How I Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature   This first comprehensive collection of Margaret Walker's autobiographical and literary essays has been acclaimed as "a powerful social history and as a serious study of black American literature."- Kirkus Review In the title essay, Walker recounts the search for family and social history from which she wrote her carefully researched novel of the Civil War. The autobiographical essays reflect on her work and her life as an artist, as African-American, and a woman, while the literary essays examine the writings of such giants as Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Phyllis Wheatley, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others. "Spanning a half-century (1943to 1988), these brilliant, intimate writings capture the flavor of the times and powerfully convey the social and literary thoughts that distinguishes Walker as one of the intellectual beacons of her generation."- Booklist |
Contents
Growing Out of Shadow | 3 |
How I Told My Child about Race | 10 |
Willing to Pay the Price | 15 |
Black Women in Academia | 26 |
Richard Wright | 33 |
How I Wrote Jubilee | 50 |
A Literary Legacy from Dunbar to Baraka | 69 |
The Education of a Seminal Mind W E B Du Bois | 84 |
Rediscovering Black Women Writers in the Mecca of the New Negro | 91 |
New Poets of the Forties and the Optimism of the Age | 102 |
Some Aspects of the Black Aesthetic | 114 |
The Humanistic Tradition of Afro American Literature | 121 |
A Brief Introduction to Southern Literature | 134 |
Faulkner and Race | 143 |
Acknowledgments | 155 |
Common terms and phrases
African Afro-American literature American literature Anthology Baldwin Baraka began believe Black aesthetic Black American Black Women Black writers century characters Chicago Civil colored creative culture Dilsey edited essays father Faulkner fiction Frank Marshall Davis Georgia going Gwendolyn Brooks Harlem Renaissance Harper human humanistic Hurston imagination Iowa Jackson James Weldon Johnson Jubilee knew Langston Hughes language literary living magazine Margaret Walker Mississippi mother myth Negro never nigger Northwestern novel Orleans Owen Dodson Paul Laurence Dunbar philosophy plantation play poems poetry poets political published race racial racism religious Reprinted by permission Richard Wright Robert Hayden segregation slave slavery social protest society songs South southern literature spiritual Sterling Brown teacher teaching tell things tion tradition understanding University volume W. E. B. Du Bois wanted white America white writers woman Women Writers written wrote York