Black Women Writers(1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation 0385171242, 9780385171243
Critical interpretations, personal reflections, and literary works highlight an anthology focusing on the lives and work
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English Pages 543 [584] Year 1984
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153 N5 B558
Black women writers (1950-1980) a critical evaluation / edited by Mari Evans* 1st ed. Garden City, N.Y. : Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1934. cl983. xxviii, 543 p. ; 22 cm. Includes bibliographies and index* #5921 Brodart $22.75. ISBN 0-385-17124-2 :
—
1. American literature Afro— American authors History and criticism. 2. American literature Women authors History and criticism. 3. American literature 20th century History and criticism. I. Evans, Mari, 1923-
—
—
t5 NOV 84
9113003
NEWCxc
81-43914
LIBRARY NEW COLLEGE OF CALIFORNIA 777 VALENCIA STREET
SAN FRAMC1SCO. CA §4111 (41 S)
626-1694
Digitized by the Internet Archive in
2010
http://www.archive.org/details/blackwomenwriterOOevan
Black
Women
Writers (1950-1980)
Other works by Mari Evans
POETRY
Where I
Is
Am
a
All the
Music?
Black
Woman
Nightstar
JUVENILES I
Look
at
Me J.D.
Singing Black
Jim Flying High
Black
Women
Writers
(1950-1980) A CRITICAL EVALUATION
Edited by Mari Evans
ANCHOR PR ESS/DOU B LED A Y GARDEN CITY, NEW YORK 1984
—
Black
Women
Writers (1950-1980):
A
Critical Evaluation
is
published simultaneously
hardcover and paperback editions.
Library of Congress Cataloging
Main
entry under
Black
women
in
Publication Data
title:
writers
(1950-1980)
Includes bibliographies and index. 1.
— Afro-American — Women authors— History and
American
literature
literature
authors
criticism.
History and criticism.
PS153N5B558
I.
810'.9'9287
isbn 0-385-17124-2
isbn 0-385-17125-0 (pbk.)
©
All Rights
Reserved
1983 by Mari Evans
Printed in the United States of America First Edition
3.
Evans, Mari, (date).
1983
Copyright
— History
81-43914
and
American
criticism.
literature
2.
American
— 20th century
For Hoyt P.
Neal,
who
W.
who
Fuller,
Jr.,
who planned
to
be
a part of this
book; for Larry
did not have a chance to respond; and for George E. Kent,
provided a revision for his article two weeks prior to his death. Their
names
are here in figure
and
in fact:
voices, our "long-distance runners."
earned space. They were our clear
They
bless our efforts.
— M.E.
ACKNOWL E DC MEN TS made for permission to reprint the following: Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1970 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of Random House. Excerpts from Gather Together in My Name by Maya Angelou, copyright © 1974 by Maya Angelou Reprinted by permis-
Grateful acknowledgment
Excerpts from
sion of
/
Random
is
Know Why
the
House. Excerpts from Singing and Swinging and Getting Merry Like Christ-
©
1976 by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of mas by Maya Angelou, copyright 1981 Random House. Excerpts from The Heart of a Woman by Maya Angelou, copyright
©
Random
by Maya Angelou. Reprinted by permission of
©
©
Cade Bambara, copyright
Excerpts from The Salt Eaters by Toni
Bambara. Reprinted by permission of
House.
Random
1980 by Toni Cade
House. Excerpts from Gorilla,
My
Love by
Cade Bambara. Reprinted by permission of Random House. Excerpts from The Sea Birds Are Still Alive by Toni Cade Bambara, copyright © 1977 by Toni Cade Bambara Reprinted by permission of Random House. Excerpts from Selected Poems by Gwendolyn Brooks, copyright © 1963 by Cwendolyn
Toni Cade Bambara. copyright
Brooks.
Reprinted by permission of Harper
Gwendolyn Brooks, copyright Harper
1972 by Toni
&
Row,
©
1971 by
&
Row,
Excerpts from
Inc.
Gwendolyn
The World of
Brooks. Reprinted by permission of
Inc.
One
Excerpts from Like
©
of the Family by Alice Childress, copyright
1953 by Alice
Childress. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Excerpts from Everett Anderson's Christmas
Coming by
Lucille Clifton, copyright
&
1971 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart
from Some of the Days of Everett Anderson by Lucille Clifton, copyright Clifton.
Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart
©
Anderson's Year by Lucille Clifton, copyright permission of Holt, Rinehart ton, copyright
©
&
&
©
Winston. Excerpts
©
1970 by Lucille
Winston. Excerpts from Everett by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by
1971
Winston. Excerpts from Good Says Jerome by Lucille
Clif-
1973 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts
from The Black BC's by Lucille Clifton, copyright
©
1970 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by
Good Times by Lucille Clifton, copyright © 1969 permission of Random House. Excerpts from An Ordinary
permission of the author. Excerpts from
by Lucille Clifton
Woman
Reprinted by
by Lucille Clifton, copyright
the author. Excerpts from
©
1974 by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of
Good News About
the Earth by Lucille Clifton, copyright
©
1972
by Lucille Clifton. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from
Where
Is
All the Music? by Mari Evans, copyright
copyright
©
(Am
©
1968 by Mari Evans.
Woman
by Mari Evans,
1970 by Mari Evans. Reprinted by permission of the author
Excerpts from
Reprinted by permission of the author Excerpts from
©
Nightstar by Mari Evans, copyright
a Black
1981 by Mari Evans
Reprinted by permission of the
authoi
ExoerptS from The
Women and
the
Men
by Nikki Giovanni, copyright
Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of William I
louse by Nikki Giovanni, copyright
William Morrow
& Company
Giovanni, copyright
row
&
©
©
©
&
©
1975 by Nikki
Company. Excerpts from
\/\
1972 by Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of
Excerpts from Cotton
1978 by Nikki Giovanni
Company. Excerpts from Those
copyright
Morrow
Who
Candy on
a
Rainy Day by Nikki
Reprinted by permission of William Moi
Ride the Night Winds by Nikki Ciovanni.
1983 by Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permission of William
Company. Excerpts from Re:Creation by Nikki Giovanni, copyright
©
Morrow
&
1970 by Nikki Gio-
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
X
Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Black Feeling, Black Talk/Black
©
judgement by Nikki Giovanni, copyright
&
William Morrow
sion of
1970 by Nikki Giovanni. Reprinted by permis-
Company.
Excerpts from Corregidora by Gayl Jones, copyright
Random
permission of
House. Excerpts from Eva's
Random
by Gayl Jones. Reprinted by permission of
W. W.
Black Unicom by Audre Lorde, copyright
W. W.
1976
©
1982 by Audre Lorde. Re-
W. W.
©
©
Norton, Inc. Excerpts from The
1978 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted by permission
Norton, Inc. Excerpts from From a Land Where Other People Live by Audre
Lorde, copyright
from
©
House.
Norton. Excerpts from Coal by Audre Lorde, copyright
1976 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted by permission of
of
1975 by Gayl Jones. Reprinted by
by Gayl Jones, copyright
Poems by Audre Lorde, copyright
Excerpts from Chosen printed by permission of
©
Man
New
York
©
1973 by Audre Lorde. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts
Head Shop and Museum by Audre Lorde,
©
copyright
1975 by Audre Lorde.
Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from "To Da-duh right
©
Memoriam"
in
stones by Paule Marshall, copyright Press,
first
published
in
New
World magazine, copy-
1967. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from
©
Brown
Girl,
Brown-
1959 by Paule Marshall (reprinted by The Feminist
The Feminist
1981). Reprinted by permission of
Hands and Sing by Paule Marshall, copyright
©
Excerpts from Soul Clap
Press.
1961 by Paule Marshall. Reprinted by
permission of the author. Excerpts from The Chosen Place, The Timeless People by Paule Marshall, copyright
©1976
by Paule Marshall. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Widow
Excerpts from Praisesong for the
by Paule Marshall, copyright
©
1983 by Paule
Marshall. Reprinted by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.
©
Excerpts from The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison, copyright
Reprinted by permission of Holt, Rinehart son, copyright
©
&
1970 by Toni Morrison.
Winston. Excerpts from Sula by Toni Morri-
1973 by Toni Morrison. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
©
Excerpts from Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison, copyright
1977 by Toni Morrison.
Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc. Excerpts from Tar Baby by Toni Morrison, copyright
©
1981 by Toni Morrison. Reprinted by permission of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.
Excerpts from Paper Soul by Carolyn Rodgers, copyright
©
1968 by Carolyn Rodgers.
Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Song of a Black Bird by Carolyn Rodgers, copyright
Excerpts from
©
1969 by Carolyn Rodgers. Reprinted by permission of the author.
How I Got Ovah
by Carolyn Rodgers, copyright
©
1975 by Carolyn Rodgers.
Reprinted by permission of Anchor Press/Doubleday. Excerpts from The Heart as Evergreen
©
by Carolyn Rodgers, copyright
1978 by Carolyn Rodgers. Reprinted by permission of
Anchor Press/Doubleday. Excerpts from
We
a
Badddd People by Sonia Sanchez, copyright
Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Sanchez, copyright
Excerpts from
A
©
1981
I've
©
Been a
1970 by Sonia
Woman
by Sonia
by Sonia Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of the author.
Blues Book for Blue Black Magical
Women
by Sonia Sanchez, copyright
©
1973 by Sonia Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from Homecoming
by Sonia Sanchez, copyright author. Excerpts from
©
1969 by Sonia Sanchez. Reprinted by permission of the
Love Poems by Sonia Sanchez, copyright
©
1973 by Sonia Sanchez.
Reprinted by permission of the author. Excerpts from copyright
©
Good Night
Willie Lee,
I'll
See You
in the
Morning by Alice Walker,
1979 by Alice Walker. Reprinted by permission of The Dial
from Once by Alice Walker, copyright
©
Press.
Excerpts
1968 by Alice Walker. Reprinted by permission of
Harcourt Brace Jovanovich. Excerpts from In Love and Trouble by Alice Walker, copyrighted
©
1973 by Alice Walker. Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
XI
Excerpts from Revolutionary Petunias by Alice Walker, copyright
©
1973 by Alice Walker
Reprinted by permission of Harcourt Brace jovanovich. Excerpts from jubilee by Margaret Walker, copyright
©
1966 by Margaret Walker Alex-
Houghton Mifflin. Brown from The Collected Poems
ander. Reprinted by permission of
"Old Lem" by right
©
Sterling A.
of Sterling A. Brown, copy-
1980 by Sterling A. Brown. Reprinted by permission of Harper
&
Row,
Inc.
Contents Preface
xvii
MARI EVANS Introduction
xxiii
STEPHEN
E.
HENDERSON
MAYA ANGELOU Shades and Slashes of Light
3
MAYA ANGELOU Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement SELWYN R. CUDJOE
6
Reconstruction of the Composite
Women
in
Self:
New
Images of Black
Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography
25
SONDRA O'NEALE 37
Bio/Selected Bibliography
TONI CADE BAMBARA Salvation
Is
the Issue
41
TONI CADE BAMBARA
From Baptism
to Resurrection:
Toni Cade Bambara and the
Incongruity of Language
48
RUTH ELIZABETH BURKS Music as Theme: The Jazz Mode Bambara ELEANOR W. TRAYLOR
in
the
Works
of
Toni Cade 58
Bio/Selected Bibliography
71
GWENDOLYN BROOKS The the
Field of the Fever,
Time of the Tall-Walkers GWENDOLYN BROOKS
Gwendolyn
Brooks: Poet of the
ADDISON GAYLE,
Gwendolyn Brooks' GEORGE KENT
75
Whirlwind
79
JR.
Poetic Realism:
A Developmental
88
Survey
Bio/Selected Bibliography
106
ALICE CHILDRESS A Candle in a Gale Wind
1
ALICE CHILDRESS
1
1
CONTENTS
XIV
Alice Childress's Dramatic Structure
SAMUEL
The
Literary
JOHN
O.
HAY Genius
117
A.
129
of Alice Childress
KILLENS
Bio/Selected Bibliography
134
LUCILLE CLIFTON A Simple Language
137
LUCILLE CLIFTON Tell the
Good News: A View
AUDREY
T.
Lucille Clifton:
MC CLUSKEY Warm Water,
of the
Works
of Lucille Clifton
139
Greased Legs, and Dangerous 150
Poetry
HAKI MADHUBUTI Bio/Selected Bibliography
161
MARI EVANS My Father's Passage
165
MARI EVANS The Art of Mari Evans DAVID DORSEY
Works SOLOMON EDWARDS
Affirmation in the
170
of
Mari Evans
190
201
Bio/Selected Bibliography
NIKKI GIOVANNI An Answer to Some
How
Questions on
I
Write: In Three Parts
205
NIKKI GIOVANNI
Nikki Giovanni: Taking a
Chance on
Feeling
21
PAULA GIDDINGS Sweet Soft Essence of
WILLIAM
J.
Possibility:
The
Poetry of Nikki Giovanni
218
HARRIS
Bio/Selected Bibliograph
229
GAYL JONES About My Work
233
GAYL JONES Singing a
Deep Song. Language
as
Evidence
in
the Novels of
236
Gayl Jones
MELVIN DIXON Escape from Trublem: The Fiction of Gayl Jones JERRY W. WARD,
249
JR.
Bio/Selected Biblioeraohv
258
CONTENTS
XV
AUDRE LORDE My
Words Will Be There AUDRE LORDE
In the
Name
261
of the Father:
The
Poetry of Audre Lorde
269
JEROME BROOKS
The Unicorn
Audre Lorde
Black:
Is
in
277
Retrospect
JOAN MARTIN 292
Bio/Selected Bibliography
PAULE MARSHALL The Closing
of the Circle:
Wholeness
Movement from
Division to
295
Paule Marshall's Fiction
in
EUGENIA COLLIER
And
Called Every Generation Blessed:
Ritual in the
JOHN
MC
Works
Theme,
Setting,
and 316
of Paule Marshall
CLUSKEY,
JR.
335
Bio/Selected Bibliography
TONI MORRISON The Ancestor
Rootedness:
as
339
Foundation
TONI MORRISON
The Quest
for Self:
Triumph and
Failure in the
Works
of Toni
346
Morrison
DOROTHY H. LEE Theme, Characterization, and
Style in the
Works
of
Toni
Morrison
361
DARWIN
TURNER
T.
370
Bio/Selected Bibliography
CAROLYN RODGERS An Amen Arena
373
CAROLYN RODGERS Imagery
in
the
Women
Poems:
The
Art of Carolyn Rodgers
ANGELENE JAMISON Running Wild in Her Soul: The Poetry BETTYE J. PARKER-SMITH Bio/Selected Bibliography
of Carolyn Rodgers
377 393
411
SONIA SANCHEZ Ruminations/Reflections
SONIA SANCHEZ
41
CONTENTS
XVl'
The Bringer MADHUBUTI
Sonia Sanchez:
HAKI
The
of
419
Memories
433
Poetry of Sonia Sanchez
DAVID WILLIAMS
449
Bio/Selected Bibliography
ALICE WALKER 453
Writing The Color Purple
WALKER Walker: The Black Woman
ALICE Alice
Artist as
Wayward
457
BARBARA CHRISTIAN Alice Walker's
BETTYE
J.
Women:
In Search of
Some Peace
of
Mind
478
PARKER-SMITH
494
Bio/Selected Bibliography
MARGARET WALKER Fields
Watered with Blood: Myth and Ritual
in
the Poetry of
499
Margaret Walker
EUGENIA COLLIER
Music as Theme: The Blues Walker ELEANOR TRAYLOR
Mode
in
the
Works
of
Margaret 511
Bio/Selected Bibliography
526
INDEX
527
Preface Historically, very little serious critical attention has
been directed toward
women who
the creative energy and expertise of that large body of Black
have provided the matrix
what
is
nurturing
the
in
did not exist in 1979,
volume of
much
field of
when this made
criticism that
of
what
is
classic,
African-American
segment of
skillful
what
is
significant,
Certainly there
letters.
project was conceived, a single definitive available both traditional
and examinations of the works of
tional analyses
significant
for
Black
women
a
and nontradi-
representative and
writers. In addition, there
no single volume that provided, along with
critical
was
overviews, a forum for
the writers themselves as well as a selection of bibliographical materials
and current biographical information. The therefore, always existed
raison d'etre for this volume,
and was always highly
such substantive disregard.
It
visible in the spotlight of
appeared no more than responsible that we
should examine as closely as possible the works of these history
women whom
had nudged to some forward position, and that we should
require,
Women
Writers
even demand, such an examination. Accordingly, Black (1950-1980):
A
Critical Evaluation
may be
seen as an effort to meet an
observed need. Writers were selected as subjects on the basis of two
have considerable national
"name
visibility
criteria: that
they
based on their material, and that that
recognition" should have been established over a considerable pe-
riod of time.
There was no presumption that the women critiqued were way to the many women not included. More-
superior in any measurable over, the initial
list
of possible choices for critique was
composed
of eigh-
teen to twenty names. Approximately forty essayists were then asked to indicate their ists
first,
responded.
mously
second, and third choices; approximately twenty essay-
discovered that while novelists were popular
I
difficult to find critics willing to
scholarly examinations of the poets.
One was added
in
assume
Most
it
was enor-
responsibility for serious,
writers survived the initial
list.
response to numerous inquiries; several would have
been added had someone nudged
me
soon enough, and some of those
selected chose, for various reasons, not to participate.
encouraged the presence of some
women who were
More
not at
all
seriously,
I
enthusiastic
about the project.
Each woman received a list of questions designed to elicit from her a in which she viewed her composite Self, the society,
statement of the way her motivation
—
possibly even her compulsion
of her methodology.
The
—
to create,
and something
questions, based on over fifteen years of interac-
tion with audiences, introduced those areas of inquiry
which have
tradi-
PREFACE
XV111
writer.
engaged audiences, sometimes to the discomfort of the visiting Deliberately noncomplex, the questions two-stepped between the
serious
and the provocative, hoping
tionally
to persuade a vigorous response
creative coterie which, in the main, shyly
from
a
unconvincingly, professed a
if
deep reluctance to speak of themselves. The goal was to provoke a body of individual responses to a standardized set of queries that would deliver each woman, her philosophy,
and idiosyncrasies
politics,
distinction to each of her sisters. Further,
it
simplicity of the questions
would generate responses
reader as to the academic
elite.
For most of the within which they
who
gers,
some
women
moved
chose to reply
to the
intact, in contra-
was hoped that the deliberate as satisfying to the lay
the questions merely suggested a framework
There were two exceptions: Carolyn Rodrather matter-of-factly and less expansively than easily.
sample questions, and Toni Morrison, who agreed only to an
interview by one of two friends, Nikki Giovanni or Eleanor Traylor.
To
introduce the interview per se would be to introduce an element
foreign to the editor's construct for the book; but, rather than deprive the
reader of Morrison's fine statement an interview was conducted by Elea-
nor Traylor. Morrison's statement in
is
presented without Traylor's questions
order to maintain some control over conformity and balance. felt
I
platform ists,
but
—one it
that could be expected to confront or even rebut her essay-
was imperative
to
do so
assumptive statements of the obligation. critical
own
essential to provide each writer with her
was not only
it
Without the
in
critics.
writer's
order to bring into perspective the It
seemed,
as a
matter of
fact,
an
statement of intent and direction, any
approach would be incomplete and possibly
invalid.
Several personal statements of intent and direction are, unfortunately, still
not included. These were writers
who
felt
the five-to-seven page state-
ment conflicted with a basic, personal philosophy, or that
it
was simply too
great an infringement on their time.
There was Margaret Walker, whose warm response to my initial letter was reconsidered and rescinded a year and a half later, when she told me of her
new
decision not to contribute a statement to the volume.
I
very strongly that Walker's presence was substantive and necessary. reasons,
which were personal and
political,
were reasons
I
could respect,
but her earlier agreement and subsequent change of mind had placed in
felt
Her
me
the untenable position of having commissioned articles that were, or
were nearly, complete. Since no permission
is
required to write about an
author's work, and although this development would deprive readers of
Walker's uniquely personal voice and valuable input,
it
seemed important
that the missing statement not be allowed to destroy the value of the entire segment.
PREFACE
XIX
The
References for Margaret Walker, however incomplete, are here.
reader has not only excellent critical information but, serendipitously, an-
other and otherwise missing element
woman
the Black
which
itself,
in
our search for the dimensions of
writer: her disillusionment with the publishing industry
deeper than the problems-of-publishing malaise which
is
anguish, the anger so finely drawn, that
many
years;
transcended a friendship of
it
superseded her understanding that the project was valuable
it
to posterity, representing as
it
did the
compendium
first
focus on the works of so representative a segment of Black
of criticism to
women,
partic-
through three of the most impactful decades
ularly those writing
history of African-Americans in the
in
the
United States.
important to see Walker as neither an anachronism nor irresponsi-
It is
ble.
af-
non-Black writer. In Walker's case the scars were so deep, the
fects the
my enormous disappointment women who did not fully
Despite
could understand that, of
I
that small group of
cooperate with the project,
she acted without caprice, deciding to plant her feet, retract her permission,
and say "no more." This sense of alienation, of being embattled, of
feeling betrayed,
experience of Black
a significant part of the
is
my
writers. Its manifestation, despite
merely lends
regrets,
women
a further
touch
of authenticity to the volume.
One
two writers are missing because of an ongoing
or
and mine the
first
same language." compendium. Also a long time
to speak "the
June Jordan
in
the
women
I
included; unfortunately,
inability of theirs
certainly regret the absence of
I
friend, she
was one of
was unable to make the
rangements that would have ensured her presence. Any number of of
tremendous and demonstrated
one
is
plete treatment
many recently) who
I
of
who
should be here are
was simply not enough space to provide the com-
to blame; there
writers,
talent
ar-
women not. No
envisioned, and to include
whom
have been
all
the fine Black female
visible nationally for years
(some more
deserve a comprehensive analysis of their valuable and im-
portant contributions.
Good
went into hiding over a five-to-seven-page account of write." Once a page and a half appeared in my mailbox necessary to persuade a fine writer that how she did what
friends
"why and how and it became
I
And there were those who submitted unsolicited essays for writers critics who disappeared leaving behind neither
she did so well merited a few more lines than that!
marvelously patient
critics
already assigned, and other article nor
Where
message.
are Adriennc
Kennedy, Louise Meriwether, Jayne Cortex, Sarah
Wright, Ntozake Shange, Alexis Hunter, Micki Grant,
ad infinitum?
And
J.
De
Veaux, Eloise Greenfield, Kristin
E. Franklin, Gloria
there are the
new
Oden.
Julia Fields,
Rosa Guy,
writers, such as Gloria Naylor,
who,
PREFACE
XX
on the strength of her award-winning
first
The
novel,
Place, gives notice that she will claim a place in the
women
Black
whose
writers
There was another
my
itated against
Mae
and circumstance
that space limitations
two Black
serious desire to see included
have made important and singular contributions Verta
of Brewster
creativity continues to blossom.
—
regret
Women
ongoing pantheon of
in fields
mil-
women who
hard to codify.
Smart-Grosvenor and Charlayne Hunter-Gault have been cenuniquely creative ways. Smart-Grosvenor, a contempo-
tral figures in their
rary "cultural griot,"
into African-American
injects vitality
myths and
manners, rescues our discrete lingua franca (which most ingenerally we
and
to forget),
and
sings us a survival
we
strange and alien garments
Mae
serious examination
— remembered melodies
Unquestionably
essay.
a valuable national
Smart-Grosvenor has yet to receive
oral,
is
it
difficult to codify
deserves nevertheless to be evaluated for
and informed approach It
cannot have been
work the
for her
deserves.
it
Charlayne Hunter-Gault's contribution, admittedly because
try
as ancient
obeahs inserted somewhere between us and the
as useful as protective
resource, Verta
music
in
easy.
the
A
field of political
its
penetrating
commentary and
analysis.
voice of undeniable stature, Hunter-Gault has
been the only Black female
figure in
an arena of oral
political
dominated by white males. If her insight and challenges, her information and her perspective, consistently shaped by Black
opinion
privilege to values,
had
been "packaged" and published over the
last
decade, hers would certainly
have been one of the names included
the
initial
The finally,
women who might
of
list is all
them ever
in a single
volume.
The words essayists,
to be treated, in
"critics"
my
much
and
endless; fine
and
Black
that,
women
any nominally comprehensive way,
"essayists" are used interchangeably for the
like characters
in a novel,
began
to
and the
"be themselves," some
had optimistically sugend the "stylistic" approaches There were frequent telephone conferences, my anguished imploI
ration, their equally
concede that
do not
is
many
original "vision" did not survive in every instance,
resisting to the
gested.
plans for this volume.
have been here
that can be said: there are simply too
writers for
reasons that
in
all
anguished wails of protest. Eventually
critics, too,
work
in
I
was forced to
are artists who, just as surely as the visual artist,
the same
medium
nor use the same colors; or they,
like
dancers moving to a jealously personal rhythm, refuse to create landscapes that
do not hugely wear their personal impress. Although problems of and production are endemic to publishing, our project
personalities
seemed headed for a record of sorts. Only some of the writers examined provided comprehensive graphical information, and although some critics were helpful
bio/biblioin
contrib-
PREFACE
XXI
uting supplemental material, the result was to reemphasize that the matter of accessible concise bio/bibliographical
women will
many Black
information for
writers remains, despite our effort, only partially addressed.
be omissions; that
Three
years
is
There
a given.
and approximately
we were
forty critics later,
We sought
twenty-nine original manuscripts.
way
current article and were on our
in receipt of
permission to reprint a single
to press.
for one,
I,
questioning
whether creative writers have the necessary distance to edit or whether, writers, they
may
certainly did)
(I
as
empathize too completely with the
contributors' problems.
who
Clearly, there are critics
had committed himself to
a critique; Larry
and George Kent, whose work prior to his passing.
liams,
should be here. Prior to their deaths, Hoyt
had enthusiastically welcomed the project and
Fuller, always the visionary,
Other
Neal had also been contacted,
here, sent a final revision just
is
were
critics
also contacted: Sherley
Angela Jackson, Cathy Hurst, Janet
Sybil
Bell,
two weeks
Anne Wil-
Kein,
Barbara
Smith, Kalamu ya Salaam, Houston Baker, Chester Fontenot, Andrea
Benton Rushing, Charles Rowell, Alvin Aubert, Samuel Allen, and Michael Harper.
One more
me
major, and for
women;
could be only fifteen
earned the right to be there, was
The
myself out?
in or leave
the
women
examined.
I
uncomfortable, decision loomed. There
did it
real
my work
ethical,
editors
would
it
Had
I
should be one of
I
should consider not allowing the same
I
met the
had received
women. Maybe the women be those who
for the other
criteria: that
the
a rather significant visibility, that their
have been widely received, and that they have established
works
a strong literary
We
presence over at least most of the period treated by the volume.
decided
I
met the
One problem my own
include
criteria.
remained: work.
I
had
to live with myself
Doubleday any
critical of
my
final
relinquish to
I
decision about the selection of
work. She would not only decide which essays on
include but would, from the
moment
problems, and controversy would be out of submitted; two by friends, two by essayists selection of
and editing
committee
of three
my I
was not one of them.
my
essays
my work
to
staff.
Editing opinions,
hands. Four essays were
had never met. The
for the essays critical of
women who
two
of submission, be the authorized
contact between the essayists and the production
1
about the decision to
solved that by suggesting that
I
editor at
the book;
I
be worse to put myself
were of one mind:
we intended
that
question was whether
rightfully or not
have any right to usurp space?
consulted friends and "friends." Sincerely or not,
they too expressed concern that scrutiny for
I
my work
final
were made by
a
shared administrative responsibility for
PREFACE
XX11
In time
whom
I
I
would
shared
my
realize that a
number
did not, in fact, share
my
am
who
and
with
essayists
graciously responded
sense of the urgency, the importance, and the
complexity of the task ahead. Very few, I
of writers
concept for the volume and
it
seemed,
really
shared the vision.
indebted to many, however, for their professionalism, their kindness,
their patience.
I
hasten to acknowledge, therefore, the single person most
—
volume Marie Dutton Brown, the Doubleday editor who first understood the value of the project. It was her informed and perceptive insight that convinced her peers and the hierarchy at Doubleday that the book would be a landmark volume. It was she responsible for the existence of the
who then
patiently guided
painful soul searching,
me
through the early
Marie Brown
other editorial responsibility,
I
left
stages.
When,
after
much
her post at Doubleday for an-
was fortunate to
find the
new editors, who had
Laura Van Wormer, and Gerald Gladney, and Loretta Barrett,
had administrative
responsibility
concerned about the
project.
from the beginning,
still
They remained committed
sensitive to at a
and
time when
things were tough.
My
goal
had been
lofty
and complex, and despite the numerous prob-
lems that emerged, the project resulted nine African-American writers and
in
the bringing together of thirty-
critics for
the single, serious purpose of
discussing the creative works of contemporary African-American It
women.
has been infinitely rewarding.
— Mari Evans December 1982
Introduction Stephen women
Black
have played a heroic
E.
Henderson
role in the struggle for
equality both here in the United States
and abroad, and
in
freedom and the minds of
most of us the archetypal names of Harriet Tubman and Sojourner Truth smolder with deathless pride. More recently to those names have been
added Rosa Parks, Daisy Bates, Scott King,
Ella Baker, Fannie
Lou Hamer, Coretta
Davis, and others.
Ruby Doris Robinson, Angela
And
just as
Black literature has always been implicated in our freedom struggle, Black
women
almost by definition have always been involved
in
the generation
and of our culture in general. One could, in fact, make the case that, the founders of Black American literature, in a Phillis Wheatley, Lucy Terry, and Harriet E. formal sense, were women
and sustenance of our
literature
—
Wilson.
where
One
could
make an
equally strong case for the oral tradition,
the basis of the literature rests
on the work songs and the
where some of the oldest songs accompanied such workaday ing rice is
spirituals,
tasks as husk-
and pounding corn. And certainly the prototype of the love song
the lullabye.
Notwithstanding our knowledge of these things, the contradictions be-
tween knowledge and action that surfaced
Power movements forced their
own
sensitive
positions vis-a-vis the
and
in the Civil
intelligent
men and
Rights and Black
women
to
reexamine
to conclude that they
were the
victims not only of racial injustice but of a sexual arrogance tantamount to
dual colonialism
—one
from without, the other from within, the Black
community. Thus, it is with a that Johnetta Cole traces the
and an anthropologist's precision point of the new Black women's con-
historian's flash
sciousness to the position paper written in the mid-sixties by
Robinson on the
role
and treatment of Black women
in
Ruby Doris
SNCC. That
formalized awareness changed the character of the organization and the focus of the
SNCC
movement.
model and inspiration
and other organizations had served as Speech Movement, the peace move-
for the Free
ment, the gay movement, and the women's movement. Stephen
Howard the is
New
E.
Henderson, Ph.D.,
University.
Coauthor
of
When
Black
director of the Institute tor the Arts
and Humanities.
The Militant Black Writer (1969), editor
of Understanding
is
Black Poetry (1972), and author of numerous essays on African-American poetry, he
also editor of Sayala. a journal of art
national con fe ren ces on Black
and ideas which has sponsored, since 1974.
American
literature
.i
series of
INTRODUCTION
XXIV
women
discovered a political context that involved both race and gender,
our history
in this
country took a special turn, and our literature
made
a
quantum leap toward maturity and honesty.
What
has happened in the past few years
a "revolution within the
is
Revolution," one that was initiated by and has been sustained chiefly by
Black women. rary
life, in
and
The impact
can be
felt in virtually all
the everyday world around us and
culture.
It
is
particularly dramatic
in
aspects of contempo-
the special worlds of art
literature,
in
to
which
it
has
brought dimensions of feeling and analysis that were hitherto missing. In effect, as
Black
women
have come into new awareness of their powers,
as
they have struggled to liberate themselves, they have enriched and ex-
panded the international corpus of Black literature. This phenomenon is announced as early as Margaret Walker's Jubilee in 1966 and surfaces dramatically in the 1970s with the emergence of writers like Ntozake Shange, and Gayl Jones, but it is anticipated by others who emerged
now turning inward to a more personal vision. Maya Angelou and Nikki Giovanni for example,
during the 1960s and were
Some
of these writers,
had enormous popular appeal. Writers such as June Jordan, Audre Lorde, and Mari Evans brought a human face to political writing; Sonia Sanchez
and Jayne Cortez brought subtle dimensions to personal statement; Alexis De Veaux brought a sense of ritual and mystery. In the depiction and revelation of character, as writers and stylists, and as sustainers, women have made and are making very substantial contribu-
From the first, one notices the Gwendolyn Brooks conditions into art in a poem
tions to the literature.
specific femaleness
that
like
or Sonia Sanchez depicts in her personal poetry, or Alice
The Color Purple, or Audre Lorde expresses
women
differed
Black
is
as different
from the descriptions/portrayals
vision of Black writers in the sixties
from that of whites writing on Black
women
reveals in
The Cancer Journals. Black a special knowledge of their
in
have thus brought into the literature
and experiences that of women by men, as the lives
"Malcolm X,"
Walker
subjects.
have braved the criticism leveled
at
and
fifties
In the process,
them by Black male
and scholars who felt that men were presented unfairly or in too superficial a manner. They braved the ideological strictures of the sixties and freed themselves from the roles assigned to them in the writings of
writers
their
male counterparts, where, depicted
earth mothers and idealized Big
as
Mommas
queens and princesses, or of
as
superhuman wisdom and
strength, they were unrecognizable as individuals.
The
process of correcting the portrayal of Black
women
has involved
both the creative writer and the scholar-critic, and oftentimes one person
and Thadious Davis, creative writers Williams. The Walker and Sherley Anne or Margaret serves both functions, as in the case of Trudier Harris
INTRODUCTION employ
all
XXV
the major modes, including the personal essay, the novel, the
and poetry; and
short story, drama,
bring fresh vitality to them. .
.
.
they extend the genres and
stylistically in
point are Shange's For Colored Girls
Bambara's The Salt Eaters, Walker's The Color Purple, and Verta
,
Mae
Cases
Grosvenor's Vibration Cooking, which transmutes the "cookbook"
into poetry. Supporting the efforts of the creative writers are explorations in
scholarship and criticism, sometimes
These
have led to
efforts
Black literature, to
a
a
made by
the writers themselves.
reexamination of the history and the texts of
rediscovery, for example, of Jesse Fauset, Georgia
Douglass Johnson, Nella Larson, and, especially, of Zora Neale Hurston.
The
Hull on Georgia
scholarship of Gloria
Douglass Johnson, or of
Trudier Harris on Alice Childress; Sondra O'Neale on
and other
early writers;
Barbara Christian, on the novel
—
of these efforts have created currents
all
of ferment that are changing our entire
ing Black literature
Any
Wheatley
Phillis
Joanne Braxton, on the slave narratives of women;
and
way
of thinking about
and evaluat-
culture.
consideration of the Black Aesthetic concept, one of the most
challenging of the past two decades, must
now
involve on one
Carolyn Fowler's Black Aesthetics and Barbara Smith's "Towards Feminist Criticism" on
Dance's research
the other.
folklore,
in
It
would
and Daphne Harrison's study of Black
women
hand Black
from Daryl
benefit
also
Geneva Smitherman's work
a
in
linguistics,
blues singers. Studies of the
blues as literature, essential in this endeavor, would be
enhanced by
a
reading of the creative work and the critical statements of Gayl Jones and
Anne
Sherley
Williams.
Obviously, Black ture
in
women
did not begin their involvement with
litera-
the 1970s, and one of the refreshing aspects of the reevaluation
mentioned above
is
not only the reappraisal of Phillis Wheatley or the
rediscovery of Zora Neale Hurston, but also a deepening realization of the role that in
Black
women, both known and unknown, have
building the institution of Black literature.
assess, for
innumerable scholars and
like
historically played
can one properly
example, the importance of a Jean Hutson Blackwell, or
thy Porter Wesley, or an Annette Phinazee, of
How
artists?
who have
What would
without the meticulous bibliographies of
the literature? These
women
Doro-
the recent scholarship be
a Janet
merable unsung librarians and English teachers
a
assisted the research
Sims?
who
And
the innu-
introduced us
arc an integral part of the
all
to
deep structure of
Black literature, which includes the writers themselves, the scholars and teachers, the critics, the editors, the journals,
zations
Hi is book becomes
of recent attempts to focus
The most
and the professional organi-
a part of that structure as
and
clarify this
it
joins
with
a series
important body of work.
distinctive feature of the present
volume
is its
organization
INTRODUCTION
XXVI
an organization that makes writer's reflection
it
possible to present in a single
on her work, her intentions,
inspirations,
volume and
(a)
the
goals, (b) a
by two perceptive critics, and (c) the hard biographand bibliographical data that often provide their own curb against sentimentality on one hand and excessive speculation on the other. The writer's reflection on her own work ranges from the perfunctory comment substantial evaluation ical
found
an autobiographical statement to the invaluable extended
in
which she discusses
tion in
success, the response of critics,
Of
production.
and the place of the work in her total and critics of the literature are
special interest to students
those statements that suggest a correlation between the or
designed
strategies
specific
reflec-
specific literary strategy, her evaluation of her
how
Angelou's account of
to
she writes
achieve is
moving
in its
and the work
life
important
effects.
Maya
honesty and simplic-
ity:
I
write because
When
am
I
my
turn
I
woman, listening attentively to her talking people. mind to writing (my unconscious or subconscious is
a Black
conscious
always busy recording images, phrases, sound, colors, and scents) rigid habit.
arrange
my mind
morning
is
new,
in
a
writing order. That
my
mind.
The
it is
a
little
room
cubicle in
I
tell
myself
I
will
coffee,
all
I
I
have coffee and allow the work of the day before to
I
see
and
have rented
I
and
how lucky am that this come to me which have
characters and situations take over the chambers of
existence until they are
times a
is,
day never seen before, that ideas
never consciously known. flood
follow a fairly
I
around 5:30 or 6 a.m., wash, pray, put on
rise early,
I
in a
hear.
Then
I
go to
my
my
writing room, most rarely
but sometimes
room: "a Bible,
a dictionary,
cheap but clean hotel;
my own home.
She describes the
essential contents of the
Roget's Thesaurus, a bottle of sherry, cigarettes, an ashtray, and three or four decks of playing cards."
While her hands and "small mind
ern Black phrase) are engaged in blacks on the reds,
my
(a
South-
placing the reds on the blacks and the
working mind arranges and rearranges the charac-
when they are in a plausible order, simply have down where they are and what they say." Toni Cade Bambara's account is equally moving, not because of its
ters
and the
plot. Finally
I
to write
simplicity but because of
its
sensuous analysis of the specific details of
She speaks of the stages in her development and discusses individual stories and social relations, but most wonderfully she speaks about her philosophy and the appeal of various writing materials. Here is her account of work on a major television project. creation.
upcoming ninety-minute TV film on the life and work of up a 4 X 8-foot slab of Sheetrock in the yard atop three sawhorses. unrolled a yard or two of butcher paper, and with a fistful of pens worked barefoot, standing up moving back and forth acting out the scenes. It In preparation for the
Zora Neale Hurston, I
I
set
INTRODUCTION
XXV11
seemed the most appropriate way to get started. Zora is too big, too bold, too down-home, to capture and release at a desk with a notebook. In
outdoors, too black, a
string out the narrative thread; purple for the visual motifs, blue for audio;
1
Conte crayon
childhood which
for flashbacks to
glued-down swatches of newspaper Garvey, Joe McCarthy, et
sion, tions;
and yellow run-through
Obviously, the critic the
al.;
I
this regard,
see as sepia-toned photos;
issues of the times
— the Depres-
red for the fact-fiction-conversion/work sec-
white america iconography.
to highlight the
.
.
.
deals with such a multitalented artist must, at
be conversant with the modes of the
least,
and
who
and
for figures
Bambara's work
expression,
artist's
and
in
fortunate enough to have the empathetic
is
Eleanor Traylor.
incisive attention of critic
In general, there are several
noteworthy aspects of the
critical essays.
and foremost, they include statements and evaluations by men as well as women, which in itself implies both an editorial and an ideological First
one that
position, qualities
literature,
analysis
says that Black
and concerns,
and on some
women's
levels, at least,
Black American
amenable to appreciation and
is
Some
by perceptive and sensitive males.
this collection,
literature, despite its special
a part of the larger tradition of
is
of the writers included in
and some not included, would agree with
this position.
Others, however, would argue for a distinctive sensibility and aesthetic
men would
that
find virtually inaccessible.
Another important aspect of the
community
represent the academic
around the
critical attitudes
critical essays
for the
They
their range.
is
most part and tend
to cluster
and assumptions associated with the
New
Criticism that flourished in this country from the 1940s through the mid1960s.
The newer modes
persons such as Houston A. Baker,
Gates,
Jr.,
by Jerry
and poststructuralism are con-
of structuralism
spicuously absent, as are those critics
who
are
most conversant with them,
Chester Fontenot, Henry Louis
Jr.,
Robert Stepto, and others. This group
W.
Ward,
Jr.
Perhaps, there
is
represented essentially
is
some meaning
in this aside
from
the purely personal or the ideological. Perhaps the newer criticism has not
been ate.
sufficiently mastered, or possibly
Perhaps the literature
will
it is
already perceived as inappropri-
continue to generate
its
own
and methods. Perhaps the raw sociocultural urgency short-circuits preoccupation with abstractions that level of
myth. Notwithstanding, there
is
Gayl Jones. There
Alice Walker, and there
and
in
is
is
a
modes
do not resonate on the and a daring in the
a freshness
perceptions and grace of Eleanor Traylor, and tions of
critical
of the literature
a
challenge
bracing intellectuality
in
deep and consuming wisdom
the passionate polemics of Audre Lorde.
We
in
the observa-
the observations of in
Alice Childress
hear these voices
addressing one another and ourselves, both within the book as the essayists
counterpoint the voice of the writer, and
in
the outside world as that
INTRODUCTION
XXV111
multitude of talented writers create their of our people
—one which no
that matter, can possibly contain. theless,
and they
signal a
own
music, which
is
the history
single volume, or collection of volumes, for
Some
of the leitmotifs are here, none-
growth toward an unrealized grandeur.
Stephen E. Henderson Institute for the Arts
Howard
University
Washington, D.C.
March
4,
1983
and the Humanities
Black
Women
Writers (1950-1980)
Maya Ange/ou
Shades and Slashes of
Light
MAYA ANGELOU We
"... over
Why
What
of reach?
shape words and
lips
blood.
.
I
.
have spent
people.
What shimmering
a writer write?
goals
maddeningly out
writer's eyes, desirable, seductive, but
happens
.
"
my
and how frequently does
dance before the
Our
race of singers.
and quicken our
spirits
years listening to
fifty
A
are a tongued folk.
rhythms which elevate our
ego when one dreams of training Russian
to the
bears to dance the Watusi and
is
barely able to teach a friendly dog to
shake hands?
Those
could say
I
passively
on
reveal.
I
write because
a page, or that
could say that
I
I
like
write because
I
love the discipline
I
words and the way they I
the above as
my
reasons for writing
which writers must employ
would not be
I
lie
have profound truths to
translate their nebulous thoughts into practical phrases.
I
and obscenely
are questions, frightful questions, too intimate
probing.
If
to
claimed any of
I
telling the
whole
truth.
have too often hated words, despised their elusive nature. Loathed them
for skittering
around evading
ponderous. Lying
my
like stones
on
me
my
convey
their responsibility to
Conversely, they have frequently infuriated
by being
a page, unwilling to skip,
meaning. heavy,
inert,
impervious to
prodding.
As
truth,
for
I'm quiveringly uncertain of
chameleonlike before
my
eyes so
many
times, that
learning, to trust almost anything except
ing brings
me
principle flees
a stated truth before
and
leaves in
opposite meaning. No,
I
its
I
my
be
to
so.
If
am
morn-
pen and yellow pad, the
place either ashes of
know no
changed
have learned, or
what appears
can find
I
Reality has
it.
itself
absolute truths which
or a dictate of
am
capable of
have
lost lovers,
I
revealing.
And
I
certainly
do not adore the
writer's discipline.
I
endangered friendships, and blundered into eccentricity, impelled by a concentration which usually
about to be executed I
in
is
to be
found only
in
the minds of people
the next half hour.
write for the Black voice and any car which can hear
writes for musical instruments
and
a
it.
choreographer creates
As
a
composer
for the
body,
1
search for sound, tempos, and rhythms to ride through the vocal cord over
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
4
the tongue, and out of the
Black people.
lips of
and
love the shades
I
and passages of magical
slashes of light. Its rumblings
(1950-1980)
lyricism.
accept
I
the glory of stridencies and purrings, trumpetings and sombre sonorities.
Having
said that,
must now
I
moans and
contradictions, the
time than
this
was when
I
and during
After,
talk
about content.
I
have noted most
twenty years our speech patterns, the ambiguities,
carefully for the past
and
laughter,
am
even more enchanted at
began eavesdropping.
I
demeanings,
pestilential assaults of frustration, hate,
and murders, our language continues to expand and mature. Our
made inadequate and
enriched by the words
hostility, are
we
use
to,
and with, each
our intonations, our modulations, our shouts and write because
I
I
lives,
estranged by the experience of malice, loathing, and
am
a Black
woman,
By
other.
hollers.
listening attentively to her talking
people.
When scious
is
I
my
turn
follow a fairly rigid habit.
to writing
lucky
ideas will
am
I
come
that this
to
rise early,
I
my mind
put on coffee, and arrange
how
mind
conscious
morning
see
me which
hear.
have rented in
Then
in a
I
go to
my
my
hours
is,
I
myself
tell
I
my
mind.
I
have coffee
The
characters
existence until they are little
sometimes
hotel; rarely but
bottle of sherry, cigarettes, an ashtray, five
That
a Bible, a dictionary, Roget's
I
I
day never seen before, that
writing room, most times a
cheap but clean
During the
a
to flood
chambers of
my own home. keep in my writing room
cards.
new,
have never consciously known.
I
situations take over the
and
or subcon-
around 5:30 or 6 a.m., wash, pray,
in writing order. is
and allow the work of the day before and
(my unconscious
always busy recording images, phrases, sound, colors, and scents)
it
all
I
cubicle
I
is
room
a
Thesaurus, a
and three or four decks of playing
spend there
I
use every object, but
I
play
more than actually write. It seems to me that when my hands and small mind (a Southern Black phrase) are engaged in placing the reds on the blacks and blacks on the reds, my working mind arranges and rearranges the characters and the plot. Finally when they are in a plausible order, I simply have to write down where they are and what they say. Later, after have returned home or if have worked at home, when solitaire
I
I
have signal
left
my
my
I
writing room,
total
mind
begin to think for the I
I
it may now stop working for the writer and woman, the wife, the friend, and the cook.
that
begin thinking about dinner midafternoon.
both creative and relaxing. After
gun
I
bathe and change clothes. This seems to
a dish
I
it,
love to cook
and
find
it
have planned dinner and possibly be-
which demands long stewing,
dining room table and polish
I
I
take the morning's work to
straighten out the
grammar,
clear
my
up the
Maya Angelou syntax, I
am
and
try to
5
eliminate repetitions and contradictions. By dinnertime,
ready to join
working on
a
book
I
my family am never
or friends (although truthfully, totally
away from
it).
I
know
when I'm
that they are
aware that they and their concerns are not of great importance during the creative period pretend.
The
discipline
I
(as
long as a year, sometimes
use to be in
company
stands
me
less),
in
but
to
we
me all
good stead on
when must go alone into my small writing room and face a host of new ideas and headstrong characters, yet keep myself open so that they can interact, grow, and become real. write. suppose also wear a hat or a very tightly pulled head tie when the following morning
I
I
I
I
hope by doing that
and running face.
in great
I
will
keep
gray blobs
my
I
brains from seeping out of
down my
neck, into
my
ears,
my
scalp
and over
my
Maya Angelou and the Autobiographical Statement
SELWYN Slaver}'
added
terrible for
is
to the
burden
men; but
common
it
is
to all,
far
more
CUDJOE
R.
terrible for
women. Super-
they have wrongs, and sufferings, and
mortifications peculiarly their own.
Linda Brent, Incidents
in
the Life of a Slave Girl
most important thing about black people
/ think the
they can control anything except their
people think and do has
own
can of
autobiographical statement
Afro-American
all
that they
don
't
think
So everything black
be understood as very personal.
to
Hannah
The Afro-American
is
persons.
literary pursuits.
Nelson, in Drylongso
is
the most Afro-Ameri-
During the eighteenth and
nineteenth centuries, thousands of autobiographies of Afro-American slaves
of
up
appeared expressing their sentiments about
American
institutions.
The
contemporary
until the
for capturing the
slavery, the
most cruel
practice of the autobiographical statement,
era,
remains the quintessential
genre
literary
cadences of the Afro-American being, revealing
its
deep-
and tracing the evolution of the Afro-American psyche
est aspirations
under the impact of slavery and modern U.S. imperialism.
Within
this
context
aspect slavery as
it
it
is
important to note that
appeared does not
freedoms" granted to Black people since the
full
differ very
in
in its
most
much from
essential
the "formal
the contemporary United States,
franchise was achieved only with the passage of the Civil
Rights Act of 1965. Under slavery the whole person was enslaved; during imperialism, the physical body remained free while Black labor was stolen savagely and Black participation in the social and political affairs of the
country remained minimal and peripheral. Yet one essential condition Selwyn R. Cudjoe, Ph.D., formerly University,
is
assistant professor of
the author of Resistance
People (1983).
A
and Caribbean
criticism
New
and many other publications. Professor Cudjoe on the works of V.
S.
Naipaul.
at
Harvard
and Movement of the
contributing editor to Freedomways, his works have appeared
vard Educational Re\>iew, Harvard Magazine, the Studies,
Afro-American studies
Literature (1980)
in
The Har-
York Times, The journal of Ethnic is
currently writing a book of literary
Maya Angelou
7
characterized both slavery and imperialism: the violation of the personhood of the Afro-American because he was too helpless to defend himself consistently, and the further degradation of his social being as the nature of the system worked toward his further diminishment.
For Afro-American
own
women
this violation
Linda Brent
peculiarities and, as
and degradation possessed
dents in the Life of a Slave Girl (1861): "Slavery is
more
far
women. Superadded
terrible for
its
her autobiography, Inci-
testified in
terrible for
is
burden
to the
men; but
common
to
it
all,
they have wrongs and sufferings and mortifications peculiarly their own."
Such
a
elty of
condition
may be
called double jeopardy
—
that
the special cru-
is,
being at one and the same time the victim of one's race and of
one's sex.
women remained
Yet the violation and degradation of Afro-American largely ignored,
guarded
and the nature of
secret. Indeed, of the
published
their lives remained, as
leading to a spectacle in
munity. As
woman
literature
as Black
matter of
fact,
without
and
someone autonomous and a
well into the
as
really
Black
sisters in
era,
having to confront
and
as female; as a person
someone responsible
an
literary activity of
the latter part of the twentieth century. There
the autobiographical statement that makes
is
all-
her
nothing
essentially different
it
as a
com-
to a
woman remained
the Afro-American
pervading absence until she was rescued by the
in
contemporary
which one could speak about the autobiographical
Afro-American
in
the Afro-American presence; as
were, a closely
the early years very few were concerned with the condition of
in
the Black woman. This absence continued
statement
it
thousands of autobiographies which were
from
except, of course, that which has been erected by convention.
fiction
Michael Ryan, picking up on the observations of Jacques Derrida, has argued that inherent in the structure of the autobiographical statement is the necessary death of the author as a condition for the existence of the referential machinery.
1
'The
writing," he states,
"must be capable, from
the outset, of functioning independently of the subject, of being repeated in
the absence of the subject. Strictly speaking, then,
'ideal' of fictional
To phy
the degree, however, that the referent
(it
being absent or "ideal"
in fiction),
autobiography that guarantees that versa.
ways
In fact,
it
will
is
present
there
referent
in
really
is
is
always
2
the autobiogra-
nothing
in
any discussion on the Afro-American autobiography
likely to raise this question: "Is
it
really true 7
"
biographical. Indeed, Linda Brent was compelled
prove the authenticity of her work. kind of afterword, George
W.
Thus
at
the
not be read as fiction or vice
author must present strong evidence that the work
in a
its
— produced and sustained by convention."
is
al-
and almost always the is
unquestionably auto-
to call
upon others
to
the end of the autobiography,
Lowther
is
forced to corroborate the
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
8
(1950-1980)
some incidents whose eyes it may
"authenticity" of the manuscript: "This narrative contains so extraordinary, that, doubtless,
chance to
fall,
that
ography
is
it is
full
persons, under
be ready to believe that
will
however
special purpose. But,
know
many
it
it
is
colored highly, to serve a
may be regarded by
the incredulous,
I
of living truths." 3 Obviously, the "truth" of the autobi-
neither self-evident nor independent of extratextual confirma-
tion.
Autobiography and at,
fiction, then, are
or (re)cognizing the
same
simply different means of arriving
truth: the reality of
position of the Afro-American subject in that
American
life
and the
Neither genre should be
life.
given a privileged position in our literary history and each should be
judged on
ence
its
ability to
speak honestly and perceptively about Black experi-
in this land.
What
accounts for the unique power and longevity of this genre
Afro-American writing and text of the genre?
its
specific
in
permutations within the larger con-
will suggest three reasons.
I
Hannah Nelson, an Afro-American woman reported to have said that
it
of the contemporary era,
is
the intense regard for the personal that
is
distinguishes the Black subject from the white subject in the United States.
She argues that "the most important thing about black people
that they don't think they can control anything except their
own
is
persons.
So everything black people think and do has to be understood as very personal." (My italics) 4 As a result, the inviolability of the Afro-American's personhood is so closely guarded that any assault or presumed assault upon his/her person
is
frequently resisted. Such a response to social reality
always leads to complaints that Blacks tend to be "too touchy," or "too sensitive" in
apparent
in
Christmas.
most of
their relations with whites.
Maya Angelou's
This fact becomes quite
Singin and Swingin and Gettin Merry Like '
'
'
5
Maya Angelou seems to have captured (and elaborated upon) when she responded to Mrs. Callinan's inability to call her by knew her correct name, thus denying her individuality. "Every person In fact,
this point
I
had
a hellish horror of
practice to call a
being 'called out of his name.'
Negro anything
It
was
a
dangerous
that could be loosely construed as insult-
ing because of the centuries of their having been called niggers, dinges, blackbirds, crows, boots and spooks." (C.B. sanctity of the person individuality leads to in
and Mrs. Cullinan's reluctance
p.
to grant
one of the most poignant moments
jigs,
91) 6 In fact this
in
Angelou her
the text when,
wreaking revenge on Mrs. Cullinan for her indifference and cruelty,
Angelou drops some of Mrs. Cullinan's most treasured heirlooms (her casserole
and green
glass cups)
and shocks Mrs. Cullinan into (re)cogni-
Maya Angelou
9
tion of her personhood.
Recounting the incident, Angelou gives her side
of the story:
She
wobbled around on the
actually
"Oh,
cried,
Momma. Oh,
floor
Gawd.
dear
and picked up shards
It's
Momma's
and
of the cups
china from Virginia.
.
.
.
Clumsy little black nigger." Old speckled-face leaned down and asked, "Who did it, Viola? Was it Mary? Who did it?" ... can't remember whether her action preceded her words, but know that Mrs. Cullinan said, "Her name's Margaret, goddamn it, her name's Margaret!" And she threw a wedge of the broken plate at me. Mrs. Cullinan was right about one thing. My name wasn't Mary. [C.B., pp. 92-
That clumsy
nigger.
I
I
.
.
.
93]
The
realm of the personal, then,
very important, as
is
is
its
presumed
violation.
on
In her discussion with Professor Gwaltney, Nelson goes
to
make
another important observation about the difference between Black people
and white people, particularly
much
in
the area of speech ("speech" used here to
manner of speaking to someone but to its capactransmit experience): "Our speech is most directly personal, and
refer not so ity to
to the
every black person assumes that every other black person has a right to a personal opinion. In speaking of great matters, your personal experience
considered evidence.
With
us, distant statistics are certainly
tant as the actual experience of a sober person." of the Afro-American, then,
is
(My
italics)
is
not as impor7
The
speech
accorded an unusually high degree of im-
portance and acts as an arena where a sense of one's personal and social liberation can
be
personal assumes
realized. The inordinate amount of weight which the may account in part for the strength of the Afro-Ameri-
can autobiographical statement
The unique weight
in
our literature.
of the "personal"
speech can better be perceived,
in
and the
integrity of the
word or
our discussion of the peculiarity of the
Afro-American autobiographical statement, as one of the most important
means means
of negotiating our
way out
of the condition of enslavement
of expressing the intensity with
rience their violation
and
as a
which Afro-American people expe-
and denigration. The capacity of speech to convey manner in which
the intensely lived experience and the closely guarded the personal its
is
held give to the Afro-American autobiographical statement
special position of authority in
As
Afro-American
a direct result of this condition,
letters.
the Afro-American autobiographical
form tends
to
be bereft of any excessive subjectivism and
mindless egotism. Instead,
it
presents the Afro-American as reflecting a
statement as
much more as
a
im-personal condition, the autobiographical subject emerging
an almost random
member
of the group, selected to
tell
his/her
tale.
As
a
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
10
1950—1980)
(
consequence, the Afro-American autobiographical statement emerges
a public rather
superficial
than
and
is
me-ism gives way
to our-ism
as
and
concerns about individual subject usually give way to the collec-
tive subjection of
The
a private gesture,
the group.
autobiography, therefore,
presumed generally
to
objective and realistic in
is
be of service to the group.
to glorify the exploits of the individual,
approach
its
never meant
It is
and the concerns of the
collective
predominate. One's personal experiences are presumed to be an authentic expression of the society, and thus statistical evidences and sociological treatises
assume
a
secondary level of importance. Herein can be found the
importance of the autobiographical statement
may be argued
It
Afro-American
in
letters.
supreme
that the autobiographical statement ruled
because of the absence of the novel, which came into
flowering with
full
Richard Wright's Native Son (1940). But the predominant place which the autobiographical statement assumed cannot be so reduced since
could be argued that the power of the word
(i.e.,
much
compelling images evoked by the autobiography has African mythology and
its
Americans. Janheinz Jahn centrality of the word, force, responsibility
of
its
it
and the
of speech)
origin in
relationship to the spiritual culture of Afroin his
Nommo,
in
work Muntu
132)
(p.
African thought.
The
to the
testifies
notion that "the
and commitment of the word, and the awareness that
the word alone alters the word"
(p.
133),
seems
to
have
origin in
its
African culture.
The
reverence for the word in traditional African thought and
its
trans-
formative power in the changed historical conditions of America de-
manded reality of
that the
word be used
American
The
life.
as a
weapon and
from the cruel
a shield
capacity for speech (that
is,
the capacity to
"rap") assumed a primary place in the culture of Afro-Americans; a neces-
though not
sary
a sufficient condition for liberation.
Thus, where avenues of struggle were closed to the African subject the diaspora, s/he could recoil him/herself and utilize the
extended arena liberation. In
in
which to continue the struggle
both a metaphorical and
became instruments ical
its
nance and hope to Afro-Americans sion
and
for personal
a literal sense,
reflection of the
power
and
In
my
experience that
article
"What
I
social
and the mag-
for transformation
in their darkest hours.
gave suste-
As an expres-
rite
through which the complex con-
sciousness and historical unfoldment of a people stand revealed. this
in
an
Afro-American experience, the autobiographical
statement becomes that strange
and from
as
speech and language
of liberation in Afro-American thought,
incantation of the word and
nommo
Maya Angelou
Teach and
Why"
It
is
of
speaks.
(Harvard Educational Review,
Maya Angelou August 1980),
1
suggested that the 1970s were an important decade for
I
Afro-American
literature
prose writings by in
because
was
it
Afro-American women
a
time when we saw the influx of
writers
who
expressed themselves
the novel, the short story and the autobiography.
While the decade
began with the work of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye (1970), Maya Angelou, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1970), Louise Meriwether's
Daddy Was
a
Numbers Runner
of Grange Copeland (1970),
Macho and
the
Myth
(1970), and Alice Walker's The Third Life it
ended with Michele Wallace's Black
Superwoman (1979) and Mary Helen Wash-
of the
Midnight Birds (1980). Throughout the decade, however, there was a subtle distancing of the Afro-American women writers from their male counterparts, particularly ington's anthology
in
manner in which they treated the subjectivity of their major protagmanner in which these female protagonists were freed, not so
the
onists; the
much from
own menfolk;
the other, but from their
the bold attempt to
speak for the integrity of their selfhood and to define their being
in their
own terms; and their special need to speak about feminine concerns among themselves. Jeanne Nobles in her work Beautiful, Also, Are the Souls of
My
Black Sisters (1978) argues that the Black
theme
the 1970s "bypass[ed] the popular society" (p. 188), while
when she claimed
writers of
Gwendolyn Brooks confirmed
these sentiments
that these Black writers were "talking to themselves"
Mary Helen Washington,
rather than to others.
Midnight Birds
women
of black reactions to a racist
(p. xv),
would celebrate the
in
her introduction to
fact that the
works of Black
female writers represented "an open revolt against the ideologies and tudes that impress [Black]
women
atti-
into servitude."
Because of limitations on the part of male writers, the female characters
who were
portrayed never really realized their
womanhood
(i.e.
their es-
sences as autonomous subjects) in the mainstream of Afro-American
They were depicted
ature.
at a surface level of reality that
statement of the condition of the Black female: they never to
have
lives
it
men
is
in
as a
seemed live
for
or white; for children, or for parents; bereft, always
appeared, of an autonomous It
really
worthy of emulation. They invariably seemed to
others, for Black
liter-
worked
self.
response to these specific concerns that
Maya Angelou
offered
her autobiographical statements, presenting a powerful, authentic and
profound signification of the condition of Afro-American womanhood
in
her quest for understanding and love rather than for bitterness and despair.
Her work
is
a
triumph
in
the articulation of truth in simple, forth-
right terms. /
Know Why
the
Caged Bird Sings
Caged Bird) American South during the
(hereafter referred to as
explores growing up Black and female in the
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
12
second quarter of
age of three to sixteen, the Arkansas, the
last
From
themes when she
declares: "If
'The Black female
way
the rust on the razor that
insult. "(C B.,
p.
assaulted in her tender years by
is
same time
that she
those in
the
and Black
illogical hate
by
all
manner
in
which
of the forces above, in her tender years in
her
to adolescence.
Southern ity. It is
life,
as
Angelou demonstrates,
is
one of harshness and
brutal-
exemplified by the conditions under which the workers of Stamps
lived, the fear
engendered by the Ku Klux Klan, the wanton murder of
Black folks (which led Mother Henderson to send
mother
Bailey to their
in California),
Maya and
South an abomination against
God and man. Not
ness were entirely absent from her childhood as
Thomas Hardy
her brother
the racial separation of the town,
and the innumerable incidents of denigration which made
came,
all
caught
is
demonstrate the "unnecessary insult" of Southern girlhood
movement
this
231)
violated,
is
From
3)
p.
end of her work, where she con-
the burden of the work: to demonstrate the
is
the Black female to
painful for the Southern
is is
masculine prejudice, white
lack of power." (C.B.,
and
to the
forces of nature at the
tripartite crossfire of
This
growing up
an unnecessary
It is
introduction she wends her
to
violation,
the outset Angelou sounds the pervading
being aware of her displacement
threatens the throat.
cludes:
The world
embroidered with humiliation,
is
loss.
common
ten years of which she lived in Stamps,
first
displacement, and
girl,
of the subject from the
life
three in Los Angeles and San Francisco.
which Angelou introduces us
Black
recounts the
this century. It
1950—1980)
(
characterized
them
that
life,
in
life
moments but such
the
of happi-
moments
The Mayor of Casterdrama of pain."
in
bridge, as but "the occasional episode[s] in a general
Such cruelty
led to a well-defined pattern of behavior
on the part of the
South's citizens and the adoption of certain necessary codes exist in that part of the country.
As Angelou points
out:
if
"The
to white folks (or even powhitetrash) the better." (C.B., p. 22)
of the powhitetrash
manner off at
in
each
As the
had
to
be accepted and the
which the whites
moment
tried to
spiritual
one was to less
you say
The
insults
and emotional
debase the Blacks had to be fended
of existence.
text charts Angelou's
movement from innocence
to awareness,
from childhood to an ever quickening sense of adolescence, there were certain
ideological
Angelou had tion
to
apparatuses,
overcome
and autonomy.
It
is
in
inserted
into
the social
fabric,
which
order to maintain a sense of relative libera-
the virtue of Angelou and the strength of the
statement that, as she develops, she
is
able to detect the presence of these
Maya Angelou
13
them and
apparatuses, to challenge
withstand their pervasive and natu-
to
ralizing tendencies.
any other
In this country, as in
and sports are supposed
capitalist country, religion, education,
ways so that the
to function in certain ideological
subject accepts certain well-defined practices. Thus, while religion
de-
is
signed to keep the Afro-American in an oppressed condition, here Black
people subverted that institution and used
it
them
to assist
to
withstand
the cruelty of the American experience.
The
fight
a pacifier, as
between Joe Louis and Primo Camera was intended to act as entertainment for Blacks, and to help demonstrate how far
they had progressed
same
the society. "See!
in
ring as a white boy."
do, turned out to be a tableau in
with white America,
drama
American
of
in
life
A
Black boy can
However, the match,
now
step in the
such events tend to
which Black America came face
a struggle of equals.
therefore
as all
is
A
to face
re-creation of the real
played out in the boxing ring: Angelou
describes the scene which takes place in her grandmother's store on that
night of the fight: Babies
the floor as
slid to
women
stood up and
men
leaned toward the radio.
"Here's the referee. He's counting. One, two, three, four,
five, six,
seven
.
.
.
the contender trying to get up again?"
Is
All the men in the store shouted, "NO." M eight, nine, ten." There were a few sounds
—
seemed
to
"The
fight
the referee
up
.
.
.
Then
be holding themselves
.
is all .
.
Here he
over, ladies
Here he is
is.
from the audience, but they
tremendous pressure.
in against
and gentlemen.
Let's get the
." .
microphone over
He's got the Brown Bomber's hand, he's holding
.
the voice, husky and familiar,
came
to
wash over us
to it
— "The winnah, and
heavyweight champeen of the world Joe Louis." Champion of the world. A Black boy. Some Black mother's son. He was the strongest man in the world. People drank Coca-Colas like ambrosia and ate candy bars like Christmas. Some of the men went behind the Store and poured white still
.
.
.
lightning in their soft-drink bottles, and a few of the bigger boys followed them. Those who were not chased away came back blowing their breath in front of
themselves It
for
like
proud smokers.
would take an hour or more before the people would leave the Store and head
home. Those who
wouldn't do for a Black
on
a night
when
lived too far
man and
had made arrangements to stay
his family to
joe Louis had proved that
he caught on
we were
a lonely
in
town.
It
country road
the strongest people
in
the
world. (C.B., pp. 114-15)
Singing and perhaps swinging
like
When
may have asked when she arrived
Christmas, Angelou
the forgiveness of the Italians for this act of celebration in Italy
some
struggle
between the colors continued and the people participated
years later.
she was a
girl in
Arkansas, however, the in this
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
14
lifc-and-dcath battle, projecting
all
other part of the turf
The
where the struggle
sports arena
for justice
5
0-1980)
emotions onto that
of their pent-up
boxing match coming over the radio.
(19
is
became
just an-
carried on in this
country.
One of the most poignant moments of ideological unveiling comes when Angelou describes her graduation exercises of 1940 at Lafayette County Training School. As she listens to the condescending and racist manner in which Mr. Edward Donlcavy, the featured speaker, insulted the intelligence of her
he made
as
class,
hearing the approving "amens" of her elders
comparisons with Central, the white school of
his invidious
the area, Angelou, a young sensitive Black female, could only think: "It
was awful to be Negro and have no control over
my
young and already trained
listen
my
against
thought
and
color with no chance of defense.
should
I
to sit quietly
like to see us all
life. It
We
was brutal to be
to charges
should
all
brought
be dead.
I
dead, one on top of the other." (C.B.,
153)
P-
And
here the sense of collective responsibility, a sensibility charged by
the disparagement of the group,
hood there
is
reflected. In the
impotence of
child-
nothing she can do, but the charges which have been leveled
is
against her people will not be soon forgotten.
Indeed, the act colors the texture of her world; she realizes the emptiness of the sentiments which were expressed in the valedictory address: "I
am
master of
my
fate,
I
am
falsehood of the statement
my
soul."
a waste of time." (C.B.,
that she takes her
first,
Observing the inherent
or not to be," she could only observe in
"Hadn't he heard the whitefolks?
ironic tones:
question was
captain of
'To be
p.
1
54)
It is
We
couldn't be, so the
out of this
fumbling steps toward her
social
web
of reality
development
in
Stamps, Arkansas.
According to the attempts to reduce
This
is
text, then,
all
Negroes
the major crime of the society
is
that
it
impotence and nothingness.
to a sense of
the internal "rust" which threatens the "personhood" of Black
people (young and old)
in all of
tendency of an oppressive and
America.
It
is
the inherent homicidal
which pushes these young
racist society
people to the brink of spiritual waste and physical destruction. For Maya,
such
a milieu
becomes the point of departure from which she struggles to and personhood, the necessary prerequisite be-
salvage a sense of dignity fore
any sense of femaleness can be expressed.
Like Linda Brent,
female
is
to
peculiarity
be faced with
is
mother and
Maya Angelou understands
is
that to be Black
a special quality of violence
brought into sharp focus when
Maya
and
violation.
goes to
subsequently raped by her mother's boyfriend.
live
and This
with her
When
she
is
Maya Angelou
15
faced with this catastrophe, her
reaction
first
withdraw into
to
is
Yet because of the strength of her individual will, she
where she can function
herself back to a point
manner
in
herself.
able to work
is
seemingly productive
in a
her social world. Nevertheless, the rape of this eight-year-old by
an almost impotent adult Black male
—who,
would seem, was unable
it
to
enjoy a relatively mature and respectful relationship with an adult Black
woman
—can be seen
mension of Black Earlier,
as
symbolic of only one aspect of
women
suggested that the works of the Black
I
this internal di-
life.
writers of this
meant
period (either at the autobiographical or the novelistic level) were to
examine more
particularly the shortcomings of Black people at the level
of their domestic
lives. It is
almost as
Angelou wants
if
to suggest that the
power, the energy, and the honesty which characterized our examination of our relationship with our oppressor
be turned inward
in
to have inhibited our
own
level of social
liberation. In other words, the
be seen
as
One
development and our quest
problem of Afro-American liberation
It is this
internal probing
and forget the complicity of white
drawn, the
to impotence,
villain
women
by their fathers'
lust
is
society,
to be recognized as a society
to lives of
which
is
it
back
the major
to victimization
the perception of what a sexual liaison
unplanned pregnancy. Certainly
was not prepared
is
writer.
life
which reduces men
whoredom, and children
and beauty which leads Maya into
that eventually produces an
to
the larger canvas from which this
and impotence. Indeed,
constitutes femininity
sixteen she
On
for
which character-
cannot, however, simply read the shortcomings of Black
into the text
is
the former of which
reality,
work (C.B.) and marks the writings of the Black female
causative agent of Black denigration. life is
must now
at the external level)
both an internal and an external
must be our exclusive concern. izes this
(i.e.,
an examination of some of the problems which seem
at the
age of
financially or emotionally to take care of a
child.
But to argue
for the cruelty
and
brutality of the society does not
the episodes of beauty which relieve the violence of California. religious life of
monotony
Nor can one deny the
Stamps's Black community.
of
life in
progressive tendency of the It
to argue, however, that
is
the cruelty so overwhelms the sensibility of the Black person that
Black ness
makes
it
woman
it
it
very difficult for
him/her
says:
"Without
willing
it,
I
p.
my
awareness was that
I
didn't
230) This realization of her status
is
know what bought
I
and aware-
had gone from being
ignorant of being ignorant to being aware of being aware. part of
the South
in
to exist in the society. For a
further demonstrates the pain which growth
demand. As Angelou
deny
Stamps or the
And
was aware
at a price:
the worst
of." (C.B.,
her subjection to
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
16
(1950— 1980)
the tripartite force of which she speaks (masculine prejudice, white
One
of the shortcomings of the text revolves around the
which the
story
is
imagination, logic,
sciousness as
it
grows into maturity.
in
the
tone of the work
is
even and develop-
its
rationalization of later years tends almost to destroy the flow of
Indeed many times one
text.
in
the unfolding of childhood con-
The
constant, which causes the text to be almost predictable in
The
manner
from the point of view of an adult, who imposes the and language of an adult upon the work and thus
told
prevents the reader from participating
ment.
illogi-
and Black powerlessness).
cal hate,
her response to incidents
in
her
is
forced to question the authenticity of
life.
Such an occasion occurs when Angelou
offers
what she considers an
dehumanization and exploitation of Blacks. Speak-
ethical response to the
ing of the "Black underground," she contends: It
wasn't possible for
me
to regard
them
as criminals or
be anything but proud
of their achievements.
The needs the hero
is
of a society determine
that
man who
ingenuity and courage
is
is
its
ethics,
offered only the
and
the Black American ghettos
in
crumbs from
his country's table
able to take for himself a Lucullan feast.
Stories of law violations are
weighed on
.
.
a different set of scales in
but by
.
the Black
mind than in the white. Petty crimes embarrass the community and many people wistfully wonder why Negroes don't rob more banks, embezzle more funds and employ graft in the unions. "We are the victims of the world's most comprehensive robbery. Life demands a balance. It's all right if we do a little robbing now." [C.B., p. 190-91]
Such
attitudes, of course,
may extend
since so few of us can really
to
compete
most members of the community either legally or equally with our
white counterparts. Perhaps the janitor with the robin 's-egg-blue Cadillac
ought to be laughed fact
Yet what makes such an analysis untenable
at.
that ethical postulates in any society usually transcend
"needs"
if
its
is
the
mere
they lead to a reproduction of behavioral patterns that are
detrimental to the social development of the group. There
is
no demon-
strable evidence that these people are in fact "heroic" since their activity
tends to dehumanize the society and leads to people
her mother's boyfriend, limits
who
raped Maya.
The
like
Mr. Freeman,
inability to transcend the
which are placed upon Black society by the dominant culture can
only lead to the reduction of Black personhood.
The
characters
who
are
admired are certainly the extensions of Mr. Freeman.
The
task of autobiography, then, does not consist in the
tion of naturalistic detail but, because
of ideas
and
situations
and makes an
it
mere reproduc-
involves the creative organization
ethical
and moral statement about
Maya Angelou
17
the society, must generate that which
is
purposeful and significant for our
liberation. In fact the "Principle of Reverse," of
help an individual to "get over" characteristics,
victor
it
it
can reverse
because of
and
[allow]
certainly does not
it
.
.
some revenge
.
its
essential
and make the apparent
itself
may "pry open
victim. Surely, the "Principle of Reverse"
its
door of rejection p. 190);
follows that
which Maya speaks, may
initially, precisely
the
the bargain" (C.B.,
in
and cannot reverse the situation which makes
the violation and denigration of the Black female possible in this society.
The
intense solidity and moral center which
is
not to be found in Gather Together in
as
Gather Together). The
we observed
My Name
in
Caged Bird
(hereafter referred to
richly textured ethical life of the Black people of
the rural South and the dignity with which they live their lives are
broken
we
as
all
but
enter the alienated and fragmented lives which the urban
world of America engenders.
It is
these conditions of alienation and frag-
mentation which characterize the situate herself in
life
of
Maya Angelou
as she seeks to
urban California during her sixteenth to nineteenth
years.
Gather Together introduces us to
men and
world of prostitution and pimps, con
a
women, drug addiction and spiritual disintegration. Rural way to the alienation and destruction of urban life. Maya, the major protagonist, survives, but she is without any sense of purpose and at the end of the work she is forced to concede: "I had no idea what was going to make of my life, but had given a promise and found my innocence." (C.B. p. 181) It is as though she had to go to the brink of street
dignity gives
I
I
y
how
destruction in order to realize herself; a striking demonstration of capitalism always and everywhere drives
victim to the end of endur-
its
ance, so that one must either break under the strains of the society or
some
salvage
dignity from the general confusion.
Gather Together reveals a more selective vision of Afro-American In this work, the author writes about
whom that
one
particular kind of
she meets through the kind of work she does.
Angelou has been
madam
Afro-American
When
one considers
a short-order cook, a waitress at a nightclub, a
in
charge of her
own house
prostitute,
and the lover
of a drug addict
becomes apparent
life.
of prostitution, a nightclub dancer, a
who
stole dresses for a living,
that the range of characters
whom
it
she encountered
during this period of emotional and social upheaval were indeed limited to the declassed elements of the society.
And
this
what
is
Gather Together from both Caged Bird and Singin
differentiates
and Swingin and '
'
Gettin Merry Like Christmas. '
The in
violation
which began
Gather Together. To be
question of what
it
means
in
Caged Bird
sure, the
to
takes on a
author
is
still
be Black and female
much
sharper focus
concerned with the in
America, but her
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
18
development
is
reflective of a particular type of Black
moment of history and subjected to certain Black woman with unusual intensity. Thus when she
arrives in
my mind
was animal
instinct.
950—1980) at a specific
which
assault the
aware that even her mother
is
"hadn't the slightest idea that not only was passed for
1
woman
social forces
Los Angeles she
(
I
not
woman, but what
a
Like a tree or a
responded to the wind and the tides." (G.T.,
p.
river,
merely
I
23) In responding to the
indifference of her mother's family to her immaturity, she complains most
"they were not equipped to understand that an eighteen-year-old
bitterly,
mother
is
also an eighteen-year-old girl." (G.T., p. 27) Yet
angle of vision
—
instinct" to an
must prepare Neither
that of "a tree in the
it is from this wind" possessing mostly "animal
"unequipped" eighteen-year-old young woman
that
we
nor linguistically innocent, Gather Together reflects
politically
the imposition of values of a later period in the author's
organizing the incidents of text in a coherent
in
—
to respond to Angelou's story.
life.
Undoubtedly,
manner
having
(i.e.,
recourse to memorization, selection of incidents, etc.), the Active principle of
which we spoke
our introduction comes
in
fully into play.
The
fact
is
that with time the perception of the subject changes, which demonstrates that the autobiographical statement indicates one's attitudes toward the
than the presentation of the facts
fact, rather
and unalterable.
It is
(i.e.,
the incidents) as given
that attitude toward the facts to which critics should
respond.
For example,
Angelou
set
it
difficult
is
young
for the reader to believe that the
out to organize the prostitution of Johnnie
Mae and
Beatrice
because she wanted to take revenge on those "inconsiderate, stupid bitches." (G.T., p. 45)
Nor can we,
for that matter, accept the fact that
she turned tricks for L.D. because she believed that "there was nothing
wrong with
sex.
I
had no need
for
shame. Society dictated that sex was
only licensed by marriage documents. Well, ety
a
is
human As
conglomerate of being." (G.T.,
a justification,
it
p.
human
didn't agree with that. Soci-
what
I
was.
A
142)
rings too hollow. Society
merely of
human
whose
make them human
acts
I
beings, and that's just
beings. Society or
a
is
is
not a conglomeration
conglomeration of social beings
nonhuman. To the degree
negate our humanity, they can be considered wrong.
To
that those acts
the degree that
they affirm our humanity they can be considered correct. Such reasoning,
though,
is
only to keep the argument within the context in which
Angelou has
Maya
raised the question.
For me, the importance of the text capacity to signify
to,
and from, the
—
its
social significance
larger social context
—
lies in its
from which
it
Maya Angelou
19
Caged Bird and Gather Together assume their largest meaning or meanings within the context of the larger society. As a consequence, one cannot reduce important attitudes of social behavior by mere strident comments of dissent. Such attitudes and values are derived from the larger social context of Afro-American life. Correspondingly, one quesoriginates. Clearly,
Mae when
tions Angelou's attitude toward Johnnie
has been wounded: "And, ladies, you decided
me one way
to screw
were going
the screwing?" (G.T.,
56)
p.
or the other.
It is
Maya
and
young woman who had saving pride to
and
was
I
was
I
and who,
was
an's behind.
p.
tell
them
it
like
is
is
snob on
all
levels,
racial,
I
held myself to be freer than the
advised by her mother:
is
if
you
them. Especially Negro women.
let
he can walk
a road in a colored
wom-
now. Your mother raised you. You're
this,
they find
it.
If
you haven't been trained
Here
her face. "Stepping. But not on you." [G.T.,
this advice
a
51]
to get to stepping."
Yet precisely because she
life-
thought myself morally superior to
woman and
his dog, thinks
But you remember
grown. Let them catch their liking
and
woman more
the quietude of Stamps; a
and believed myself cleverer than the customers
advantage of you
his brother
did
degree of life-saving
both that imperious attitude and her
madam and
a
unmarried
met. [C.T.,
will take
Everybody,
in
Who
now.
correct?
she recounts:
the middle of the text,
in
"People
I
was
I
a waitress
a lonely
women
married
at us it
a certain
few tense years to become
a
in
intellectual.
the whores. served.
to use
exist. For, as
had managed
I
is
an extremely lonely young woman; a young
is
isolated in bustling California than she
cultural
Look
imperious, but
In spite of this imperious attitude, pride,
she cries out that she
the beginning that you
in
a
p.
full-
home
at
to
whisper of delight crawled over 108]
drifting through this phase of her
particularly fruitful to her nor does she
none
life,
seem
of
particularly
proud of her activity during those "few tense years" of sixteen through
Of
eighteen.
what her
is
own we
here, of
course,
it
is
more important social
is
not so
development. While to her
terms of
manner her
interpretation
life.
the brink of catastrophe she had been.
(i.e.,
in
this question cannot be answered
two horrendous and dramatic incidents make her
Finally,
child
that these incidents took place;
hesitate to accept in an unquestioning
what these events meant
much on
much
what she made of these incidents
realize
The kidnapping
how
of her
the near-loss of her child, her most important and significant
achievement thus
far)
and her being saved from
a life of drugs
by the
generosity of Troubadour Martin really gave her that rebirth into inno-
cence; a rebirth at a higher level of dialectical understanding.
Yet
in a
curious
way the book seems not
to succeed. Its lack of moral
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
20
weight and ethical center deny
work together.
of keeping the
it
If
an organizing principle and rigor capable I
may be
book appear merely gathered together
They
it
is
permitted, the incidents of the
the
in
may
are not so organized that they
cation. In fact,
(1950-1980)
name
Maya Angelou.
of
achieve a complex level of
signifi-
make the work
the absence of these qualities which
conspicuously weak.
The language has begun to loosen up and this becomes the work's Where there were mere patches of beautiful writing in Caged Bird, there is a much more consistent and sustained flow of eloquent and almost honey-dipped writing. The simplicity of the speech patterns remains, yet there is a much more controlled use of language. The writing flows and shimmers with beauty; only the rigorous, coherent saving grace.
and meaningful organization
At the end
of experience
is
missing.
of the work, the author attempts to recover
Caged
Whereas, however, she presented
Bird.
the society in the daily
life
Caged
and
Bird, in
some
of the
we encountered
powerful ideological unfoldment of the society which
in
herself as an integral part of
Gather Together she separates herself from
sufferings of her people
and projects
a strikingly individ-
ual ethos:
The maids and doormen, their ghetto
homes and rub
selves that things
tance at their liquor to
were not
mean
drown
their
as
factory'
who were
workers and janitors
able to leave
against the cold-shouldered white world, told them-
bad
as they
seemed. They smiled
a
dishonest accep-
servitude and on Saturday night bought the most expensive
Others, locked
lie.
in
the unending
maze
of having to laugh
without humor and scratch without agitation, foisted their hopes on the Lord.
They shouted
loudly on
Sunday morning
at His
goodness and spent the afternoon
preparing the starched uniforms to meet a boss's unrelenting examination.
timorous and the frightened held tightly to their nor afraid. [G.T.,
p.
palliatives.
I
The
was neither timid
166]
This kind of distance and assumption weakens the work because begins to rely almost exclusively on individual exploits rather than to flect
the traditional collective
wisdom and/or
cause of this absence, the work reduces
account of a personal
life
sufferings of the group. Be-
itself
at times
to a titillating
bereft of the context of the larger society.
narrowly private existence of the subject universalized (which gives such great
power
is
it
re-
The
substituted for the personal
to the
Afro-American autobio-
graphical statement), and the importance of Gather Together
is
dimin-
ished.
The
last
scene of Gather Together,
drug addicts (which symbolically tion)
is
meant
to
is
in
which Maya
is
taken to a room of
the outer limits of chaos and destruc-
be contrasted with the opening scene of Caged Bird
(a
Maya Angelou
21
which Angelou
striking tableau of innocence) in
identifies very strongly
which personify the "ideal" and the "real" and the unattainable nature of the former in American life. The horrifying last scene stands as a foreshadowing of the destruction which with
all
of the cultural conceptions
awaits those
who attempt
to achieve those ideals
which America presents
to her children.
Thus, where she announces at the end of Caged Bird that she "had
gone from being ignorant of being ignorant to being aware,"
at the
end of
Gather Together she declares for a certain type of innocence which cannot
be
really
we found
regarded in the same light as that which
ning of Caged Bird.
It
must be regarded
as the
(
rediscovery of that primal
innocence, at a higher level of consciousness, which was
encounter with the American dream.
The
at the begin-
lost in
her original
sinking into the slime of the
American abyss represents the necessary condition of regeneration and (re)birth into a new and, hopefully, more consciously liberated person. Thus, if Caged Bird sets the context for the subject, Gather Together presents itself as the necessary purgation through which the initiate must pass in order to (re)capture relatively healthy
manner
and
to (re)define the social self to function in a
white America.
in
and Swingin explores the adulthood of Maya Angelou, again major protagonist, as she moves back into and defines herself more cenSingin
trally
'
'
within the mainstream of the Black experience. In this work, she
encounters the white world
in
much
a
more sensuous manner,
fuller,
seeking to answer, as she does, the major problem of her works: what
means
to
be Black and female reduces
in
America.
what
We
would see that
means
to
be Black and person
in
the
in
America; the urgency of being Black and female collapses into what
final analysis,
itself to
it
it
this quest,
it
means to be Black and person. In order to achieve this, the book is divided into two parts: part one, in which the writer works out her relationship with the white American world, and part two, in which she makes a statement about her
own development through
her participation in the
opera Porgy and Bess, and her encounter with Europe and with Africa.
and Swingin' opens with a scene Angelou feels a sense of being "unanchored" Singin'
of displacement in as the family
youth are torn asunder under the impact of urban these
new circumstances
life in
which
bonds of her
California.
Under
the author examines her feeling and her relation-
ship with the larger white society as she encounters white people on an
intimate personal level for the
and whites
lived separately in
mutual relations did not ship, though, she
exist.
time. As the reader will recall, Blacks Stamps and the occasion for shared and Before Angelou can enter into any relationfirst
must dispense with
about white people. Indeed
it
is
all
the stereotypical notions she has
no longer
possible to argue. "It wasn't
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
22
And
nice to reveal one's feelings to strangers. stranger to
me
than a friendly white woman."
1950—1980)
(
nothing on earth was
&
fS.
S.,
p. 5)
As the autobiography gradually unfolds, she observes that most of the stereotypical pictures which she has of whites are designed to protect her from the cruelty of white hate and indifference. Yet
feelings
grows
as she
and eventually discarded, the
into adulthood, these notions are punctured
coming when she is forced to make a decision about marrying white man, who is courting her through her son. Part of the
biggest test
Tosh, a
from Angelou's awareness that whites had violated her
difficulty arises
my
people for centuries and that "Anger and guilt decided before
share sex, they must never exchange love."
Angelou confronts the problem with herself that feel that
I
& 5.,
(S.
pp. 27-28;
a sort of evasion
my
had betrayed
when
member
italics)
she I
tells
needn't
race by marrying one of the enemy, nor could
white Americans believe that
I
had so forgiven them the past that
of their tribe."
(S.
&> 5., p. 35)
by the truce she makes with her Blackness and
satisfied
my
Tosh "was Greek, not white American; therefore
ready to love a
birth
and white was white and although the two might
that Black was Black
She
I
was
not entirely
is
for the rest of her
marriage has to contend with the guilt created by her liaison with a white male.
With tarily
came and the
the end of her marriage, the tears
would be
cast into "a
maelstrom of rootlessness"
embroidered her mind. Soon, however,
that she
would be ridiculed by her people
another victim of a "white
man
it
& 5.,
(S.
fright that she p.
44)
momen-
gave way to the knowledge
in their belief that
she was
[who] had taken a Black woman's body
her hopeless, helpless and alone."
&
45) At the end of
and
left
this
encounter, however, she would be better prepared to deal with her
own
life,
having gained
ing, already, the
One
a certain
stubborn
(S.
S.,
p.
entrance to the white world and possess-
realities of
Black
life.
of the significant facets of the author's relationship to
volves around the
manner
in
which she
effaces her
own
Tosh
re-
identity within the
framework of the marriage. But the compromises which she makes to secure a stronger marriage cannot be seen only in the context of the subject-ion of wife to
be read
husband or Black female
to white male.
as the subjection of the central values of the
It
can also
Black world (and, as a
consequence, of the Black woman) to the dominant
totality of
white
val-
ues.
In this context, finds
many
it is
to
be noted that
in spite of
the fact that Angelou
aspects of white culture objectionable, most of the
dominant
images of perfection and beauty remain fashioned by the ethos of white society. Yet the tensions
which keep the
first
section of the
work together
Maya Angelou
23
center around the general tendency of her wanting to be absorbed into the larger
ambit of American culture
(i.e.,
white culture) and her struggle to
maintain a sense of her Black identity. Against this tension of absorption versus identity the writer, as major protagonist, posits her
first
nonabsorption),
(i.e.,
attempt
an honest
at
relationship with a white person within a structure of antagonism. This
encounter occurs when Jorrie and her friends offer Angelou their friend-
unencumbered manner. Her
ship in a free, and
first
response
is:
My God. My world was spinning off its axis, and there was nothing to hold on to. Anger and haughtiness, pride and prejudice, my old back-up team would not serve me
in this
new predicament. These
do whatever they could
do.
me and
of education might have crippled
6S.,
invalided. fS.
84;
p.
whites were treating
They did not consider that
my
me
as an equal as
if
I could
gender or lack
race, height, or
that I should be regarded as
someone
italics]
This free and equal relationship
is
significant to her in that
it
represents an
important stage of her evolution toward adulthood.
With for
her success at the Purple Onion nightclub, another career began
Angelou, one that launched her into a role
in
the opera Porgy and
Bess.
As Angelou begins the second phase of her development tion toward adulthood) her
on which she begins taken place
her
in
thus
her evolu-
which have
to evaluate the major transformations
life
Yanko Varda aboard
(i.e.,
Southern origins became the necessary basis Enjoying the hospitality of her new friend
far.
his yacht, she reveals a
dimension of
this
new
The
small, exclu-
aware-
ness: I
excused myself from the table and went to stand on the deck.
sive
town of Tiburon glistened across the green-blue water and
Of Stamps,
personal history.
Negro school and the malnutrition. prostitution.
and
my
inviting doors to
its
one paved
of
the humiliation of
brightly painted catamaran tied
past to a tardy marriage
which was
my
the segregated
become bald from
unwed motherhood and
up below
me
And
the
hastily broken.
newer and richer worlds, where the sounds of happiness drifted
through closed panels and the doorknobs came
The
street, of
bitter poverty that causes children to
Of the blind solitude Waves slapped at the
pursued
1
Arkansas, and
thought about
1
off in
my
identification of her people's sufferings in the
hands.
fS.
& S.,
p.
124]
minds of the ordinary
European, their immediate identification of her with Joe Louis, the enthusiastic
manner
in
which the Europeans welcomed the Porgy
spirituals of her people, led to
development. distinction
The
some
of the most revealing
recognition that "Europeans often
between Black and white Americans
Southern bigot
.
.
.
[in that]
cast
and the
moments of her made as clear a
as did the
most confirmed
Blacks were liked, whereas white Americans
BLACK
24
were not."
&
(S.
S.,
WOMEN WRITERS much
pp. 164-65) did
(1950-1980)
to raise her self-esteem
and
a
recognition of her emergent place in the world.
Her and
visit to
Africa added to that sense of self-worth; her link to the past
were complete. In Africa she had found that sense of
herself
self-
esteem which white America had tried to deny her from the day she was born. She had returned to her people.
amid the beggars of Egypt, As she says, "I was would take pride in the fact young, talented, well-dressed, and whether was an American." (S. & 5., p. 230) Yet the manner in publicly or not, which she and her Black colleagues resisted the sights and practices of enslavement of their fellow Blacks in Egypt demonstrated an identity of common suffering and fraternal solidarity which identified them with the larger community of Africa and its diaspora. It is, however, the success of Porgy which seemed paradigmatic of her evolution as an autonomous and fully liberated person. The pride which she takes in her company's professionalism, their discipline onstage, and the wellspring of spirituality that the opera emoted, all seem to conduce toward an organic harmony of her personal history as it intertwined with Paradoxically enough,
where she
it
was
Africa,
in
realized the specificity of her Americanness. I
I
the social history of her people.
The triumph
of Porgy, therefore, speaks
not only to the dramatic success of a Black company, personal triumph of
a
it
speaks, also, to the
remarkable Black woman. Singin and Swingin '
'
is
a
celebration of that triumph.
Maya Angelou produced
In 1970
with what
it
meant
to
her
tate against
social, political,
any achievement
in
work, a volume concerned
America. By 1976 she had meant to be Black and person in and economic constraints which mili-
enlarged her concerns to address what
America, given the
first
be Black and female
in
it
contemporary America.
NOTES No.
(summer
1.
See "Self-Evidence," Diacritics, Vol.
2.
Ibid., p. 6.
3.
Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl (Boston: published for the author, 1861),
p.
210.
4.
Quoted
ica 5.
p.
A
Sings
1980).
Self-Portrait of
(New
York:
Black Amer-
Random House,
91. Hereafter cited in text (C.B.J.
Angelou, Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like Christmas
Random House, 7.
2
John Langston Gwaltney, Drylongso:
(New York: Random House, 1980), p. 6. Maya Angelou, / Know Why the Caged Bird
1970), 6.
in
10,
1976). See p. 53.
Gwaltney, Drylongso,
p. 8.
(New
York:
Reconstruction
Composite
of the
Self:
Images of Black Women in Maya Angelou's Continuing Autobiography
New
SONDRA O'NEALE The
woman
Black
America's favorite unconfessed symbol. She
is
unwed mothers,
nation's archetype for
Her round, smiling requisite sales
Mammy
face bordered by the proverbial red
image
pancakes and frozen Only her knowledgeable smile
for synthetic
use to make."
authenticate the flavor of corporately fried chicken.
need to
bandanna
waffles "just like
of expertise can
When
have
sciolists
women:
ostensibly trading poverty vouch-
mink-strewn Cadillacs, or hugging domestic accouterments
in poses
of beneficent penury, or shaking a firm bodice as a prostituting Lilith, offers the
of a
the
is
politicize reactionary measures, they usually fabricate self-serving
perceptions of "universal" Black ers for
the
is
welfare checks, and food stamps.
most exquisite forbidden sex
—
all
who
cosmologically craved images
remote, ambivalent Mother Earth. Regardless of which polemic
same perverted icon provide the greatest and subconsciously desired meaning in American
prevails, these mirrors of the
reservoir of exploitable culture.
That only
said,
who
it
if
the larger society does not
wants them to be;
if
even Black
know who Black women are, men as scholars and thinkers
writing in this century could not "free" the images of Black national psyche,
themselves. poetry,
and
it
remained
for Black
Thus the emergence fiction
women
women
in
the
to accomplish the task
of Black feminine expression in drama,
during the seventies was long overdue. Because ebon
women occupy
so much space on the bottom rung in American polls of economy, opportunity, and Eurocultural measurements of femininity, Sondra O'Neale, Ph.D.,
is
an assistant professor of African- American literature
at
Emory
University in Atlanta, Georgia. Topics researched in this article are part of her forthcoming
hook, Crowing in the Light Aspects of Bildung in Works by Black American ers,
which
ence.
is
a
comprehensive study of the unique
rites of
Women
Writ-
passage in Black feminine experi-
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
26
some are
new own
of these
than serve
its
writers
know
(
1950-1980)
that for Black liberation art
must do more
form, that fictional conceptions of depth and integrity
needed to reveal the Black women's
readers are bereft of role models
who
and that ethnic women
identity,
can inspire
a
Although Black writers have used autobiography
its
of escape.
to achieve these ends
One who employs
since the days of slavery, few use the genre today.
the tools of fiction but not
way
only
"make-believe" form to remold these per-
who has made her life her message and whose message to all women is the reconstruction of her experiential "self," is Maya Angelou. With the wide public and critical reception of / Know
ceptions, one
aspiring Black
Why
the
Caged Bird Sings (C.B.)
the gap between
and
life
art, a
be deservedly credited with the survival. Critics
the early seventies, Angelou bridged
in
step that
is
essential
mammoth and
if
Black
women
are to
creative feat of noneffacing
much
could not dismiss her work as so
"folksy" propa-
ganda because her narrative was held together by controlled techniques of artistic fiction as well as
images seldom
No
Black
if
by
study of Black feminine
a historic-sociological
ever viewed in American literature.
women
in
the world of Angelou's books are
third generation of brilliantly resourceful females, sion's stereotypical maladies
losers.
She
who conquered
without conforming to
its
is
expectations of
behavior. Thus, reflecting what Western critics are discovering
is
the focal
which
point of laudable autobiographical literature, 1 the creative thread
weaves Angelou's tapestry
is
not herself as central subject;
purposeful composite of a multifaceted "I" spring of those dauntless familial
women
archetypal "self" demonstrating the
which so many Black tive obsidian
history
women
share;
army which stepped out
and redirected
its
own
trials,
and
destiny.
who
about
is:
(1)
whom
rejections,
the
oppres-
it
is
rather a
an indivisible
off-
she writes; (2) an
and endurances
(3) a representative of that collec-
of three
The
hundred years of molding
process of her autobiography
is
not a singular statement of individual egotism but an exultant explorative revelation that she
derstood reality of "self"
is
is
because her
who
life is
an inextricable part of the misun-
Black people and Black
the model which she holds before Black
women truly are. That women and that is the
unheralded chronicle of actualization which she wants to include
canon of Black American
in
the
literature.
I
In
Caged
Bird,
chignoned Black their beauty
one gets
women
a
rare literary glimpse of those
of the twenties
beneath maid trays
in
and
thirties
glamorous
who, refusing to bury
segregated Hollywood films or
New
Maya Angelou
27
York's budding but racist fashion industry, adapted their alluring qualities to the exciting, lucrative streetlife that thrived in the Jazz first
Age during the
third of this century. Buzzing with undertones of settlement of the
Black urban North and West, these were the days of open gambling, speakeasies,
and
political bossism.
Angelou's mother and maternal grand-
mother grandly supported their families
these
in
St.
Louis and San Fran-
cisco environments in ways that cannot be viewed as disreputable because
among
they were
the few tools afforded Black folk for urban survival. But
other than nostalgic mention of performing headliners such as lington or Billie Holiday, one does not get a sense of Black or historic reconstructions of the era. Truthful assessment
Duke
El-
life in literary
would show that
most Blacks were not poor waifs lining soup kitchen doors during the Depression or, because they were denied jobs in the early years of the war pining away
effort,
Bird
is
The landscape among middle-class
secondary involvement.
in
not that of boardinghouse living
in
Caged
whites as
depicted through eyes of nineteenth-century Howellian boredom, but
and adventurous group
rather that of colorful
living in
Fillmore district during the shipbuilding years of World
From her moneyed
stepfather,
Daddy
Clidell,
San Francisco's
War
II.
Angelou received
a basic
ghetto education:
He owned apartment buildings and, later, pool halls, and was famous for being the man of honor." He didn't suffer, as many "honest men" do, from the detestable righteousness that diminishes their virtue. He knew cards and men's rarity "a
hearts.
So during the age when Mother was exposing us to certain
facts of life, like
personal hygiene, proper posture, table manners, good restaurants and tipping
me
practices,
Daddy
Jick, jack
and the Game. He wore expensively
diamond
stickpin.
Clidell taught
Except
for the jewelry,
himself with the unconscious
Through
Clidell she
the
Just Black,
many
of a
he was
man
and carried
of secure means. [C.B., pp. 213-14]
And from men
with names
like
in
"Stonewall
Cool Clyde, Tight Coat and Red Leg," she heard of
Brer Rabbit con games which they hustled on Mr. Charlie.
this parlor
banter a Black history unavailable
able to philosophize
When
a large yellow
a conservative dresser
Angelou the narrator, detached from Angelou the from
and
tailored suits
"was introduced to the most colorful characters
the Black underground."
Jimmy,
pomp
and high, low,
to play poker, blackjack, tonk
and again structure
child,
in
who absorbed
formal education,
is
role models:
he finished, more triumphant stories rain bowed around the room riding the
shoulders of laughter. By
all
accounts those
storytellers,
horn Black and male
before the turn of the twentieth century, should have been ground into useless dust. Instead they used their intelligence to pry
open the door
of rejection
and not
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
28 only
me
became wealthy but got some revenge them
to regard
The needs the hero
man who
ingenuity and courage
That same sense panorama
is
wasn't possible for
It
its
and
ethics,
offered only the
in
the Black American ghettos
crumbs from
his country's table
but by
able to take for himself a Lucullan feast. [C.B., p. 218]
is
of historical but undiscovered Black
now
of the
the bargain.
in
be anything but proud of their achievements.
of a society determine
that
is
as criminals or
(1950-1980)
four-volume autobiography.
seen
life is
in
Whether from
the
vivid
recollection of fond fellowships in rural schools contrasted with the bitter
remembrance
of a segregated system designed to animalize Black students
that one finds in
Bird, or
who managed
entertainers
performers
Caged
from the
to evade Hitlerism
Europe during the war years
in
Heath) that one Christmas
&
(S.
finds in
or
S.J,
and form enclaves of Black
(e.g.,
Josephine Baker, Bernard
Nancy Holloway, and Gordon Singin' and Swingin' and Gettin' Merry Like
Mabel Mercer, "Brickie"
Hassel,
startling reminiscences of Black
Bricktop,
from the poignant view of
a
both the creative (the Harlem Writers Guild) and the
SCLC)
Coordinator for the
ment,
as well as the
demonstrations at the
will
a
in
(Northern
thought and action of the Civil Rights Move-
UN
following
ing chorus: Black people and
with
political
annexing gravitation to African liberation (protest
her latest work, The Heart of a
umph
Northern perch
Lumumba's death)
that
one
finds in
—
Woman Angelou's message is one blendBlack women do not just endure, they tri-
of collective consciousness that
Western experience
cannot extinguish.
II
If
there
is
one enduring misrepresentation
the Black Southern matriarch.
When
in
American
Blacks appeared
Fenimore Cooper's novel The Spy, the Black woman was
literature first
in
it
James
silent, postforty,
corpulent, and in the kitchen. Cooper's contemporary, Washington ving, duplicated that perspective,
and
for
lowed, white American authors more or
modern
less
Ir-
of the period that fol-
kept her
in
that state.
By
times, given characters such as Faulkner's Molly and Dilsey, the
images of nonmulatto Southern Black
When
much
is
seen at
all
women had
still
not progressed.
they were powerless pawns related only to contexts of
white aspirations. But Angelou's depiction of her paternal Grandmother
Annie Henderson Henderson
is
is
a singular repudiation of that refraction.
While Mrs.
dependent on no one, the entire Stamps community
is
at
times totally dependent upon her, not as a pietous but impotent weeping post but as a materially resourceful entrepreneur.
When
explaining that
29
Maya Angelou
her family heritage precludes acceptance of welfare, Angelou describes
Mrs. Henderson's
self-sufficiency:
And welfare was absolutely forbidden. My pride had been starched by a family who assumed unlimited authority in its own affairs. A grandmother, who raised me, my brother and her two own sons, owned a general merchandise store. She had begun her business pies to in a
saw
men
the early 1900's in Stamps, Arkansas, by selling meat
in
lumber
in a
mill,
then racing across town
cotton-gin mill four miles away.
Through
frugal but nonarrogant
meddlesome
&
[S.
in
time to feed workers
pp. 13-14.]
S.,
management
of her finances under the
and avaricious whites, Mrs. Henderson not
eye of jealous
only stalwartly provides for her crippled son and two robust grandchildren, she feeds the Black
community during the Depression and
helps keep the
white economy from collapse. Angelou aptly contrasts gratitude and
its
absence from both segments. While holding the reluctant hand of her
who was
granddaughter Maya,
from
suffering
Grandmother Henderson endured contemptuous town's white dentist: "Annie, dog's "I
mouth than
wouldn't press on you
grandbaby.
When
asked me, and
I
lent
is
the
I'd rather stick
my hand
in a
She reminded him:
like this for
it.
Now,
it
wasn't I
can't take No. Not for my my money you didn't have to beg. You my policy. ain't no moneylender, but you
myself but
I
to
I
tried to help
matter that the lordly Black
power structure
policy
from
rejection
you come to borrow
stood to lose this building and
No
my
in a nigger's."
abcessed tooth,
a painful
woman
you out." [C.B.,
saved
him from
which he belonged would not, he
her granddaughter's tooth.
The
p.
still
184]
ruin
when
the
refused to pull
author neither supports nor condemns her
What she does do is ilwoman who would not be
grandmother's traditional Christian forbearance. lustrate alternative views of a
subjugated by such
"composite
Another
Southern Black
unconscionable oppression
—
essential
visions
of
a
self."
facet of the
unknown Southern Black woman is her majestic who ruled a ghetto borough
octoroon maternal grandmother, Mrs. Baxter, in Prohibition-era St. Louis:
...
the fact that she was a precinct captain
compounded her power and gave her
the leverage to deal with even the lowest crook without fear. She had pull with the police department, so the like
decorum and waited gambling
their jail,
they
bring
in
men
in their flashy suits
to ask favors
parlors, or said the
from
word
her. If
and
fleshy scars sat with church-
Grandmother
raised the heat off
that reduced the bail of a friend waiting in
knew what would be expected
of them.
Come
election, they
the votes from their neighborhood. She most often got
and they always brought
in
the vote. [C.B.,
p.
60]
them
were to leniency,
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
30
The
only change
of her
the urban setting, but the self-reliant
is
environment
is
By
women. That the medium
young
who
readers,
life
is
her mother, Vivian Baxter, whose quintessence
about
a
hurricane in
colors of a rainbow." (C.B.
y
With
58)
p.
thing but sentimentality and she reared
ported us efficiently with
humor and
Vivian Baxter had no mercy.
dictionary,
and
I
Maya
often
do the same: "She sup-
to
can't even read." (C.B., p. 201)
command
obstacles with any-
life's
.
'Sympathy'
.
.
is
.
With
next to
her
jol-
'shit' in
the
all
That meant she refused
psychological and, after Guy's birth, financial dependence:
By no amount been called
of agile exercising of a wishful imagination could
Generous she was; indulgent, never. Kind,
lenient.
my mother
weight, put their
own
shoulders to their
have
yes; permissive,
own canoes, pulled own plows and pushed like hell.
never. In her world, people she accepted paddled their
own
be
the climbing, falling
firm velveted
imagination.
.
.
my mother would
Or
perfect power.
its
braced with creative violence, Vivian obviated
Maya
not fiction
is
can learn to do likewise.
could only be shown by her actions for "to describe
lity,
in control
the role model which Angelou presents as having the greatest
far
impact on her own to write
woman
the atypical contribution which Angelou makes as a
corrective to images of Black serves the interest of
(1950-1980)
their .
.
.
[G.T.,p.7]
But through the four books, Vivian
Angelou's certain rock, an invincible
is
resource from which the mystique of exultant Black feminine character
molded. Tough,
a rarefied beauty,
typical expectations with
mule
words
which the white world or Black men attempted instructions to Angelou are mindful of the
Her
to constrict her being. pitiful
Zora Neale Hurston's novel: "The Black
in
is
Vivian effectively challenged any stereo-
of the world," but Vivian insisted that not
woman
one ebon
sister
is
the
has to
accept that warrant: "People
will take
advantage of you
Everybody, his brother and an's behind.
But you remember
grown. Let them catch their liking tell
them
it
if
you
his dog, thinks
like
this,
them. Especially Negro women.
let
he can walk
a road in a colored
wom-
now. Your mother raised you. You're
they find
it.
to get to stepping."
If
you haven't been trained
Here
a
at
full-
home
to
whisper of delight crawled over
her face. "Stepping. But not on you.
"You hear me?" "Yes, Mother.
At
a
time
I
hear you." [G.T.,
p.
128]
when most women were expected
in life
to surrender in place,
Maya's astonishment, Vivian put her age back fifteen years and took on the merchant marine "because they told me Negro women couldn't get in
to
the union.
...
door up to
my
I
told
hip until
them 'You want
women
to bet?'
I'll
put
my
of every color can walk over
foot in that
my
foot, get
Maya Angelou
31
union, get aboard a ship and go to sea." (Heart
in that
28) This
p.
essence of Angelou's composite: Black progress has been attained
country not only because of the leadership of Black of the
unsung
spirit of
One
most
is
the revelation
life
to celebrate.
(".
.
.
I
rare.
As
and teenager
a child
was surrounded,
But to describe her
p. 66]).
Angelou.
is
which she views the world.
opus are
at self-description in the
by strangers" [C.B.,
life,
her
in
elusive identity in the accumulative "self"
Angelou was inexorably lonely
my
women
sees her only through the eyes with
Attempts
but also because
noncompliant Black women. This
she intends the careful portrayals of major Finally the
men
the
is
in this
as
I
had been
as filled
with
loathing as one of the few critical examinations of her work has done inaccurate:
".
.
Maya Angelou
.
all
selfis
expresses the most severe self-hatred de-
from her appearance. Beaten down by massive self-loathing and selfshame, she felt her appearance was too offensive to merit any kind of true rived
The
affection from others." self
critic
concludes, "Angelou's conception of
caused her to be self-limiting and to lack self-assertion and self-accep-
tance." 2
The young Angelou
described as
to adolescence.
stand real
of
Caged Bird could be more poignantly
the throes of probing self-discovery, deliberation
in
A
child
who was
— not imagined —
common
searching for inward panacea, to with-
rejection, disappointment,
and even onslaught
from an adult world, the young Angelou had few refuges, among them her brother Bailey and her world of books. In the end, self-education through literature
acumen
and the
to
When
be
a
arts
gave her the additional fortitude and intellectual
Baxter-Henderson
woman
of her
the adult Angelou faced the world, the
Stamps, Arkansas, the speakeasies of
St. Louis,
own
generation.
humble requirements
of
and the shipyard boarding-
houses of San Francisco had passed away. Through art she could preserve the tenacious
women who
survived the crucibles those eras intended but
and determination she could not extract dependable techniques from their experiences. Hence the conclusions of Angelou herself
aside from will
model
as role
own canoes"
for this present age: in
if
Black
postindustrial society they
women must do
are to "paddle their it
through force of
Her own experiential development as traced thus far in the latest marriage, enterwork, The Heart of a Woman, teaches that no option is as much a lasting or consummate tainment, any dependent existence reservoir. "I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental would never again work to make people smile inanely and would lyrics. take on the responsibility of making them think." (Heart, p. 45) That decision is her passport to irrevocable freedom to which the definitiveness intellect.
—
—
I
of
the autobiography attests
sounded the vastness of
Angelou, the developing character, had
a lifetime of loneliness
and ascended
as
Angelou
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
32 the writer. Art evolving
became an
(1950-1980)
assertive statement for three generations of an
self.
Ill Unlike her poetry, which in
Afro-American
marking her
life is
sequences which are
a continuation of traditional oral expression
Angelou's prose follows classic technique
The
nonpoetic Western forms. cally
is
literature,
nonetheless arranged in loosely structured plot
skillfully
controlled.
Caged Bird the tenuous
In
psyche of a gangly, sensitive, withdrawn child
is
traumatically jarred by
from which neither the reader nor the protagonist
rape, a treacherous act
has recovered by the book's end. All else
revenge upon the
in
material in each book while chronologi-
rapist,
cathartic: her uncles' justified
is
her years of readjustment in a closed world of
warm
speechlessness despite the
nurturing of her grandmother, her grand-
uncle, her beloved brother Bailey,
and the Stamps community;
a
second
reunion with her vivacious mother; even her absurdly unlucky pregnancy at the
end does not assuage the
reader's anticipatory wonder: isn't the act
of rape by a trusted adult so assaultive leaves a
wound which can never be
character's future
is
upon an
eight-year-old's life that
it
healed? Such reader interest in a
the craft from which quality fiction
is
made. Few
autobiographers however have the verve to seize the drama of such a
moment, using one
book but with an
specific incident to control the
underlining implication that the incident will not control a
The denouement
Gather Together
in
man
older, crafty, experienced
nerable, and, for
all
My Name
in
lasciviously preying
first
work,
Maya is
woman. While
vul-
fore-
to the central action in the
presses the evolvement in Gather Together through a
limited first-person narrator tion than
life.
again sexual: the
upon the young,
her exposure by that time, naive
shadowing apprehension guided the reader
is
who seems
to
know
less of
the
villain's inten-
obvious to the reader. Thrice removed from the action, the
reader sees that L. D. Tolbrook
is
nothing but
a slick
pimp, that
his
seductive sexual refusals can only lead to a calamitous end; that his pleasetum-these-few-tricks-for-me-baby-so-I-can-get-out-of-an-urgent-jam line
an ancient inducement tragedy cannot. She eyes
we
is
for susceptible females,
much
too
in love.
the actor
in
is
the
Maya, the author, through whose
see a younger, foolish "self," so painstakingly details the
girl's
women, have enough
vicar-
descent into the brothel that Black ious
but Maya
example to avoid the
model, not only
is
Maya
trap.
women,
all
Again, through using the "self" as role
able to instruct and inspire the reader but the
Maya Angelou
33
autobiography's integral
sacrifice of personal disclosure authenticates the
depth. Just as the title of
Gather Together
is
commune
injunction for the travailing soul to pray and
and the Caged Bird
patiently for deliverance
the beloved Paul Laurence Dunbar,
is
title is
gave
work, Singin
creativity, the title of the third
Merry Like Christmas,
who
a folkloric title
New
taken from a
Testament
while waiting
taken from a
poem by
Angelou's nascent
call to
and Swingin and Gettin
'
'
'
symbolic of the author's long-
deserved ascent to success and fulfillment. This volume's plot and tone are
above adroit reenactments of that native humor so effective
lifted
lieving constant struggle in Black life
which
balanced
holistically
is
in re-
in
the
Maya (who had theretofore been called Marguerite or Ritie all her life) the singer, Maya the dancer, Maya the actress, had shed the fearful image of "typical" unwed Black mother with a dead-end destiny. She knew she was more than that. two books. The buoyancy
first
But the
and
racist
constant because
is
sexist society
—which had relegated her
to dishwasher,
short-order cook, barmaid, chauffeur, and counter clerk; which had denied
her entrance into secure employment and higher education services;
and which programmed her into
which
of changing modernity even eradicated the avenues
ated her foremothers business climb
is
—seemed
invincible.
The
New
of
Porgy and Bess, which began
the armed the crush
partially liber-
culmination of her show
a dual invitation: either to replace
Broadway production
in
when
a familiar void
Eartha Kitt
in
the
Faces or to join the star-studded cast of
a
world tour
settings shift to such faraway places as
in
1954.
From
Rome, Venice,
that climax the
Paris, Yugoslavia,
Alexandria, Cairo, Athens, and Milan; and the narrator, character, and reader view
life
from glorious
vistas auspiciously
removed from the world
of that dejected girl in Stamps, Arkansas.
The
step from star, producer,
Freedom
for
and writer
Leadership Conference provides the focus for her
Heart of a
Woman. Here
show Cabaret
for the benefit
to being northern coordinator for the
Southern Christian latest excursus,
The
with each of the previous installments,
also, as
the work ends with abrupt suspense. In this way dramatic technique not
only centralizes each work, whole. In
when
son
Caged Bird the in
.
.
.
makes the
the word "lesbian"
if
series narrative a collective is
the rash conception of her
her self-description.
fits
which wisdom hindsights she
numbed pregnant For eons,
of fate
also
the concluding action of the book she initiates an emotionless
affair to see
rhetoric
it
shock-effect ending
and the
it
With
a lofty
articulates the anguish of a be-
sixteen-year-old:
seemed,
I
had accepted
Furies, but this tune
I
my
had
plight as the hapless, put-upon victim
to face the fact that
1
had hrought
my
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
34
new
How
catastrophe upon myself.
making love
lured into
have one of two
me?
to
He must
to
I
he
unscrupulously ambitious, or he
is
believe that for his ends to be served
people can justifiably be shifted about, or that he
world but of the worlds which others inhabit. ality, it
so
I
And,
all
is
unswerv-
the center not only of his
is
had neither element
my own
in
my
of
swore
I'd
initiate's faith:
Guy back
bags and
but
life,
never lose
to Mother's.
had given
I
a
I
'The next day
I
my
own
person-
shoulders where
ends
took the clothes,
had no idea what
promise and found
I
my
was going innocence.
Both of these passages are lucid philosophical treatments of
mundane, though
guage
is
I
essential, ordinary
life's vicissi-
the language and structure
is
moments
in life.
One
of the
forms that Angelou uses to guide the reader past these apparent surfaces
When
precise analogy.
to
again." (G.T., p. 214)
it
tudes but the test of superior autobiography of those
had
must
things and
after viewing a boyfriend's confessed addiction to heroin, she
make
I
staggered under the weight. [C.B., pp. 276-77]
I
Gather Together with an
my
I
hefted the burden of pregnancy at sixteen onto
belonged. Admittedly,
whom
blame the innocent man
In order to be profoundly dishonest, a person
qualities: either
ingly egocentric.
was
(1950-1980)
is
describing one of her daddy's girlfriends, the lan-
not only symbolic but portends their mutual jealousy:
Dolores lived there with him and kept the house clean with the orderliness of a coffin. Artificial flowers
reposed waxily
in glass vases.
She was on
close terms with
her washing machine and ironing board. Her hairdresser could count on absolute
and punctuality. In
fidelity
a word, but for intrusions her
perfect.
And
When
variously citing the notable absences of
then
I
came
symbolism are delicately synthesized:
had been
living with
life
would have been
along. [C.B., p. 221]
empty
men in her life, tone and moan some salty songs. in my bed" (Heart, p. 67);
"I could
arms and rocks
I
No, husbands were men at all seemed attracted to me. rarer than common garden variety unicorns" (S. & 5., p. 13); and "Charles was one emotional runny had taken that journey and left me all alone. "Indeed no
.
.
.
I
sore" (G.T.,
p. 26).
Another aspect of rative
is
style
which prevents ponderous plodding
in
the nar-
Angelou's avoidance of a monolithic Black language. As
first-
person narrator, she does not disavow an erudition cultivated from child-
hood through
early exposure to
and constant reading of such Western
masters as Dostoyevsky, Chekhov, Gorky, Dickens, Dunbar,
Shakespeare, Kipling, Poe, Alger, Thackeray, James
Du
Bois,
Weldon Johnson, and
even the Beowulf poet. Through direct dialogue the reader gleans that
Maya is
is
more expected ghetto expressiveness but such of high drama such as when a Brooklyn murder her son Guy:
perfectly capable of
saved for appropriate
gang threatens
to
moments
Maya Angelou
35
understand that you arc the head of the Savages and you have an arrange-
"I
ment with my son. also understand that the police are afraid of you. Well, came 'round to make you aware of something. If my son comes home with a black eye or I
I
a torn shirt,
I
won't
the police."
call
my hand
His attention followed Susie's
grandmother
first,
my
to
then her mother, then
baby. You understand what I'm saying will
then find
purse. "I will
your house and
7
If
I'll
come
over here and shoot
blow away that sweet
the Savages so
much
touch
as
my
little
son,
I
everything that moves, including the rats and
kill
cockroaches." I
showed the borrowed
none
my hand
kept
But
of the family in
I
slid
my
must say you're
my
back into
it
plans had not gone
the purse, fondling
mother,
for a
then
pistol,
moved and my
purse. For a second,
beyond the speech,
security. Jerry spoke,
mean motherfucker."
a
"O.K.,
to
imitative affectation
New
how, uh, children are
.
.
th-th-these days
.
.
.
.";
man? Boy, anybody
you errer that you er look
tell
the light badinage of customers I'll
have two cans of sardines. look like you standing
paddies."
The
speech dominate expressiveness works: the nativistic
still.
let is
like
Grandma Henderson's
I'm gonna work so
make you
choice not to
in
Just
.
.
.
her father's corrective
pauses of "er," which reaffirms his pretentious mask, "So er this er little
speech.
York, the only
"You know
of her uncle Willie's stuttering,
is
overburden
homespun Black
Europe, from San Francisco to
just
I
[Heart, pp. 83-84]
In addition to sparse use of street vernacular, she also does not
Black communicants with clumsy versions of
From Arkansas
so
understand.
I
Daddy's
is
me?"; and
store, ''Sister,
today I'm gonna
fast
gimme a coupla them fat peanut known variables in Black
imitations of
reinforcement of a major premise
humanness and
in
the
potential of Black identity.
The four-volume autobiography effectively banishes several stereotypimyths about Black women which had remained unanswered in naa Black tional literature. Angelou casts a new mold of Mother Earth she chooses the woman who repositions herself in the universe so that primary objects of her service. And ultimately that object may even be cal
—
herself. Self-reconstruction of the "I"
mode which
is
a
demanding, complex
literary
not only exercises tested rudiments of fiction but also departs
from the more accepted form of biography.
Just as in fiction, the biogra-
pher can imagine or improvise a character's motives; but the autobiographer
is
the one narrator
of us can truly
new
know
who
totality of archetypal
omissions
in
really
Black
national history
cultural criteria.
knows the
truth
—
as well, that
ourselves. In divulging that truth
woman:
a
composite
Angelou
is,
as
any
reveals a
self that corrects
and provides seldom-seen
role
models
for
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
36
(l950— 1980
NOTES 1.
See the 1977 presidential address of the English Association entitled Autobiog-
raphy by Sir Victor Pritchett (London: English Association, 1977); also Lord Butler,
The
Difficult
novelistic
Fact The
Art of Autobiography (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1968). The is also explored in John Hellmann's Fables of
approach to reportive prose
New
Journalism as
New
Fiction (Chicago: University of Illinois Press,
1981). 2.
Regina Blackburn, "In Search of the Black Female
Women's Autobiographies and
Self:
African-American
Ethnicity," in Estelle C. Jelinek, ed.,
Women's
Autobiography: Essays in Criticism (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1980).
Maya Ange/ou personal: Born
Missouri, April 4, 1928. Divorced, one son.
St. Louis,
career: Visiting professor, California State University, Wichita State University,
Wake
Forest University, 1974; reporter,
Ghanaian Times;
Radio Ghana;
writer,
1964-66; assistant administrator, University of Ghana,
editor, African Review,
1963-66; associate editor, Arab Observer, Cairo, Egypt, 1961-62; Coordinator,
Southern
Wake
Christian
Conference,
Leadership
1959-60.
Reynolds
Professor,
Forest University, 1982.
Member:
Directors Guild of America, Actors Equity;
writing: Books: /
Know Why
the
Caged Bird
Drink of Water 'for I Die, 1971; Gather Together My Wings Are Gonna Fit Me Well, 1975; Singin Like Christmas, 1976; Shaker,
Why
Plays: Ajax,
Movie and
And
Still I Rise,
AFTRA.
Me a Cool Name, 1974; Oh Pray
Sings, 1970; fust Give in '
My
6 Swingin & '
1978; The Heart of a
Gettin Merry '
Woman,
1981;
Don't You Sing? 1983.
1974 (an adaptation of Ajax by Sophocles);
TV
scripts:
"Georgia, Georgia," 1972; "I
And Still I Rise, 1977. Know Why the Caged
Bird Sings," 1978; "Sister, Sister," 1979; "Blacks, Blues, Blacks," ten one-hour
episodes for PBS, 1979.
awards/honors: Honorary sity,
lege, Occidental,
lege,
doctorates: University of Arkansas,
Ohio State Univer-
Atlanta University, Claremont College Graduate School,
Wheaton
Col-
Columbia College, Kean College, Smith College, Mills Col-
Lawrence University, Wake Forest University.
Woman
of the Year, Ladies'
Home
journal,
1976;
Tony nomination
best sup-
porting actress, "Roots," 1977.
references: Contributions of Black
Women
mailing address; c/o Random House, 10017.
Inc.,
to
America; Who's
201 East 50th
St.,
Who New
in
America.
York, N.Y.
Ton/
Cade Bambara
Salvation
the Issue
Is
TONI CADE BAMBARA "... work
How
how
was;
it
to do: to
along in the
on the verge
along
our
the relay.
in
us alive. In the ships, in the camps, in
—the
lives preserved.
That
what
is
what I
is
I
work
back from
storyteller snatches us
we
How
how
was;
it
to do: to
We,
are the subjects.
produce
it
the
be. Passing
it
stories that save
lives.
It's
my
Our
tales.
That
lives.
the edge to hear the next chapter. In which
hero of the
relay.
"
our
on the road, on the run, underground, under
fields, prisons,
siege, in the throes,
it
stories that save
They keep
Stories are important.
the quarters,
Passing
be.
it
produce
been
a long apprenticeship.
began scribbling
I
tales
on
strips
from
daddy's Daily News. Then, I'd wait by the bedroom door, chewing on
number two pencil, for those white sturdy squares my mama's stockings came wrapped around. I'd fashion two-part, six-block-long sagas to get my a
classmates to and from PS. 186.
Would
linger recklessly in doorways, hallways, basements, soaking
overheards to convert into radio scripts
I
one day send
out.
up
In the
scripted skits for Negro History Week. In overwhelmed English teachers with three-for-one assign-
various elementary schools, junior high,
I'd
ments. In high school, theatre club lured
I
I
hogged the
me away
two writing courses,
I
lit
journal. In
from the bio-chem
wrote novels,
labs.
Queens College, the
And encouraged by
stories, plays, film scripts,
none of which were ever
ables, operas, you-name-its,
finished,
unnamethough
group of nearly finished pieces copped the John Golden Award the year graduated, 1959. For the next fifteen years or definitely the center of
attraction of the
my
days and nights, writing was the featured
In that period, "Mississippi
Bottles" (Prairie Schooner,
(Dan Watts's
(WNET's "SOUL!," packed
off to
Ham
Rider" (Massachusetts Review, 1960), 1966), and
Digest,
"Maggie
Liberator, 1968-71), Gorilla,
My
The Black Woman, Tales and Love,
"The Johnson
1972), and a cargo of folders and notebooks
Atlanta
Green
of the
1967), were followed by stories, articles, and
Short Stories for Black Folk,
tually
I
while students were
predawn in-betweens.
"The Hammer Man" (Negro reviews
so,
a
in
1974.
Though
writing, editing,
and
Girls" I
evenscript-
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
42 ing for years,
did not acknowledge to myself that
I
writing was
my way
of doing
my work
Cuba
summer
of 1973.
There
in
the
most
others,
especially
had been teaching
my
was
I
the world,
in
(1950-1980)
till
I
a writer, that
returned from
learned what Langston
Hughes and
colleagues in the Neo-Black Arts
Movement,
for years
—
I
that writing
tant way, to participate in the
is
a legitimate way,
empowerment
of the
an impor-
community
that
names me. I
returned
home
ing bones, offering
my
desk,
had
from readers
right-ons
from the authenticating audience.
tion in
to a stack of mail
amens and
— I
critical
was
raising questions, pick-
feedback and accredita-
Somehow
a writer.
head was a vigorous, typewriting obsessive who worked
wore suede elbow patches on cashmere
and
a wife
a secretary
order. "Serious writer"
who
was
sleeves,
smoked
"writer"
at a
huge
a pipe,
and
kept the house quiet and the pages
a fearless-looking warrior in bullet belt
in
and
feathered cloak, with the ritual knife in the teeth ready to cut through
My
nonsense.
through from
my
image of myself, on the other hand, despite
my
break-
bourgeois training that promoted "literaphilia" as a
surrogate for political action and "sensibility" as a substitute for social consciousness, was that of a irritating gritty
lumpy
affair.
somnambulent
oyster in
whose
tissues
an
somethin-or-other was making sleep and daydreaming a
In Atlanta, in the
still
waters of
my
landlocked hermitage,
I
was eager to find out what pearly thing might become available when the oyster was shucked. I
reviewed published and unpublished works, browsed through note-
some understanding of that world I was attempting some better way to establish a relationship work and the reader's productive work given the productive between my elaborate and intricate mechanism (publishing, distribution, promotion)
books and
folders, for
to signify with words, for
separating the two.
I
listened to
my comic
routines,
my outrage,
contradic-
tions, duplicities of feeling;
probed beneath the smooth camouflage of
words
searched for patterns, processes, evidence of
for tell-tale droppings;
growth. ing.
I
And
discovered, to
make
among
other things, that writing
use of either state involves
risks.
is
akin to dream-
Writing,
like
dreams,
confronts, pushes you up against the evasions, self-deceptions, investments in
opinions and interpretations, the clutter that blinds, that disguises that
underlying, all-encompassing design within which the perceivable world in
which society would have us
stay put
—
the page in the same way characters are narios,
pushed me,
years about dudes
in
operates. Virginia, conjured
summoned
"Baby's Breath," challenged judgments
careless with their seed.
Dialogue
on
for the night sceI'd
held for
in either state triggers
Toni Cade Bambara
new
43
demanding the
sets of recognitions,
eviction or modification of the
old and familiar "certainties."
Dream work
too makes impatient with linear literary conventions anc
with conventional narrator postures
medium, the camera eye
narrator as
Eaters
as close as
is
omniscient mind, as witness,
as
come
I
another possibility
at
as permeable.
have come at
I
coaxing the "design" of the world nicate
—
Both dreams and mediation hint
participant.
The
and attempt
a;
the
setup in The Sal
my development
this stage in
intuit
—
tc
signify/commu
to
through. Intimations that what I'm striving for
—
to
work
ai
the point of interface between the political/artistic/metaphysical, thai
meeting place where
seeming contradictions and
all
polarities melt, thai
membrane (jamming at the juncture doo ahh) can b( explored more sense-ably in some language other than what I've beer using, prompts me of late to experiment more with new kinds of writing bicameral mind
and writing forms and to pick up another kind of pencil
materials
—
the
camera.
Of suits
me
the writing forms, I've always been partial to the short story.
all
my
temperament.
makes
It
a
modest appeal
up alongside the reader on her/his blind
to slip
Ii
for attention, allowing
side
and grab'm. Bui
the major publishing industry, the academic establishment, reviewers, anc critics
And
favor the novel.
the independent press journals can rareh
afford to print a ten-page piece.
Murder move
readily admits in interviews that the
by
a recognition of
A
because
I
open the
need to work
my
in a
brain.
How
visitor
—
Salt.
new
language; also because the lumps prying for print.
And
too, writing
is
sue!
do it year after year, book after book, And temperament. There are times of course, in betweei novelists
in
i:
and hospitable
intensely sociable periods
any
but rather Career. Economics. Critical atten
do not seem appropriate
shell
whe
to paints again, scripts, songs, especially film work. Parti}
a lonely business.
past
it,
major motive behind the production of
But I'm back
loyalist
was not occasionec
having reached the limits of the genre or the practi
tioner's disillusion with tion.
gene-deep
for the
to the novel
fits
person, by phone, by mail
and collaborative work, whei
—
is
an intruder,
a burglar,
i
space hogger, an oxygen taker, a chaos maker, a conflict inducer, a mooc
and
chaser, Visitors in,
but
a total drag.
though it
swifty
A
insist their
becomes
reach
may presume, but
is
presence on the conscious. a past-tense affair.
The
quickly dealt with
A
ceiling
visitor
naggingly present progressive tense. Friends and kin rush
by
my
frequent and lengthy disappearances from
on planet
earth.
that the only sociable
all
is
the work
itself.
However
cav(
in th
Alienated and isolated, Black
women
arc
often stranded
waiting for
some
tiling
(some where)
often dangling in a
In this
poem
resignation
between
the contradictions arc apparent
and
struggle,
— the contradictions between
between moving and standing
dual level of being which often exists ing from a lack of fulfillment
when
there
is
still.
There
discontentment
is
a
result-
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
388 i
(
1950-19 80)
got old, looking at myself young
how
learned
i
What is interesting is women whose lives are
to run standing
still
gave up, holding on
i
that the poet
aware of the number of Black
is
incomplete, and
who
drain themselves by waiting
and hoping. kept waiting for
i
—
this
is
and
its i
—
to
my
all
happen
found out
they had already happened
my
in
Rodgers points out that she
wanting anymore," but
head
.
.
tried to "trick" herself into
does not work.
it
.
It
and wanting and needing are characteristic of
ing
because Black
women
"not dreaming or/
does not work because dream-
However,
real people.
are not often allowed to be real people, they force
themselves to pretend they have no dreams, no needs, no desires for
Too
fulfillment.
The
life/and dying
what life,
is
often the result
solution of course is
in their
there
is
a
ity
a
and act on the live,
Black
fact that "living
women must
to act
on one's own truth, one's own
not always easy. Black
is
must confront themselves within
able to recognize
all
this historical context.
and
lives
have
vulnerabil-
They must be
the forces which have shaped their struggle, and then
fight for their
own
place, their
own
voice, their
own
defini-
Have Been Hungry," Rodgers examines her own past, and Black women's history, and recognizes it for what it is. 20
tion. In "I
turn,
is
reality.
women whose
grief, pain, isolation, loneliness,
is
accept
heads, what they want and need. For as long as there
chance
been marked by
be willing to
confused restlessness.
not dead." In order to
However, such action essentially
is
to recognize
is
all i
that
i
have wanted
have not had
and much of what i
in
i
have had
have not wanted.
She substantiates her feelings by pointing out that her father wanted three sons and one daughter, instead of three daughters and one son. One girl would mean having only "one good
for
nothing" instead of three. How-
ever, being fully conscious of her father's rejection of her, she
became
a
"wanting needing love and approval seeking bleeding/girl," who spent
more time than any little girl should begging both of which she says she never received.
The
poet realizes, however, that she must
for love
come
and acceptance,
to terms with this past
389
Carolyn Rodgers
and with
herself,
knowledge has
some sense
of
and she obviously does when she admits, "some new/old me like yeast." And out of this knowledge comes
risen in self.
am
i
a forest of expectation
the beauty that
what
The
implication here
ing.
The
will
i
be
is
can be even
i
can not know.
i
restrictions
and exciting
that something new, good,
is
process of self-exploration
and
and
and toward
roles,
and what
am
no longer
a
i
a
is
is
happen-
coming to major step away from
self-discovery
terms with the "new/old knowledge," and
imposed
yet
be defined
to
is
part of
self-definition.
now,
simple
girl
bringing lemonade and cookies
begging favor •
no longer showering
a
world torn
my
"luck"
woman
in a
cold bottle of cold duck
No
longer needing to seek the approval of others or to accept herself as
the victim, she
is
in
the process of becoming a real person.
and
—who—am
i
now
but a saved sighing singular thing, a
Becoming
a real
person
is
a
And
the courageous know.
woman
.
.
.
kind of freedom, an independence that only the courageous are those
who
can wade
through the rejection, the pain, the loneliness and emptiness and embrace
an individual questions
in
They arc the ones who can answer Carolyn Rodgers' poem "Feminism." 21
self.
the
what
to
your claim to fame?
is
when
there are no diplomas
be lauded,
no husband no buds
to
when does and
in
when
to be pillared upon,
be babied the wind blow on your face
what direction do you turn it
rains 7
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
390
(
1950—1980)
The courageous answer the question with "me" because they are the who dare to see themselves as singular beings. They dare to define
ones
themselves, not in terms of their credentials, their husbands, or their children
— the
so-called protective layers
The
vidual selves.
process
similar to
is
regenerated and born again." There
and
new
a
is
—but
in
terms of their
what the old
own
folks refer to as
indi-
"being
a rebirth or re-creation taking place,
about to begin. Carolyn Rodgers uses the imagery of
life is
creation and rebirth
"Some
in
Me
.
re-
discusses, with a
woke up one morning
i
.
where she
own move towards freedom. 22
unique and forceful honesty, her .
of Beauty"
my
and looked
at
and what
saw was
i
self
carolyn
ma jua moment
not imani the i
saw more than saw
i
a
or soul sister poetess of
a "sister"
.
.
.
woman, human. and
Although she knew "carolyn" had been coming gray hair, the full recognition of
second chance
chance
at life, a i
felt a spiritual
black. all
along, like her mother's
her self-discovery was like being given a to begin
anew.
transformation
a root revival of love
and
i
knew
many
that
things
were over
and some
me
of
—beauty was about
A
"root revival of love"
return to
self, for
freedom,
it
tory,
our
is
to begin.
.
.
.
perhaps the most appropriate image for this
not only does
it
allow for self-love, independence, and
provides a better opportunity for us to redefine our
own
traditions. It frees us to
children, our mates
—
all
nificance, self-discovery
those with
and
come
own
his-
to terms with each other, our
whom we
interact.
And
of equal sig-
self-love are clearly sources of creativity.
Rodgers' "spiritual transformation" and "root revival of love" must certainly in
have served as a force behind her
her work indicative
from the
of her
artistry.
own freedom.
street to the church, she writes
There
is
a level of
honesty
In a variety of idioms ranging
about Black
women
with a kind
of sensitivity and warmth that brings them out of the poems and into our own lives. know these women who are afraid sometimes and are presI
sured into denying fear,
the time and are ashamed
of loneliness.
for
I
who are alone most of know Black mothers, my own
example,
who do
not
391
Carolyn Rodgers
know anything about Black whose
lives are sources of
creativity.
love "the music of silence" but are
women
because they are
who
but
art,
own
our
sometimes
people whose
real
are themselves Black artists I
know women who need and know these terrified of it. I
lives
merit the kind of redis-
covery and reinterpretation that Carolyn Rodgers has provided. Clearly, her artistry brings these
them
that gives
them
women
to
life,
but
their rightful place in literature.
is
it
The
her love for
love, the skill,
indeed the vision, which she brings to her poetry must certainly help Black
women
rediscover and better understand themselves.
NOTES Even
1.
a
substantive
study
Black
of
poetry
such
as
Eugene Redmond's
Drumvoices: The Mission of Afro-American Poetry (Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976) gives
little critical
attention to
many
of the
contemporary
female poets. 2.
Eugene Redmond,
3.
Carolyn Rodgers,
p.
388.
How
I
Got Ovah, foreword, Angela Jackson (Garden
City,
N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976). 4.
Ibid.
5.
Carolyn Rodgers, "Breakthrough," 77ie Black Poets, ed. Dudley Randall (New
Bantam Books, 1971), p. 263. How I Got Ovah, 1976, Redmond, op. cit, p. 388.
York: 6. 7.
Rodgers,
pp. 39-40.
Stephen Henderson, Understanding the New Black Poetry (New York: William Morrow, 1973), p. 59. 9. Mary Helen Washington, ed., Black-Eyed Susans (Carden City, N.Y.: Anchor 8.
Press/Doubleday, 1975),
How
p. x.
Got Ovah,
10.
Rodgers,
11.
Ibid., pp.
12.
Paulette Childress White,
I
pp. 33-34.
11-12.
"The
Bird Cage," in Midnight Birds, ed.,
Helen Washington (Carden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday 1980), 13
Rodgers,
How
I
Got Ovah,
p.
Mary 38.
pp. 44-45.
14.
Ibid., p. 41.
15.
Ibid.,
16.
Ibid., pp.
54-56.
17.
Ibid., pp.
47-48
18.
Carolyn Kizer, "Pro Fcinina," quoted
pp 72-75.
in
Midnight
Birds,
eel
Mary Helen
Washington (New York: Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1980), p xviii. 19. Carolvn Rodgers, The Heart as Tver Green (Garden City, NY.. Anchor 1978), pp. 5-6. 20. Rodgers.
How
21. Rodgers, T)\e
22. Rodgers,
How
I
Got Ovah,
pp.
49-52
Heart as Ever Green, I
Got
Ch'ah,
p.
53
p.
47.
Press,
BLACK
392
WOMEN WRITERS
(
1950—1980
BIBLIOGRAPHY Evans, Mari. I Fuller,
Am
a Black
Woman. New
York: William
Morrow, 1970.
Stephany. Moving Deep. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1969.
Henderson, Stephen. Understanding the
New
New
Black Poetry.
York: William
Morrow, 1973. Randall, Dudley. The Black Poets.
New
Bantam, 1971.
York:
Redmond, Eugene. Drumvoices: The Mission City, NY.. Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976. Rodgers, Carolyn. "Black Poetry
— Where
It's
of Afro-American Poetry.
At." Negro Digest,
Garden
XVII (Septem-
ber 1969), 7-16. .
.
How
I
Got Ovah. Garden
"New Poems
City, N.Y.:
Anchor Press/Doubleday, 1976.
by Carolyn Rodgers." Black World,
XXIV
(June, 1975),
82-83. .
.
.
Paper Soul. Chicago: Third World
Press, 1968.
Songs of a Blackbird. Chicago: Third World Press, 1969. The Heart as Ever Green. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Doubleday,
1978.
Rushing, Andrea Benton. "Images of Black
Black World,
XXIV
Women
in
Afro-American Poetry."
(September 1975), 18-30.
Washington, Mary Helen. Black-Eyed Susans. Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/ Doubleday, 1975. .
Midnight
Birds.
Garden
City,
NY.: Anchor Books,
1980.
Running Wild in Her Soul: The Poetry of Carolyn Rodgers BETTYE It
was
in
1971, several years into and nearing the end of the Black Arts
Movement which grew North
PARKER-SMITH
J.
out of the
sixties,
that a group of artists from the
South
(poets, dancers, musicians) traveled to a Black college in the
new revolutionary awakening and test its effect on SouthBlack people. They performed well, having set poetry to music and
to vocalize their
ern
dance. Black bodies glistened, drums talked, and poets spoke in strong vociferous voices.
They were
loud, ignored the principles subscribed to by
the English Department (the chairperson was
in
the audience), and used
Black speech patterns, hip phrases, and obscenities, and they obviously tried not to repeat the strain that characterized the dialect poets of the
Harlem Renaissance. They
stressed
all
the right concerns of the times
that threatened both spiritual
the real aspects of Black
life
survival: police brutality,
Black assassinations as
Luther King,
Jr.,
in
and Malcolm X, and male-female
'c'and added the
'k'),
They
They
relationships.
were polemical, probing, and investigative regarding those ditions that led to the Black condition:
and physical
the death of Martin
historical con-
stressed Africa (took out the
emphasized the meaning of colonialism, and drew
They had come a long way (all They wore beards and beads, afro
attention to slavery and Reconstruction.
way from 1865) and they were tired. and dashikis. And, by the students who had taken time away from classes and bid whist games, they were applauded. But then they expressed a desire (a need really) to take their show into the "community." It being Friday night, someone directed them to the Red Rooster Inn, a favorite neighborhood night spot where the college students had begun to trek since it became fashionable to coalesce with the people. The bar was crowded. Men and women had made their usual weekend pilgrimage here to celebrate the victory of ending another grueling work (or nowork) week. They studied their Pabst and stirred their Johnny Walker Red the
hairstyles
Bettye
J.
Parker-Smith, Ph.D.,
is
director of the Board of Governors-Bachelor of Arts De-
gree Program and associate professor of English of Northeastern Illinois University, Chicago.
She
is
the creditor of Sturdy Black Bridges, an anthology of Black
critical essays
and short
fiction
have been published
in First
women
currently working on a book of short stories concerned with the Black
South
writers,
World and other
and her
journals.
woman
in
She
is
the rural
and waited the
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
394 for
answers that never came. Things had certainly changed
ten years.
last
They could drink from
at the front of the bus, still
1950-198 0)
(
and eat
in
Mama
preferred eating at
the "white" water fountains,
in sit
Woolworth's (although most of them
Sue's restaurant on Ferris Street). But,
apart from these small differences, there had not been a shift in their dayto-day existence, to any measurable degree. fingers to the
bones
everybody knew of
practically
The women
still
worked
their
underpaid and sexually abused domestics, and
as
a present situation that involved a share-
cropper. For the most part, their children cried at night and played sick in
the morning because they didn't like the
new "mixed"
school they were
forced to attend.
Muddy Waters howled from needs. So
when
the jukebox; he was sensitive to their
the group from the North shut off
Muddy Waters and who had
started reading poetry, this assemblage of Southern laborers,
worked from sunup
sundown
to
for the past five days,
looked on
in
sheer
bewilderment. After all, their drums were too loud, their hair needed combing (everybody took time after work to clean themselves up before coming to the Red Rooster Inn) and the loud reading interfered with their thoughts. They seemed too young to be throwing hardcore obscenities around. It showed a lack of respect for their elders (and if this is what they meant by that word revolution, they could just hightail it on back up
The men
North).
placed a steady stare on the dancers'
legs, but,
other
own way of dealing with boredom. The group from the
than that, they simply wanted to return to their their problems.
They
North soon packed that their art
shifted their bodies in their
equipment (and pride) and
left,
disappointed
was not acknowledged by the people. They carried on
day analysis of the
difficulty
Black people have
in
a two-
appreciating those things
that are relevant. It
need
was against
this
artists
struggled in the early seventies.
tionary artists
and
it
as a
weapon
They had
they were holding on to a
Haki Madhubuti (Don
...
the seers
needed
a
new
They had been considered
L. Lee)
who saw and
spoke
in
own
They had bars, and made
insurrection.
churches,
moment
in
in history that
revolu-
it,
and
read to the recordings.
was slipping
fast.
informs us that they were .
.
.
quietly screaming to a Black world that
music. Their voices, many, hit us sometimes unclear and insensitive,
sometimes overloud and frightening, often raw and uninhibited but sincere and
a
that the Black
revolutionized poetry, refashioned
against their
Black masses on street corners,
Now
Movement,
maintained that status in the sense that they were
insurgent and radical.
used
backdrop of innocent contradiction, along with
for clarity of the state of the Black Arts
selfless, inflicting
mental anguish
in
many
of us.
The
in
most cases
poetry was read
395
Carolyn Rodgers on
street corners
Black theatre.
One
and
in alleys,
used
in liberation
of the
most
and complex poets
sensitive
ment and struggle with its known as Carolyn Rodgers. Her contradictions
to the
arguments
to
emerge from
"a skinny,
is
lackey" 2
approach
schools and incorporated into the
1
theological
.
this
move-
knockkneed
and philosophical and magnificent
that plague Black people (intense
ills
.
.
coups d'etat) and her attempts to master an appropriate
for
language to communicate with the masses of Black people qualify her to join her
1960 colleagues (the
She was instrumental or receptive power to, poetry
list
in
artists.
is
long)
who were
also revolutionary
helping create, and give a
as a Black art form. This
new
new
definition
sense of power
continued into the seventies to dominate the mind and imagination of Black
artists,
new and tain
and sent
critics scurrying
to discover the intensely personal
which
is
about for
proper response to a
a
sensitive poetic flow. In analyzing her poetry,
— the
one
is
important to a complete understanding of her work.
stances that ignite
are easily discernible.
it
She
The
circum-
struggles to affirm her
move beyond those Black womanhood. For
not strong enough to
womanliness. However, she
is
obstacles that threaten the
full
her, there are three
always cer-
biographical ingredient
development of
major dilemmas: the fear of assimilating the value
system of her mother, which interferes with claiming an independent style of her
social
own; the attempt
her.
by the standards of the
own and
her mother's condition;
system responsible for creating her
and the search It
for love (a
man)
and save
that will simultaneously electrify
mixture of elements, these complexities, that
this
is
life-
to define her "self"
demand
the
attention of this essay. It
can be
fairly
accurately
claimed that Carolyn
Rodgers'
achievements have undergone two distinct and clear baptisms.
artistic
The
first
can be viewed as being rough-hewn, folk-spirited, and held 'down at the river'
amid water moccasins
in
the face of a glaring midday sun; the climax
These were her
of a 'swing-lo-sweet-chariot' revival.
OBAC
(Organization
of Black African Culture) years. This organization, a Petri dish for
Black writers of the Fuller,
Jr.,
sixties,
was guided principally by the
then editor of Black World, and served,
arrest the psychological frailty of straight,
when he
and first
as subtly
met her
feminine as at
an
if
Carolyn Rodgers,
late
young
Hoyt
W.
only temporarily, to
who was
"slim and
3 Fuller recalled that a virgin's blush."
OBAC
social function, she
was "skinny and
scared," verbalized an interest in writing, and telegraphed a need to be stroked. 4 Being the unhealthy flower she was, Carolyn Rodgers responded naturally to his quiet
fondly of him.
mood and
healing voice. She was later to write very
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
396 a
man, standing
(
0-1980)
195
the shadows of a
in
white marble building chipping at the stones earnestly,
moving with the changes
tirelessly,
of the hours,
the days, the seasons and years, using the shadows to shield
such a
can go unnoticed .
.
.
him
man
but the
.
man
.
.
.
.
.
will
pick the foundation to pieces,
chip by chip
The format its
of the
.
.
[Bird, 30]
OBAC workshops helped cushion
members provided
member
5 .
a
Rodgers' insecurities;
strong support system for each other.
was as
It
of this literary coterie, this small in-group of novice writers
intellectuals, that she
made her
volume of poetry, Paper
initial
impact. In introducing her
Soul, Fuller prepared us for
what was
vision,
and
it
is
clear even
beautiful country." 6 This
now
first
that her
pathway leads to the
period of her writing includes her
volumes, Paper Soul, 2 Love Raps, and Songs of a Blackbird.
artist's
far
first
It is
first
come:
to
''Carolyn Rodgers will be heard. She has the artist's gift and the
a
and
and
three
charac-
by a potpourri of themes and demonstrates her impudence,
terized
through the use of her wit, obscenities, the argumentation
in
her love and
revolution poems, and the pain and presence of her mother. She questions
the relevance of the Vietnam War, declares war on the
cities,
laments
Malcolm X, and criticizes the contradictory life-style of Blacks. And she glances at God. These are the years that she whipped with a lean switch, often bringing ciating pain. I
will write
down
She
is
her wrath with stinging, sharp, and sometimes excruvery exact about her focus:
about things that are universal So that hundreds, maybe even thou-
White critics and readers will say of me, Here is a good who wrote about truth and universal topics. ... will write about
sands of years from now, Black writer,
I
Black people repossessing this earth, a-men. 7
To be
sure, she
was clairvoyant and uncompromising. Her poetry was
colored by a young woman's contempt for injustice and a young rebel's sensitivity to the cost of
freedom
precedence over everything
On
in a
corrupt world where race takes
else.
the other hand, the second baptism takes place just before Carolyn
Rodgers
is
perhaps be
able to shake herself dry from the classified as a sprinkling
very fine headcloth.
It is
more
and
is
first
river.
This one can
protected by the blessings of a
sophisticated.
It is
cooler; lacks the fire
and
397
Carolyn Rodgers
brimstone of the
But
period.
first
it
The two
nonetheless penetrating.
is
How
Cot Ovah and The Heart volumes as Ever Creen. At this point, Rodgers moved away from Third World Press, the publisher that accommodated most of the OBAC writers and phase are
that characterize this
which published her inside her
it
seems, abrasively with
once lone and timid world. With
signs of strength this stage
and
to
to her old
OBAC. She moved
OBAC
self.
recognition from a larger and
characteristics are not visible in
form of
more
it.
She
around her
itself
she received
diverse reading audience. However,
poetry that represents this period
rather specific. She cross-examines the revolution,
her relationship to
In fact, her
insecurity.
moment when
This was the
The
her celebrity was short-lived.
back
she had demonstrated
have returned doublefold, wrapped
and psychological
physical
These
assertiveness.
and she returned
seemed
frailty
three volumes, to a larger commercial publishing
first
house. She also broke,
I
listens to
its
And
her mother's whispers.
is
and
contradictions,
she em-
braces God.
Motherhood Black
is
woman and
powerful state and the relationship between a
a very
her daughter (especially
most complex relationship that Historically, Black
of physical
women
in
if
they are poor)
America have endured an unlimited amount
and psychological debasement. These daughters are awed by the pressures and survive within a
their mother's ability to withstand
dehumanizing system. Further, they are inspired by ings in ways that are difficult for a strain
perhaps the
is
between any two human beings.
exists
them
tries to please,
how
They never (no matter mothers. Toni Cade Bambara speaks
approval.
their mother's suffer-
More
The younger woman
permeates the relationship.
accepts her mother's pain, always
to articulate.
often than not,
understands and
and seeks her mother's
they become) grow up to their
tall
to this perplexity in relationship to
writing autobiographical fiction: "It does no good to write autobiographical
fiction
mama
cause the minute the book hits the stand here comes your
screamin
how
could you and sighin death
and-something and you In the
poems
first
ain't too
grown
...
have your
it
is
ass
nineteen-forty-
whipped." 8
period of Carolyn Rodgers' writing, she presents
Crucified" and "It
Is
Deep,"
the highest order. Carolyn prescription for her
ills,
she i
is
is
conflict in both
obvious.
The mother
a revolutionary
her mother
prayer:
scl
sd. u
know
in
is
me
the way yoh think
is
in
poems, "Jesus a
poet and she
recommends
had too much hate
she
The
companion
where she engages
at the beginning of Songs of a Blackbird,
psychological warfare with her mother.
Was
to
Christian of is
sick.
As
a
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
398
(
1950-198 0)
got a lots to do
wid the way u
feel
9
She blames Carolyn's condition (which is not by her diagnosis a physical illness) on the fact that she has been educated. She also plays on a note of guilt:
she sd
if
she had evah
woulda mad sent
me
me
known educashun wouda neva
she
to school (college that
she sd the way this
crazi,
i
my
worked
is)
fingers to the
white mans factori to make u
a
bone
in
de-cent some-
bodi and here u are actin not like decent folks 10
While the mother
primarily concerned about the psychological and
is
moral state of her daughter, she
encounter some
physical harm.
also worried that this
is
She
fears that the
daughter
"Negroes,"
who
may
are her
IN PUBLIC!!!" but are also "COMMUShe no doubt recalled the McCarthy years and remembered NIST." that any connection or accusation of connection with communism, posed a threat to one's physical survival. These political blunders she could evencolleagues, not only
"CURSE
11
But the idea of not
tually possibly understand; at least she could adjust.
believing in
God
is
not
just
U DON'T BELIEVE IN
GOD NO MO DO U gon
the situation into her
mon
...
shameful:
U???
and
own
in this state of frustration,
yuh need
she decided to take
hands:
pray fuh u tuh be saved
if
die
it is
HELL 12
As most Black mothers do
i
facts;
u wudn't raised that way!
go tuh
i
simply a miscalculation of
me
call
.
.
.
me
hope we don't have tuh straighten the truth out no mo. 13
Despite Carolyn's condition (after
all,
lambs
will
go
astray), despite her
obstinance, and despite the fact that she even consorted with communists,
her mother had no difficulty saying with tremendous love and sincerity, "If
yuh need
me
call
me." In the next poem, "It
Is
Deep," she becomes
gravely concerned after discovering that her daughter's telephone has
been disconnected. She "slipped on some love" and went to see about her "baby." 14 She was totally unfamiliar with the symbols of revolution she
saw scattered about her daughter's apartment. She didn't recognize the poster of Leroy Jones (Amiri Baraka), the playwright and poet, who was instrumental
in starting
her daughter's
the Black Arts
new book
of poetry.
Movement. She had not even seen
What
she understood most was that
her daughter needed love and support and that she had both to
give. So:
399
Carolyn Rodgers she pushed into
she could open see
what
bills in
some
I
had
my kitchen so my refrigerator to eat,
my hand
to
and pressed
fifty
saying "pay the talk
who
food; you got folks
and buy
bill
." 15
care about you
.
.
Her daughter observed and reminisced:
my room
there she was, standing in
not loudly condemning that day and not remembering that
grew hearing her
I
curse the factory where she "cut uh slave"
and the cheap
J-boss wouldn't allow a union,
not remembering that
heard the tears when
I
they told her a high school diploma was not enough,
and here now, not able been forced to deny
This act of
to understand
what she had
16 .
love, this crush, this
,
.
undeniable feeling of guilt and respect
that this daughter has for her mother, causes her to
must always
acknowledge and accept the
do:
After their telephone conversation in ''Jesus
why
informs Carolyn i
Was
Crucified," the mother
she has to go to bed early:
got tuh go so
i
and go tuh the record cause
work hard
do what Black women and the pain.
love, the spirit,
i
for
can
git
up
early
need 30
tomorrow
board to
social security
clarify
my
my money.
yrs.
and they don't want tuh give
me
$28.00 once every two weeks. 17
Acknowledging
herself as part of her
mother
also
means
that she accepts
her strengths as well as her pain:
My
mother, religious-negro, proud of
having waded through a
a storm,
sturdy Black bridge that
is,
very obviously,
I
crossed over, on. 18
The
irony, then, in this mother's situation,
her daughter on the one hand and
—
fills
and the
issue that astonishes
her with disdain on the other,
is
her
inhuman pressures with dignity, carry her suffering and pain with pride and emerge from humiliating circumstances still a woman, still intact, still able to love and fuss over her family. Rodgers' mother certainly wanted her daughter's lot in life her mother's ability to cope
circumstances
—
to withstand
—
to be different
from her own. Sending her to college sup-
ported this hope. She wanted her to be able to
make
a different set of
choices than those from which she had been forced to select. But, on the
other hand, she wanted her to be
like her,
strong and stern and
"reli-
BLACK
400
WOMEN WRITERS
(
1950-198 0)
19 giously girdled in her god."
She wanted her daughter's heart to beat to This desire was in total opposition to the new ways her daughter had discovered and the new life-style she had chosen. Therefore, the theme and language of her early poetry is a daughter's rebellion in the strictest form. This phase of her writing was her frantic attempt to free herself from her mother's will. But she continues to be overwhelmed by her mother's presence, which is possibly the strongest the same tune as her
influence in her
own
heart.
life.
more than a metaphor in her poetry. To Rodgers, her mother was, in some ways, like God strong and omnipotent. She had walked the waters, fed the sick, and, for someone who had "cut uh slave" Religion
is
—
the way she had, she
may
also
have been able to
raise the dead.
The
first
of
companion mother poems is subtitled "It Must Be Deep." In the is sure: "It Is Deep." It is both the depth of her mother's
these
second one, she
and her pain that traumatized her. Just an ordinary woman but she has what her daughter may lack: unfathomable strength. She is important for the very reason she is ordinary. She is struggle
nondecorative
immersed lute.
in
They
—
those ordinary things in
are rooted in the church
builds her strength. Rodgers sees
mother end tongue
She
says:
"Catch yuh
Though Rodgers' out the
At one
first
it is
God
in
hear Coltrane."
21
on
jesus,
i
mother
asks,
is
"Du yuh
her mother. As she and her
nonetheless preoccupied with pray?" She replies, "Sorta
John Coltrane was, without
and celebration where she was concerned. soul with his saxophone.
a
i
He was
godly.
He
soothed her
22
poem, "Testimony," her ambivalent attitude toward God is had been used as a psychological tool to keep Black bondage. So she challenges God to prove his worth, his omnipo-
In an early
in
it.
when
doubt, worthy of praise
revealed. Christianity
people
values are abso-
foundation that she
attitude toward religion borders on ridicule through-
period of her writing, she
point, her
Her
this
illustrative of
is
later
upon
Must Be Deep," the poet's slip of the way she views her mother. mean motha!" 20
their conversation in "It
(of pen, actually)
that count.
life
and
tence:
God— they fear you, they hold you so tight they squeeze the truth in
out, (you run wild in
you do not
tell
them
my
soul)
you .
.
.
to
scrape their hearts and knees, moaning
while whitey kicks pockets asses If
.
.
in their
.
you are the soldier they shout you
are,
401
Carolyn Rodgers
them
shoot! Shoot
shoot buckshot
jesus,
23
in their hearts
.
.
.
mother and is part of her dilemma: same time overlook the human needs of her people? How could her mother be strong, yet weak enough to adhere to this contradiction? Rodgers did not want this inheritance. She did not wish to "work her fingers to the bone" as her mother had done and bow on her knees in gratitude. She wanted to realize her own humanity. Her journey would be easier to map if she had some models. Her mother and sisters were not adequate prototypes. Nor was her "aunt who had been/ This contradiction
How
linked to her
is
God be
could
and
just
at the
wilting on porches and/rocking chairs, for/twenty years (at least)/while/
piecing quilts
and/humming hymns." 24 However,
in
the second stage, she
does accept her mother and her companion, religion. While he
OBAC,
be Coltrane or
My
Jesus,
may not
never was no white man. /her
," 25
back on her.
his
Angela Jackson, I
God
Sweet Jesus never was either./Mama never had no savior that
would turn
How
her "mama's
Got Ovah,
.
.
and
a friend
sister poet,
announces
in
the foreword to
that:
she
grown up now
is all
.
.
.
she remind u of church. her eye
she
seeing holy
is
Carolyn
is
to the
In introducing this a
his style
and
for
book
is
his
new
.
humming
.
.
.
.
.
her people
an author
is
very likely to have changed
person does not wish to offer apologies
Still, a
Dear," assures us that she has it
you
stage of her "self" to us, Rodgers explains that
where he or she was." 27 The
confrontation and
.
promise/d land. 26
finally finished,
mind.
.
a poet
she a witness,
"When
.
a witness, will glorify
is
first
come
to
poem
in this
volume, "For
terms with her mother. There
lacks the sarcasm of the earlier
is
no
mother poems.
It
resembles a Black woman's calm after a stormy Sunday shout.
fragments of the causes
for the
shout are
still
is
forced by an inner urge
hum quietly. "Grace has brought me safe this far, and me on." Carolyn Rodgers' mother's prayers have now been
to
come home and
acts like she has
needs to change her hairstyle. Wearing
reminder of those "Communist" days. told
my
to leave
sweet
me
mama
alone
it
The
in
Though
circling about in her head,
she nonetheless experiences a sense of peace and
daughter has
Muh'
its
poet
"some
grace will lead
answered. Her
sense." But she
natural state tries to explain:
is
still
a
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
402
my
about she
wild free knotty and nappy hair
why don't you let it grow on down to the ground honey
right
don't you
BLACK
my mama i
.
1950—1980)
.
sd.
why of
.
(
lay
all
throw
backin
gives
we
think
jest
some
&
a
chile,
.
.
.
fit
rootin.
boss advice
ought to do
that. 28
Nonetheless, as she conducts this odyssey, this search for authenticity of "self," else. ity;
Rodgers measures her worth through someone
she
This
a poet
is
who
writes poetry. But
some
eliminate
will
Beginning with the
man
else or
something
Certainly her search for "self" includes an expression of her creativ-
first
it
must
also include love
—
a
man.
of her pain and add a link to her completeness. stage, she has unrealistic notions
about
how
a
could enhance her womanliness. She searches for a "maharajah." 29
Black
women
hope that
have often suffered from
a prince (any prince)
a "Cinderella mentality," the
would come searching with
a slipper in
them into the night on a pedigreed white stallion (this would separate them from their mothers' pain). Often this has been God's unsolicited role. Rodgers is not exempt from this unhealthy condition. But oftentimes it takes more than a firm belief in Christianity to ease the pain of loving a Black man, because to do so is to penetrate the hand and
ride off with
centuries of his emasculation. Rodgers was later to write very painfully: i
wanted
i
needed to love you
to love you
you were you, so
all
my men and
in
glimpsed the meaning of
i
many words
like strength
and beauty
but you could not love me,
because you hate your Black
momma. 30
She understands the agony of being loved and
left:
what you say
when somebody
tell
you
he gon leave
and take the threadbare love he brung
to your seasons
raggedy love you took and stitched into the weavings of your reasonings feelings
you mended and pieced together
and knitted
for yourself a life to slip into
what you say when he gon. 31
When
the realization finally settles
does not
fit,
that in fact there are
in,
when
it
is
apparent that the shoe
no gallant white horses and that the
403
Carolyn Rodgers prince
not a prince at
is
all,
but rather a Black
then the plot assumes some
man
struggling to emerge,
focus and the long struggle to face reality
begins: myself
i've told
hundred times
a
don't
it
make
sense
.
.
.
stop believing in dreams
i'll
in fact, just as
soon as
my
finish writing
i
poem. 32
last
Rodgers examines her options and decides that to marry a Black
"Masquerade." has to take
would require giving
It
from her
all
"self."
She
all
man
is
a
which means she
of her "self,"
struggles with such a notion:
you think you
need me. think
some
that i/will complete
we could be if
promised to keep
i
real pain
loving. In
.
.
is
not enough for me.
it
is
not enough for you. 33
is
discovering that loneliness for
Some
Black
Women,"
am
we we
is
a constant
lonely.
are lonely. are talented, dedicated, well read
BLACK,
COMMITTED,
we understand
the world problems
Black women's problems with Black but
we
really
men
all
understand
is
lonely
knowing
that
we must
walk back-wards nonchalantly on our tip-toesssss into
happiness, if
only for stingy
.
moments
companion
to
she writes with an extraordi-
nary sadness:
i
.
.
it
"Poem
.
my mouth
shut and speak on cue
The
picture for you
together only
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
404
we buy clothes, we take trips, we wish, we pray, we meditate, we we grow
tired
curse,
we
crave,
we
(1950-1980
we
coo,
but must al-ways be soft and not too serious
.
caw,
.
.
not too smart not too bitchy not too sapphire
dumb
not too
not too not too not too
more
a little less a little
add here detract there lonely. 34
In the second phase of her writing, she
compromises with
herself; Jesus
is
the answer to loving and loneliness. "Jesus must of been/some kind of
dude ...
a revolutionary cat." 35
dude ...
a militant
But
this
choice
poses a threat to Black male-female relationships:
he [Black man]
tries to
of his
own
of her
and her holiness
Foul names he
For he
is
that he first
is
no longer the
volume,
ness and do
womanly
understand?
Or
their eyes will
will
are: Is
it
.
.
my
people,
sometimes
i
who wrote
with a strong touch
have to become defensive
relate to their welfare."
Whether
or not
to:
I'm not sure
want
I
and hang out and get
fat
just love
retreats in the
I
have/would want
to hibernate in the
lay
around and be pinched by
and laugh
all
the time, even
and
if
my man
the
38 .
.
second stage and takes
at the "militants."
it,
summer
the winter and nurse babies
in
and
sun don't shine
She
poet
take long bus rides and cop sunsets
for the soul
and
revolutionaries
she be the "militant gone mild"? 37
OBAC
they approve, she has the need
and
will
street corners during the sixties,
reply: "i love
—the
they label her a traitor? Will "their eyes accuse me,
Carolyn Rodgers, the
.
antirevolutionary to flaunt her womanli-
things? Will her colleagues
deny me?" To them,
and read on and
life
right. 36
of the questions that Rodgers struggles with in the last stage, partic-
ularly in the last
And
her
calls
afraid
love of her
and he
Some
is
blow her mind with the wild wind
fear
In
a
"The Revolution
long look at the revolution Is
Resting," she sets up a
dialogue between two street observers, Joe and Little Willie.
They
are
405
Carolyn Rodgers trying to decide
whether the revolution
dead, that "folks done stomped listens
and
jest resting."
39
She
so
it
and concludes, "my man
.
.
almost buried
its
in
also assesses the reactionary
and measures that against the
folks."
The poem "And When
it is
the dirt." Joe
the revolution ain't dead,
.
tants"
own movement from
dead. Little Willie believes
is
tired
its
tendency of the "mili-
foundation of the "church
solid
Came" is symbolic of her The "church folks" look on
the Revolution
the street to the church.
the revolution
in
review and recall the various changes that the "mili-
tants"
wanted
to
make. They remember being called "church-going nig-
gers,"
and having
remember being scorned
member
for celebrating
Christmas and Easter. They
re-
being asked to give up eating "chitterlings" and other forms of
They remember
pork.
reduced to "white man's religion." They
their values
all
the ridicule, and
are resting, the "church folks,"
who
now
that the "revolutionaries"
never stopped "gittin on they knees
and praying," who had been "calling each other
and brother
sister
a
long
time," extend an invitation to the "militants": 40
now why don't you militants jest come on we been waiting for you we can show you how to build
in
anything that needs building
and while we are on our knees, It is
ment
a fact that
Carolyn Rodgers
is
at that. 41
a product of the Black Arts
Move-
of the sixties. All signs point to her as an exemplar of the "revolu-
tionary poet."
Theme and
language was their major trademark.
The
use of
obscenities and Black speech patterns was a very brave act indeed, especially for
the female
restrictive English
women
artists.
But
it
represented a total rebellion against the
language as well as a defiance against their restrictive
modes. And, of course,
it
were communicating on the same
Some were
issue of language. Professor to
my knowledge
not capable of expressing the people obscenities
.
.
the tradition
.
.
least
(in
with the
common
Black person.
.
critic
Black Poetry, has addressed the states:
has demonstrated that the language of the streets
that a poet needs to say, especially is
if
he
is
is
talking to
not limited to hip phrases and monosyllabic
Aside from elegance of gesture, there
is
frankness, bluntness of language, obscenity
...
the opposite aspect of
—
a
kind of verbalized
use
it
with great virtuosity
the case of Carolyn Rodgers) a certain charm,
it
remains perhaps the
social dissonance.
and even
all
New
Henderson
street language
.
— —
level
obvious than others. Stephen Henderson, literary
less
and author of Understanding the
... no one
gave them greater assurance that they
Despite the fact that the poets
understood aspect of the tradition. 42
BLACK
406 In the
meantime,
WOMEN WRITERS
(
9
1
-
5
1
9 8
)
an attempt to "give direction to that body of Black
in
poetry that exists" 43 during the
sixties,
Rodgers of being inconsistent
her use of language.
in
Haki Madhubuti accuses Carolyn
He
alludes especially
and conventional language often strengthens his claim by quoting from Dudley
to the fact that she mixes Black speech
He
within the same poem.
Randall's review of Songs of a Black Bird: attention to give to a poem, and
he has that
iar spellings,
much
not achieved by mispellings.
During the
first
if
less
he
is
"The
Of
much
attention for the poem. Originality
is
." 44 .
.
period (baptism), Rodgers
her use of language.
reader has only so
distracted or puzzled by unfamil-
this assessment,
is
consistently inconsistent in
Madhubuti
is
correct. In
"Now
Let's Be Real," she uses "yr" and "yo" interchangeably for "your." In
"Unfunny Situation," in the same volume, she is totally conventional. 45 In "Poems for Malcolm," she is incongruous in her use of "a" and "uh"; therefore in one section of the poem one sees, "I want a poem that don't want uh love poem." 46 Consistency notwithstanding, she was not committed to an effectual transferral of Black
be cryin," and yet another, street talk to written
"I
form on any
that of the ministerial tradition.
Stephen Henderson regards nity." 47
And
perhaps
"revolutionary" ter),
artist.
level.
She
At times, her
failed in her
dialect resembles
attempt to effect what
commu-
as "the living speech of the Black
this flaw
Her use
was Rodgers' greatest weakness
as a novice
of obscenities (and often her subject mat-
lends another dimension to this problem: she was a Black
writing and Black
women
woman
are forbidden to use dirty words, at least pub-
Madhubuti admonished and praised her with the same stroke of the Bird. "There is growth" in the Hoyt W. Fuller poem, he admitted, "and this is one of the few poems in her new book that we take seriously. ... It is a hell of a tribute to a man." 48 She used the term "muthafucka" often and unashamedly and this bold gesture sparked some strong colleagual criticism. This may have contriblicly.
pen about Black
uted to the rumors to which David Llorens alludes
He
Black Bird.
'bad mouth' on her,
more
in his
introduction to
"Some 'revolutionary' brothers had put the and had run down something as old as and far
informs
us:
.
insidious than 'nigger bitches ain't shit." 49 In a cynical
.
.
and humor-
ous manner, she responded to what obviously was serious condemnation: they say, that
i
should not use the word
muthafucka anymo in
my
as the i
poetry or any speech
i
new Black womanhood
give
.
.
.
suggest a softer self
say,
that
i
only
call
muthafuckers, muthafuckers
.
.
.
407
Carolyn Rodgers and
all
manner
of wites, card-carrying
and
all
manner
of Blacks (negroes too) sweet
muthafuckers
muthafuckers, crazy muthafuckers, lowdown muthafuckers
mad and revolutionary muthafuckers know just like do (whether say
cool muthafuckers,
But anyhow you
all
I
or not), there's plenty of
it
MEAN
here trying to do the struggle
none of us can
that
been done
While
this
and we
all
know
relax until the last m.f.'s
50
not an apology,
is
it
is
a retreat.
the second stage of her writing.
absent from gruity
in.
in
I
muthafuckers out
and cynicism that characterize the
chain of personal judgments
period are links in Rodgers'
first
—her attempt
and with the Black Arts Movement
The term "muthafucker" is The ribald outcry, the inconcome
to
as a whole.
to grips with "self"
Everybody was
in a hurry.
Many
mistakes were made. Commercial publishing houses hired Black
editors
and courted the Black writer because "Blackness" was marketable.
Although the Harlem Renaissance was almost
half a century old, the
new
Black writer was aware of the political and economic plight of the 1920s
They knew
Black writer.
wanted
to
that their
successful writer. Nonetheless, as is
own time was
limited and they
be published. Carolyn Rodgers wanted to be is
evident, she
guilty of not taking her craft seriously.
And
a prolific
made some
blunders; she
she operated
in a rather
naive declamatory manner. She obviously needed the stimulus of to help dispel her psychological frailty artistic potential.
And,
as
and
the second stage, where she begins to treat her craft fact, in
more
is
seen in
earnestly. In
her verse undergoes serious modification. Over and over, the poetry
the
last
two volumes
thematic flow, a
and
OBAC
to assist her in realizing her
expected, a more developed talent
is
all
and
intuitive.
poet's
new
is
realistic
colored with an intensity, an artistic sincerity, a
depiction of Black
Her imagery
is
sharp.
While
it
life is
which
is
overwhelming
impossible to separate the
attitude toward religion from her attitude toward revolution
(the one seems to have evoked the other), they have converged to assist
her
in
her continuous search for "self." She writes with a keen-witted
observation and similitude in the description of the "church folks." Certainly, there
was never
a
gap between the world of Rodgers' vision which
she glorifies and the authentic Black community. She simply lacked under-
standing of some of
its
components
shows growth and strength and sophistication.
It is difficult
lation," the last earlier
poem
showed such
in
little
a
at the
with a
new poetry new level of
know
that "Trans-
beginning. Her
higher level of
clarity,
to believe, but refreshing to
Ever Green, was written by the same poet respect for language:
who
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
408
I
(
1
9
-
5
1
9 8
)
say,
we
will live.
no death
a
is
singular unregenerating
event. 51 It is
ments
impossible to assess the actual merit of Carolyn Rodgers' achieve-
And
at this point.
She has changed from
it
where she
difficult to see
is
but
a rebel to a religious loyalist,
of a peculiarly different state
was present from the
start.
Her
of her poetry reflect this evolutionary process.
will
go from here.
a religious loyalist
The
five
volumes
frantic search for love,
the constant battle with her mother, the ambiguity about religion, are
As
factors that run wild in her soul.
Black
a
woman,
victimized on at least
three levels, living in a world where praiseworthy models are few and far
between, the irony of Carolyn Rodgers' poetry
predictable: she contin-
is
ues to measure her soul by the ''tape of a world that looks on in contempt
and is
pity,"
and she continues
to struggle with the "true terror
within, the mutilation of the spirit
and body." 52 She
is,
.
.
[that]
.
at least, ap-
proaching a level of understanding: the fact that
i
is
went through
i
if
more
don't hate any body any
my mean
you remember
out nails
spit
i
period
chewed tobacco on paper and dipped some bad snuff i
.
.
.
woke up one morning
and looked
at
my
i
saw more than
i
saw
a
self
.
.
a "sister"
.
.
.
.
woman, human.
and black
53 .
.
NOTES 1.
Don
2.
Carolyn Rodgers,
L. Lee,
Dynamite Voices (Chicago: Broadside
"Now
Ain't
Press, 1971), p. 13.
That Love," Paper Soul (Chicago: Broadside
Press, 1968). 3.
Ibid., Introduction.
4.
This description of Carolyn Rodgers'
writer during a telephone interview with his
death
held at
(May
1982).
The
OB AC
pre-OBAC
Hoyt
state
was shared with
Fuller, editor of First
function where Fuller
first
published by Fuller
in
this
prior to
met Rodgers was
the old Southerland Hotel on Chicago's South Side. Her
Black World.
World
first
writing was
Carolyn Rodgers
409
Carolyn Rodgers, Songs of a Black Bird (Chicago: Third World Press, 1969),
5.
p. 30.
Rodgers, Paper Soul, Introduction.
6.
Name
"You
Ibid.,
7.
It."
My Love (New York: Random
8.
Toni Cade Bambara,
9.
Rodgers, Songs of a Black Bird,
Gorilla,
House, 1972),
p. ix.
p. 9.
10. Ibid., p. 9. 11. Ibid.,
9.
12. Ibid.,
9.
13. Ibid.,
1.
14. Ibid.,
2.
Ibid.,
5.
Ibid.,
5.
Ibid.,
0.
Ibid.,
3.
Ibid.,
2.
Ib.d.,
1.
Ibid.,
0.
Paper Soul, "Written
25.
Ibid.,
"Testimony."
Ibid.,
"Eulogy."
Carolyn Rodgers,
day, 1976),
for
Love
of an Ascension-Coltrane."
How I Got Ovah
(Garden City, N.Y.: Anchor Press/Double-
62.
p.
Foreword.
26. Ibid.,
27. Ibid., Author's Note.
28. Ibid., p.
1.
"Now
That Love."
29.
Paper Soul,
30.
Songs of a Black Bird,
31.
Carolyn Rodgers, The Heart as Ever Green (Garden City, NY.: Anchor Press/
Doubleday, 1978), 32.
How
I
p.
Got Ovah,
Ain't
p. 21.
19. p.
45
33. Ibid., p. 56.
47-48.
34. Ibid., pp.
35
Ibid., p. 63.
36. Ibid
,
p.
73.
37.
The Heart as Ever Green,
38.
How
1
Got Ovah,
39. Ibid., p
2.
40. Ibid., p.
67
p.
p.
36.
36.
41
Ib.d, p 67.
42.
Stephen Henderson, Understanding the
Morrow, 1973), p 41 43. Lee, p. 12
44
Ibid., p.
45.
Songs of a Black
59 Bird, pp. 18
and
26.
New Black
Poetry
(New
York: William
BLACK
410 46.
Paper Soul, "Poems
47.
Henderson,
for
WOMEN WRITERS
(
1950—1980)
Malcolm."
p. 32.
48. Lee, pp. 59-60.
49. Songs of a Black Bird, p. 8. 50. Ibid., pp. 38-39.
The Heart as Ever Green, p. 82. Ayana Johnson, a colleague and confidante, conclusions. She is currently completing a Ph.D. 51. 52.
ton. 53.
HowIGotOvah,
p.
53.
assisted
me
dissertation
in
developing these
on Zora Neale Hurs-
Carolyn Marie Rodgers Born Chicago,
personal:
Illinois,
Rodgers. Attended University of
career: Poet:
and
YMCA
social worker,
B.A., Roosevelt University.
1962-66; Columbia College, writer
1968-69; University of Washington, writer
lecturer,
summer
daughter of Clarence and Bazella
Illinois;
1970; poet in residence,
Malcolm
in residence,
X Community
College,
1972; visiting writer in residence under National Foundation on the Arts and Humanities, Albany State College, 1972; Indiana University,
Bloomington, summer 1973. writing: Paper Soul, Third World, 1968; 2 Love Raps, Third World, 1969; Songs of a Black Bird, Third
World
Press,
1969.
How
I
Got
Ovah, Anchor, 1976; The Heart As Ever Green, Anchor, 1978, Translation,
Eden
Press, 1980; (broadsides) Broadside
No. 44, 1971; Broadside No. dren of Their Sin, a
No. 37, 1970; Broadside
50, 1971 Broadside. In progress:
new volume
The Chil-
of poetry; Sanctified, Sassy.
periodicals: Black World; Chicago Daily News; Colloquy magazine; Ebony; Essence; Focus on Youth; journal of Black Poetry;
Milwaukee CouThe Nation; Negro Digest; The Black Scholar. anthologized in: The Black Poets, Randall; Black Arts, Ahmed, et. al, rier;
Brothers and Sisters, Adoff; Exploring Life Through LiteraGeography of Poets; Jump Bad, Brooks; Natural Process, Wilentz and Weatherly; New Negro Poets: The Poetry of Black America,
Black ture,
Sister;
A
Adoff;
Open
Sheftall;
Poetry,
To
Bell,
Parker,
with Love, Johnson; Understanding the
Henderson;
awards/honors: The National
Sturdy Black Bridges,
Poetry:
Gwen
We
Black
Speak as Liberators, Coombs.
first
Endowment
and Guy-
New
Conrad Kent Rivers Writing Award, 1969; Award, 1970; Society of Midland
for the Arts
Authors, Poet Laureate Award, 1970. P.E.N. Awards.
miscellaneous: Membership: Organization of Black American Culture. mailing address: 11029 South Vernon, Chicago, IL 60628
Son/a Sanchez
Ruminations/ Reflections
SONIA SANCHEZ .
.
I see myself helping to bring forth the truth about the world. I cannot
.
tell
the truth about anything unless I confess to being a student, growing
and learning something new
every day.
in the
The
my
needs/aspiration of
poet
is
a
is
Through
.
The
ego
wash
to
poet then, even though he/she
the collective subconscious of a peo-
in
new
manipulation, he/she creates
this
my
my
had
I
.
manipulator of symbols and language images which
have been planted by experience ple.
.
people.
a creator of social values.
speaks plainly,
I learn, the clearer
The more
view of the world becomes. To gain that clarity
mean-
or intensified
ing and experience, whether to the benefit or the detriment of his/her
audience.
Thus poetry
is
subconscious conversation,
a
work of those who understand
The power
it
and those who make
it
is
as
much
the
it.
that the poet has to create, preserve, or destroy social values
depends greatly on the quality of his/her
social visibility
and the function-
ary opportunity available to poetry to impact lives.
Like the priest and the prophet, with
mous, the poet in
some
in
societies has
had
whom
he/she was often synony-
infinite
powers to interpret
drowned out by the winds
others his/her voice has been
of
life;
mundane
pursuits.
Art no matter what
its
intention reacts to or reflects the culture
it
springs from. But from the very beginning two types of poetry developed.
One
can be called the poetry of ethos because
was meant to convey
it
from
personal experience, feelings of love, despair, joy, frustration arising
very private encounter, the other functionary poetry dealt with themes in
the social domain, religion, riage,
and death
To answer I
write to
in
the question of
tell
part of the truth is
happening,
it
how
1
write,
woman's view
itself.
a partial
lie.
must be
understand the
mar-
social institutions, war,
we must
look also to
the truth about the Black condition as
write to offer a Black
clouded
God, country,
the distinct context of that society's perception.
lie/lies
I've
How
see 1
it.
tell
why
I
write.
Therefore
the truth
is
1
a
always believed that the truth concealed or
So when clear
of the world.
1
1
decide to
tell
the truth about an event/
and understandable
being told
What
1
for those
learned
in
who need
to
"how"
to
deciding
WOMEN WRITERS
BLACK
416
(1950-1980)
write was simply that most folks tend to think that you're lying or jiving
them
you have to spice things up
if
just to get a
along with a number of other Black poets to
point across.
we
using the language, dialect, idioms, of the folks
I
decided
the truth in poetry by
tell
believed our audience
to be.
The most fundamental are concerned,
that
is
love and struggle
and magnify
truth to be told in any art form, as far as Blacks
America
and win.
I
killing us.
is
But we continue to
draw on any experience or image
this truth for those
who must
live
and
to clarify
ultimately be about changing
the world; not for critics or librarians. Poetry's oldest formal ties were with religion. Humanity's tions,
first civiliza-
must be remembered, were theocratic and therefore
it
Thus were the ancient Black
inspired.
mia, the Indus River, and
civilizations of the Nile,
Meso-Am erica,
which
societies in
religiously
Mesopota-
religion as a
prime force that motivated human
social vector, not as ritual, exerted a
action consciously and unconsciously. Biblical scholars
Quran
were poets. Marx was
network or system of thought. But contribute to the values of that age.
we a
write
a poet.
Mao
was
a poet.
The
poetically written. Black people lack such a centralized value
is
this allows the poets of I
each age to
believe that the age for which
still
the age evolving out of the dregs of the twentieth century into
is
more humane
dual purpose.
Therefore
age.
must be
It
I
recognize that
my
writing must serve a
a clarion call to the values of
change while
it
also
speaks to the beauty of a nonexploitative age.
within this dual purpose that
It is
For example,
chant
I
in
history of Black chanters inspires action
many
of
my
many
of us see the Black aesthetic.
poems. That chanting
and simultaneously has the and harmony. In one
calls
my
chants:
it
Sonji
at a point of desperation or insanity or pretty close to
is
means can
sit
that she in a
is
of
up the
historical effect of old plays, Sister Sonji, it
—which
crying out in the night and no one listens or hears. She
rocking chair and sing a spiritual or she can chant the way
Sister Sonji does
when she knows she
is
almost gone or she
is
close to
As she moves toward the deep end, she chants something that is ancient and religious. She chants her prayer. Her life. Her present. Her past. Her future. And a breath force comes back into her and with this insanity.
chanting and on her knees she In Sister Sonji
and
A
with the concept of time.
reborn.
If
I
can give you a Black
woman who
I
play
is
old,
young, mature, and then old again, then I've dealt with time on
then
is
some
level.
sal.
is
Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women,
Then
When we
she becomes timeless.
And we become
understand the past and present
in
timeless. Univer-
order to see our future.
417
Sonia Sanchez
Therefore to see Sonji evolve into
no bitterness
(time), with an understanding that
will
you
is
if
lost to
war
night (time); then to say can you or
it
And
audience to be timeless.
you
will
you be about constant work and change. Black people
will
a cry, a challenge to the
be timeless
of hope, with
still full
she can say to the audience we dared
if
up the day (time) and make
to pick
woman
this old
terms of the children and the husband she has
in
have no beginning or end
each generation does the job
if
must do
it
to
change the world.
Or in some poems glorify the work or struggle of a sister struggles Our poetic history needs to grow in this area, just as our consciousness needs to understand how to appreciate women as beautiful human beings. attempt to show a In A Blues Book for Blue Black Magical Women, I
I
Black
woman
moving/loving/living
A
movement.
that
Book
America and the consequences
in
"mountaintop" poem. George Kent
says that Blues
"possesses an extraordinary culmination of spiritual and poetic powpart an exhortation to
ers. It is in
move
the rhythms of black
peak through deep and deeper self-possession;
life
in part, a spiritual
to a high
autobiog-
was made me rethink/remember what Melham in an interview, "Yes. It's true. I mountain to get to that poem. And when got
raphy." Kent said things that
doing
at that time.
told
I
I
D. H.
was constantly climbing a there,
I
two things could have happened.
could have said, 'Goody-goody-
I
goody. I'm here. Look at the rest of you, you aren't.' However, after there,
what
of
I
I
was
looked up and saw another mountaintop, and then you realize really all
it's
many
about on
But whatever the area or the the truth about the world.
I
levels."
issue,
cannot
see myself helping to bring forth
I
the truth about anything unless
tell
I
new every The more learn, the clearer my view of the world becomes. To gain clarity, my first lesson was that one's ego always compromised how
confess to being a student, growing and learning something day.
that
I
something was viewed.
my
oppression.
I
tions write,
because sion
not
my work
values in I
is
tell
difficult.
ego
in
the needs/aspiration of
write.
I
Many
reflect the values
I
and exploitation, bring
That
my
is
I
will
must work
many
contradic-
of us learned that to continue to
the truth and live a live
lie at
the same time. So the
by and work
for. is
1
keep writing
free of oppres-
not be free to write as one who's not oppressed
the goal. That
thoughts on
is
the struggle and the dream.
how and why
terms, the real nuts and bolts, I
my
wash
realize that until Black people's social reality
or exploited.
To
to
key for conveying the need to end greed and
such a complex industrial age, with so
in
and confusions,
we could
is
achieve this state as
try to
Writing today
had
I
people. Selflessness
a full-time job.
I'll
tell
Take
you
I
write on
how
all
down
to elemental
of this gets done.
care of a house and family. Referee or
BLACK
418 umpire
at Little
WOMEN WRITERS
(1950-1980)
League games. Travel. Carry books when I travel. Work illnesses and injuries. Help build the political organs
some more. Deal with
within the Black community.
Work on
the
car.
Run
for trains
and
planes.
Then, late at night, just before the routine begins write and I smile as the words come drifting back like write. again, write columns for newspapers, poems, plays, and some reverent lover. stories in those few choice hours before I sleep. Find or create breaks. I
I
I
And
they say leisure
is
the basis of culture.
Sonia Sanchez:
The Bringer
MADHUBUTI
HAKI There
are few writers alive
teaches and celebrates
life,
who have even at
does this and more throughout her
Memories
of
created a body of work that both
moments. Sonia Sanchez
darkest
its
many volumes
of poetry, short stories,
and children's books. She is prolific and sharp-eyed. Her telescopic view of the world is seldom light, frivolous, or fraudulent. She is serious, serious to the point of pain and redemption. Her bottom line is this: she wants Black people to grow and develop so that we can move toward plays,
determining our own destiny. She wants us not only to be responsible for our actions but to take responsible actions. This
the task she has set for
is
and indeed she believes that what she can do others can
herself,
do.
Her work is magic. Her scope and more often than not her analytical mind bring clarity and simplicity to the complicated. The brevity in her poetry has become her trademark: if
i
i
had known,
if
had known you,
left
my
love at
i
would have
home.
poet (and woman) of few but strong and decisive words. Her sometime be controversial; nevertheless, it is her vision. With a vision may sharing heart and mind, she is constantly seeking the perfect, always striv-
She
is
a
ing with an enduring passion toward an unattainable completeness.
Sanchez
is
best
marks, but she
known
for her poetry, to
which
also a first-rate playwright
is
dren's writer and she has
made
a serious
I
will
confine
my
and an accomplished
re-
chil-
contribution to short fiction. She
has written essays, but few have been published. Not as well
known
as
Toni Morrison, Ntozakc Shange, Alice Walker, or Nikki Giovanni, she has outproduced each of them and has been active
The major
in
her chosen craft longer.
reason that she does not have the national celebrity that her
work and seriousness demand Haki R. Madhubliti (formerly
Don
is
L
that she does not Lev)
is
compromise her
values,
currently director of the Institute of Positive
Education and editor of Third World Press, Chicago The author of eleven b(X)ks of poetry, criticism,
and
essays,
recent publication
volume
in a
is
decade.
he
is
a
popular lecturer and the recipient of numerous