Many of us read some great African American women writers in high school. Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Zora Neale Hurston, Lorraine Hansberry. Maybe you also read Sojourner Truth, Maya Angelou, Terry McMillan.
If you grew up around here, you may also have read Nikki Giovanni since she teaches at VT and Rita Dove since she teaches at UVA.
I fell in love with African American women writers, mostly poets, when I was in college. The list of my favorites goes on and on. Some of them have stayed with me because of their haunting images and subject matter.
Wanda Coleman’s poem, Emmett Till, was my first encounter with the true story of Emmett Till. Alice Walker’s Everyday Use is a short story that touched my heart.
Amiri Baraka, Sonia Sanchez, Phillis Wheatley, Toni Cade Bambara, Jamaica Kincaid, Angela Davis, Octavia Butler, Paule Marshall, Gloria Naylor, June Jordan.
bell hooks always makes me think. Her book, We Real Cool: Black Men and Masculinity, harkens to Gwendolyn Brooks’ 1960 poem, We Real Cool. Which, once you hear, will be stuck in your head. Ntozake Shange, wrote the play, For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide When the Rainbow Is Enuf, which Tyler Perry directed a movie version that came out in 2011.
Audre Lorde holds a special place in my heart. She resonated with me long before I knew she was a librarian, a career path I would later take.
Lucille Clifton passed away in 2010. She has many fantastic poems including Homage to My Hips and Wishes for Sons.
Books @ McConnell library:
Afro-American women writers, 1746-1933 : an anthology and critical guide / [edited by] Ann Allen Shockley
Main Collection - Level 3 PS508.N3 A36 1988
| The Norton anthology of African American literature / Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Nellie Y. McKay, general editors Main Collection - Level 3 PS508.N3 N67 1997 |
| Words of fire : an anthology of African-American feminist thought / Beverly Guy-Sheftall ; [with an epilogue by Johnnetta B. Cole] Main Collection - Level 5 E185.86 .W927 1995 |
Great sites:
http://digital.library.upenn.edu/women/_generate/AFRICAN%20AMERICAN.html
"Many of us read some great African American women writers in high school." I hope this is true as it was not in my High School where we read one woman and one African American, who also happened to be one person: Phillis Wheatley. No offense to Ms. Wheatley, of course, but in college, I came to recognize that there were more than a few women and/or people of color who had done an awful lot of good writing in the 200 years since she had died! I hope our high schools are letting students know that these days :-)
ReplyDeleteLooking back, I remember reading "I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou in high school, some Nikki Giovanni poetry. Other than that, a lot of tragic Thomas Hardy. I wonder what current undergrads are coming in having read?
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