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Margaret
Walker forged her own path as an African American writer
Editor Maryemma Graham is clear about what excited her in
collecting the interviews of African American poet, novelist,
and essayist Margaret Walker.
"Margaret Walker created and lived by her own
standards," Graham writes in her new book,
Conversations
with Margaret Walker. "Her passion came from her insatiable
curiosity, a belief in Christian humanism, a hatred for
irreverence, and an uncompromising commitment to social
justice."
Walker (1915-1998) began her writing career as a poet in the
late 1930s. But she was cast into the limelight in 1966 when her
novel Jubilee was published to wide critical and commercial
acclaim.
In interviews ranging from 1972 to 1996,
Conversations
with Margaret Walker captures Walker's voice as she discusses an
incredibly wide range of interests. The same erudition, wit, and
love of language on display in the gargantuan novel, Jubilee,
comes through in conversations as well as her sense of moral
authority.
Walker was fiercely independent when it came to her love of
her home state. "Her geographic loyalty to the South in
general and Mississippi in particular kept at least some of her
critics at bay, believing her to be slightly crazy," Graham
writes.
In a long 1972 conversation with fellow poet Nikki Giovanni,
Walker argues about the tribulations and triumphs of motherhood,
the presence of black women in literature, and race relations in
America. With Marcia Greenlee in 1977, she talks extensively
about her family's history and her love of botany. In several of
the interviews, her friendship with Richard Wright rises to the
forefront. Even in her interviews with Claudia Tate and John
Griffin Jones, in which the interviewers try to direct the
conversations toward the mechanics and thought processes behind
Walker's writing, the talks often sweep into broader issues of
African American culture, family history, and the past's
influence on the present.
University Press of Mississippi /
$46.00, hardback, ISBN 1-57806-511-9
/ $18.00, paperback, ISBN 1-57806-512-7
* * * *
*
Other scholarly work on Margaret Walker:
Maryemma
Graham.
Conversations
with Margaret Walker (2002)
Maryemma
Graham.
Fields Watered with Blood: Critical Essays on
Margaret Walker (Georgia, 2001).
Maryemma
Graham.
How I Wrote
Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature by Margaret
Walker (1990).
Maryemma
Graham.
On Being Female, Black and Free:
Essays by Margaret Walker, 1932-1992 (1997). * * * * *
update 21 June 2008 |
