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Silences of the Marginal
By Tillie Olsen
Only eleven [black writers] in the hundred
years since 1850 have published novels more than twice.
—Robert
Bone. The Negro Novel in America, 1958
Nineteen fifty was evidently the watershed
year. Since 1960, any single year has seen more than nine novels
by black writers that are their second, third, or fourth books. They are reaping the (hard-won) benefits of
having been born in the more favorable nineteen thirties,
forties, fifties, instead of into their parents' generations.
They grew into a time of rising economic levels (still low, but
for more, above an all-conditioning economic imperative);
shorter work hours; great mass migrations seeking more humane
conditions of life; visible struggle; and, with the fifties, a
resurgence of black consciousness—all
providing a more enabling soil and climate.
Bone did not take into account fiction
privately published, nor did he have the advantage of recent
bibliographies (such as those by Rush, Myers, Arata: Black
American Writers, 1973) which disclose a wealth of writers,
most of them born since 1920—and indicating
eloquently what was silenced in the generations before—(and
their own generation)—("lives that never came to
writing").
These
bibliographies also indicate how vulnerable nearly all
(especially first-generation writers) were to lessenings and
silencings; revealing numbers of poems and stories that never
came to books—and long interims
between works. Marks of all marginal writers.
They
do not, except by inference, reveal "the complex
odds." No one has yet written A Room of One's Own for
writers, other than women, still marginal in literature. Nor do
any bibliographies exist for writers whose origins and
circumstances are marginal. Class remains the greatest
unexamined factor.
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People
ask me how I find time to write with a family and a teaching job.
I don't. That is one reason I was so long with Jubilee. A
writer needs time to write a certain number of hours every day.
This is particularly true with prose fiction and absolutely
necessary with the novel. Writing poetry may be different, but the
novel demands long hours every day at a steady pace until the
thing is done.
It
is humanly impossible for a woman who is a wife and mother to work
on a regular teaching job and write. Weekends and nights and
vacations are all right for reading but not enough for writing.
This is a full-time job, but for me such full attention has only
been possible during three Depression years I was on the Writers'
Project and during that one [graduate] school year in which I
finished Jubilee.—Margaret
Walker, thirty years (1938-1968) from the inception of Jubilee
to its completion: four children and twenty-six years in "the
teaching harness" in that time.
Source: Tillie Olsen. Silences. New York:
Dell, 1978.
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Blacks in Hispanic Literature: Critical Essays
Edited by
Miriam DeCosta-Willis
Blacks in Hispanic Literature is a
collection of fourteen essays by scholars and
creative writers from Africa and the Americas.
Called one of two significant critical works on
Afro-Hispanic literature to appear in the late
1970s, it includes the pioneering studies of
Carter G. Woodson and
Valaurez B. Spratlin, published in the 1930s, as
well as the essays of scholars whose interpretations
were shaped by the Black aesthetic. The early
essays, primarily of the Black-as-subject in Spanish
medieval and Golden Age literature, provide an
historical context for understanding 20th-century
creative works by African-descended, Hispanophone
writers, such as Cuban
Nicolás Guillén and Ecuadorean poet, novelist,
and scholar
Adalberto Ortiz, whose essay analyzes the
significance of Negritude in Latin America. This
collaborative text set the tone for later
conferences in which writers and scholars worked
together to promote, disseminate, and critique the
literature of Spanish-speaking people of African
descent. . . .
Cited by a
literary critic in 2004 as "the seminal study in the
field of Afro-Hispanic Literature . . . on which
most scholars in the field 'cut their teeth'."
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Sister Citizen: Shame, Stereotypes, and Black Women in
America
By Melissa V.
Harris-Perry
According to the
author, this society has historically exerted
considerable pressure on black females to fit into one
of a handful of stereotypes, primarily, the Mammy, the
Matriarch or the Jezebel. The selfless
Mammy’s behavior is marked by a slavish devotion to
white folks’ domestic concerns, often at the expense of
those of her own family’s needs. By contrast, the
relatively-hedonistic Jezebel is a sexually-insatiable
temptress. And the Matriarch is generally thought of as
an emasculating figure who denigrates black men, ala the
characters Sapphire and Aunt Esther on the television
shows Amos and Andy and Sanford and Son, respectively.
Professor Perry
points out how the propagation of these harmful myths
have served the mainstream culture well. For instance,
the Mammy suggests that it is almost second nature for
black females to feel a maternal instinct towards
Caucasian babies.
As for the source
of the Jezebel, black women had no control over their
own bodies during slavery given that they were being
auctioned off and bred to maximize profits. Nonetheless,
it was in the interest of plantation owners to propagate
the lie that sisters were sluts inclined to mate
indiscriminately.
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The White Masters of the
World
From
The World and Africa, 1965
By W. E. B. Du Bois
W. E. B. Du Bois’
Arraignment and Indictment of White Civilization
(Fletcher)
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Ancient African Nations
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Negro Digest /
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The Death of Emmett Till by Bob Dylan
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The Lonesome Death of Hattie Carroll
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Only a Pawn in Their Game
Rev. Jesse Lee Peterson Thanks America for
Slavery /
George Jackson /
Hurricane Carter
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The Journal of Negro History issues at Project Gutenberg
The
Haitian Declaration of Independence 1804
/
January 1, 1804 -- The Founding of
Haiti
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