not want that attitude to be a part of her comedy. Soon after beginning comedy, she transitioned over into women’s circuits, where Williams has said she felt safe performing, and where she could “vent.”

Within a year, Karen Williams was travelling nationwide. Not much is documented regarding her early career, other than the fact that she seemed to be doing well for herself.

During this time, Williams also released an anthology of lesbian poetry, though the anthology itself could not be found.

1990s-2000

By the 1990s, Williams was gaining attention around the country. Much of her fame was coming out of women’s and queer circuits. In 1991, she was recorded performing at the Womyn’s Music Festival Comedy Day Stage. In 1993 Williams performed at the Northampton Lesbian Festival in Massachusetts, and at the 1993 March on Washington for Lesbian, Gay and Bi Equal Rights and Liberation. Also since 1993, Williams has produced the National Women’s Comedy Conference, also known as HotelFest. This conference is held in Columbus, Ohio annually, and its goal is to connect all the men and women who are interested in comedy.

For a short time in the 90s, Williams was a featured columnist for a Chicago gay newspaper called Outlines. She was also the author of a playbook called Let’s Laugh About Sex.

Throughout 1997, she is highlighted in Tell-a-Woman magazine in Philadelphia, PA multiple times over a few short months. The proceeds from each of her Philly performances were given to Triangle Interests, a group that would improve the quality of life for the local lesbian community.

Williams recorded two primary comedy albums, 1996's Outrageous and 1997's Way Out.

In 1998, Williams was featured in an LGBT comedy documentary entitled “We’re Funny That Way,” which highlights famous queer comedians of the era. By the end of the 90s, Williams wasn’t only a headliner, but a host – she hosted the 3^rd annual Gay and Lesbian American Music Awards in 1999.

2000s-Present

By the 2000s, Karen Williams put less emphasis on her stand-up (at least based on the lack of information around her during this times) and put much more focus on her work as an activist. That said, her work always centered humor as a vessel for healing, so she never abandoned comedy altogether. Most notably, Williams founded the HaHa Institute. The Institute was technically founded in 1992, but it became central to Williams’ work in the 2000s. The Institute's mission is as follows:

“The mission of HaHA Institute is to encourage the fullest and highest activation of human potential for compassion, wisdom, and life force through the daily use of humor and healing arts, which includes stress management, nutrition, exercise, massage and healing touch, aromatherapy, and spiritual practices.”

In 2009, Williams held an LGBT sexual assault survivor conference.

Williams was listed as a headliner at the 2015 San Francisco Pride parade. In recent years, since about 2016, Williams has also occasionally written for the San Francisco Bay Times as a columnist and op-ed writer. Her pieces cover everything from her previous heterosexual marriage, to how the AIDS epidemic inspired and motivated her as a queer performer.

From 2015 to 2017, Williams worked as the Director of Volunteer Involvement from North Coast Community Homes, a group that “develops, customizes, and maintains safe, comfortable homes for individuals with intellectual, developmental, physical, and mental health disabilities in neighborhoods across North East Ohio."

Williams made an appearance in the 2020 “We’re Funny That Way” virtual reunion special, based on the 1998 documentary she had previously been featured in. The video contains Williams speaking briefly on her 2020 pandemic life before giving a short bit of stand-up for her audience.

Identity

As a queer Black woman, Karen Williams has never shied away from her identity and its impact on her life. Many of her jokes highlight one or more of her intersectional identities, and it shows in both her on-stage and off-stage personality.

“I’ve gotten over being Black, I’ve gotten over being gay. But this aging thing sucks, whose idea was that, huh?”

Williams has been heavily influenced by her identity over the years – it was the reason she moved to women’s circuits when first starting out in comedy; being a queer woman, and a Black one no less, made her feel uncomfortable in many male spaces.

In terms of sexuality, Williams claims to have known she was a lesbian since age 9. She does not dive too deep into her childhood as a lesbian, but does eventually acknowledge in writing that she had children and was in a heterosexual marriage for a small part of her life before proudly embracing her lesbian identity.

Even as a lesbian, Williams has experienced confusion, though. She writes about the struggles of gaining custody of her son after coming out and being divorced, and how this situation did damage her newfound relationships with women. She has also addressed her odd position with the binary that often exists in the lesbian community between “butch” and “femme” lesbians, stating how:

“As a self-proclaimed out lesbian femme aggressive top — TMI — I was teased once by a very butch girlfriend that she didn’t want to go around with me because everyone would know that she was gay! I remember my look of fake horror, then our roars of laughter at the irony of the situation. While she got called “Sir…” at least once a day, I easily surfed in and out of gay and straight worlds without much commentary about my gender.”

She has also joked about how her identity often contradicts itself from time to time. In a bit about the hit series Orange Is the New Black, she jokes about how strange it is to be both Black and gay when watching a show about queer women in prison:

“It’s making prison accessible to white women. I don’t really get why the show is so popular. I’ve spent most of my life trying to avoid prison.” “Instead of throwing ourselves down wells, now the lesbians are in prison.”

Over the years, Williams has both attended and produced events pertaining to her intersectional identity. In one video, she is quoted as saying that “Black feminism never hurt me,” meaning she does not struggle to be a feminist as a Black woman.

Even off-stage Williams gives weight to her identity, refusing to be spoken over – even by fellow friends and comedians. When joking with other comedians in a Laughing Matters Q&A, Williams told fellow comedian Suzanne Westenhoefer, “I can speak for myself. The Black girl is always getting spoken over.” Her tone was friendly and clearly in good fun, but the point landed nonetheless.

Personal Life

Williams was once a model and a serious dancer of African-Haitian and Modern styles. She is currently a committed Buddhist.

Karen Williams was previously married to a man (whose identity is not public knowledge). She got a divorce shortly after coming out of the closet and is currently unmarried. She has three children, whom she feels she has benefitted by living as an out lesbian while raising them. “They have to look at the world differently,” she has said about her kids. Williams currently lives in Cleveland, Ohio.

References

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