Threading the needle between Black women authors

By Alexis Shoats

As women, we often have to forge our paths and the best testament to know where we can go is to evaluate our past. Reflecting on our cultural history gives us a great deal of insight. History is told through so many different lenses, and as we all know when it comes to black people, it has unfortunately been rewritten time and time again. As a result this watered-down and keeps future generations from knowing how rich black history truly is. However, because the writing is already available it is our continued responsibility to shed light on these authors. For this issue, those authors are black women. Black female authors have always documented the perils and placed a mirror up to society through their writing. We can trace our country’s progressions and downfalls through writing. We can also learn black women’s opinions on traditional femininity, masculinity, relationships, friendships, class, race, and the list goes on. Black women are not a monolith and will always have something to contribute to the ongoing progression of this world. 

We saw it with Zora Neale Hurston when she refused to adapt to the New Negro Agenda during the Harlem Renaissance.  She took pride in being a black woman from the South and disagreed with the current agenda of shedding one’s former life to get ahead as a race. So she continued to write about the progress she wanted to see and the questions she wanted readers to ponder. During this time she also aligned herself with like-minded individuals such as Langston Hughes. Who was also criticized for painting black people “unattractively” in light of this new agenda. Both artists were unapologetically proud of all the facets of being Black, and they encouraged others to embrace their heritage instead of conforming to an elite agenda. 

Due to the Harlem Renaissance and the first wave of the Great Migration, our minds immediately wander to the giants we are familiar with. However, during the second wave of the great migration in Chicago, a young black woman named Gwendolyn Brooks was also releasing work. Originally from Kansas, but raised on the southside of Chicago, Gwendolyn Brooks began publishing her poetry with the support of her parents. At the age of 17, she was already publishing her poems in the Chicago Defender. To paint a picture of the time the United States was engrossed in the Second World War, and the black population in Chicago nearly tripled. Her acclaimed work “A Street in Bronzeville” chronicles her own experiences and observations of African Americans' racial treatment. A few years later she followed up and published a collection of poems titled “ Annie Allen” about a black girl going through girlhood and growing into a woman during World War 1. It is the tale of self-identity, love, and motherhood. This collection won Gwendolyn Brooks a Pulitzer Prize in Poetry, making her the first African American to win a Pulitzer Prize. 

She would continue to find success and advocate for black writers and publishers. Brooks rise to the top coincided with the Chicago Black Renaissance Movement. Similar to the Harlem Renaissance, the Chicago Renaissance was a creative movement that brought about some of the most prominent literary writers, artists, and the growth of jazz, blues, and gospel music in the community that was titled “Black Belt.” (which is present-day the southside of Chicago). It was during this time that Lorraine Hansberry began writing A Raisin in the Sun based on her experiences during this time. Although this is her most known piece of work, Hansberry commented on a range of issues. From global issues to speaking out against homophobia and embracing her own lesbianism (which was discovered after her death through various letters). Lorraine Hansberry was at a pinnacle moment in her career but her voice was also important to the ongoing fight for equality. 

History has a funny way of overlapping, Dr. Maya Angelou also began to discover her own voice during this timeframe and joined the Harlem Writers Guild due to the urging of her friend and novelist John Oliver Killens. Angelou had a very eclectic spirit and a fighter attitude. By this time she was already a mother and had worked various jobs prior while living in San Francisco. During this time she befriended other writers who would also go on to become prominent writers such as James Baldwin who was also a member of the guild. It was during this time that she heard a speech by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and decided to join the Civil Rights Movement full-time. Her work with Dr. King and SLSC took her to Africa, where she became the editor of African Review. Angelou also taught at the University of Ghana’s School of Music and Drama. Many may not know that Dr. Maya Angelou had a deep love and affinity for dance. Earlier in her career she traveled through San Francisco as a duo with Alvin Ailey, and she also traveled across Europe in Porgy and Bess. She would continue to reference dance in various metaphors in her writing.

Upon returning to America, at the encouragement of Baldwin and Robert Loomis, an editor at Random House at the time, she began writing I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. After this success Angelou wrote 5 more autobiographical novels, and her words would go beyond just the ears of those in the United States. During this exact time in history, Toni Morrison, a black mother of two boys, worked in publishing also at Random House in New York. Prior to her career as an author, she was the first black woman editor at the publishing house. She prioritized pushing black fiction to the forefront of bookstores, and while working at the company she worked diligently on her first novel Bluest Eye. She published her first novel at age thirty-nine. Years older than her counterparts but nonetheless right on time, and a timeless piece it is.

Morrison continued to explore themes of belonging, embracing one’s blackness and identity, class and gender, as well as history and folklore. These themes were not always welcomed during this timeframe, in fact, Bluest Eye received a significant amount of backlash and continues to be challenged by book bans. However, Morrison kept writing because black people's stories deserved to be told. In The Pieces I Am documentary she spoke about the urge to write about the black people in Shakespeare's plays but her professor was outraged at the thought of it.

Similar to Morrison, Audre Lorde also wrote to show the human side of blackness. Through her writing, she wrote about cancer, feminism, LGBT equality, motherhood, and being a black queer woman. Much of her work intersected, and through her poems, she pushed for others to see this as well. Through The Cancer Journals, Lorde gets extremely intimate with the reader and details her own experience navigating life with cancer as well as how it affected her identity. She described that although the ACA (American Cancer Association) intentions were meant to be positive, pushing breast prosthesis post-mastectomy has a negative connotation and she refused to do so. Her reason was that this idea defers back to a woman who is not whole if she has one breast. This form of feminism was just one of the many Lorde pushed back and spoke out against during this second wave of feminism.

In addition to Lorde’s outlook, black women are no strangers to not fitting the status quo. Due to societal roles that have been firmly etched into our hierarchy, black women have always been expected to be home care workers or to have subservient jobs. Octavia Butler’s mother encouraged Octavia to get a secretary job after obtaining her degree. She wanted her daughter to have a stable career with a steady income. Octavia couldn’t do it, she pushed forward working odd jobs so that she would have more time to focus on her stories. 

Octavia Butler’s genre of choice was Science Fiction. You can imagine how many black women’s stories in this genre at the time were being published. Butler was rejected countless times and it was during this period that she took two writing workshops. She captured the attention of writer Harlan Ellison and sold her first story Childfinder to him. She also met Sci-Fi giant himself, Samuel Delaney who became a longtime friend and whose work is another example of black writers across genres. After these writing workshops, Butler spent the next five years writing and publishing her Patternist series. It was after this series she was able to live off of her writer’s income. Butler would go on to continue to find success through stories such as her standalone Kindred and the Parable series. The themes in many of these novels served as a metaphor and covered issues of racism, misogyny, class, and gender. During a conversation with Delaney, when asked why Science Fiction, Butler answers “To me, the attraction of science fiction is just the freedom that there isn’t anything I can’t do in it. There isn’t any issue I can’t address.”  

"It is the endless possibility and escapism that birthed out Afro-Futurism.

Butler’s work is not only a staple but a beacon to study when it comes to African

Americans' ideas of space, time, and the future. "

Afro-Futurism was first coined by Mark Dery in the 1990s, but as we know it has existed since the dawn of Modern Science. Model Donyale Luna used to say she was from the stars. Artist Sun Ra has stated he’s been to Saturn and upon returning he decided music was needed to heal people and transcend oppression. Afro-Futurism for many is a way to have control over one's own story, to feel liberated, and to root racism as well as oppression out. Nikki Giovanni’s poem Quilted the Black Eyed Peas (We’re Going to Mars) is another great example of an artist specifically leaning into this. One of my favorite stanzas from the poem is “We’re going to Mars because it gives us a reason to change. If Mars came here it would be ugly. Nations would band together to hunt down and kill the Martians.” She goes on to compare the cruel treatment of slavery and the Fugitive Slave Law for those who sympathized with the Martians. Towards the end of the poem after explaining why Earth is not safe and Mars is the best fresh start. She states that Black Americans are the only people who will understand this journey. She then begins to explain the middle passage and gives suggestions on items to bring during this long journey to an unknown world. 

Giovanni’s work has always struck a chord with audiences, even early on in her undergraduate years at Fisk. While she was at Fisk she wrote for an on-campus literary journal and published an essay in the Negro Digest. Fisk, like a lot of HBCUs, served as a nurturing launchpad for the young writer. 

Although she would graduate from Sarah Lawrence, Spelman would also serve as a place where two of Alice Walker’s professors would serve as mentors. Upon their dismal, she followed them to Sarah Lawrence. Walker soon returned to the South to serve on the NAACP legal defense team, serve as a writer in residence, and teacher. It was during this time that Walker published her first novel, The Third Life of Grange Copeland. While working as the editor of Ms. Magazine, Walker also published Meridan and her most notable piece of work The Color Purple. Walker has always centered Black women in her novels, coining the term Womanist meaning black feminist. She explains that it is a word of our own to use to intersect the feminist agenda with race and the unique black female experience. Aside from her poetic and transformative writing, Walker has also uplifted other black writers which I think is a key to understanding her. A few years after her death, Walker re-read Zora Neale Hurston’s writing and felt a sense of familiarity with the writer. This appreciation would lead Walker and literary scholar Charlotte D. Hunt to discover the grave of the late writer. She would go on to mark the grave 

“ZORA NEALE HURSTON / A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960”

This act in many ways, shows exactly how to be a womanist. In addition to Walker publishing newer stories, there has been a resurgence in interest in her novels by the upcoming generations. Young adults discovered her writing for the first time via channels such as social media and discussions around book bans in the United States. She isn’t the only writer experiencing this, Bell Hooks All About Love went viral across social platforms last year. Each reader had it on their TBR list. Similar to Walker, Bell Hooks was influenced by the greats that came before her such as Gwendolyn Brooks, Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and even writing her doctoral thesis on Toni Morrison. Born Gloria Jean Watkins in Kentucky, Hooks's writing focused on race and gender, white supremacy, the patriarchy, feminism, and mass media. As a self-proclaimed country girl, she also went on to write about Appalachian Elgy about her time growing up in the Kentucky mountains as well as the folklore and harsh degradation the mountains have suffered. There are no limits to what Ms. Hooks wrote. Much like many of these writers, she understood the interconnectivity of these themes. 

As I stated in the beginning of this article, Black women are not a monolith although society would like you to think otherwise. This article only scratches the surface of a few of our greats, the list and contributions certainly get longer. Black women writers are crucial to history, and I have enjoyed the process over the past few years of discovering and learning more about the known and unsung authors.