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1093 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1991
Bemba. Xhosa. Kipsigi. Didinga. Somalia. Kgatla, Botswana. Yao. Sudan. Akan, Ghana. Khoikhoi, South Africa. Dahomey/Benin. Amhara, Ethiopia. ChiChewa and ChiTumbuka, Malawi. Tigray. Ancient Egyptian.Between the day I started Daughters of Africa and today's finishing, I've made around 1350 edits to the Goodreads database based on this work's contents. More often than not, whenever I came across an author who didn't need my efforts, the lack was due to her inclusion in 500 Great Books By Women having already drawn her into my librarying radar. It got to the point that I'd check over those those more frequently thrown around names of Morrison, Kincaid, Larsen and Butler, Walker and Hurston, just to see some evidence of someone other than me walking through these rooms. Presumptuous, I know. A cause less so was the ever burgeoning need for reassurance.
Hatshepsut. Makeda, Queen of Sheba. Lucy Terry. Phillis Wheatley. Old Elizabeth. Mary Prince. Zilpha Elaw. Sojourner Truth. Nancy Gardner PrinceThere will be no lists for the difficult works. There will be no road maps to the unpopular, the buried, the unloved. There will be no white person to tell you the way. You want a direction? Pick out a history and look out for the sole representative, the lonely soul, the only one amidst a sea of the norm. Now commit one thousand pages, days, and lives to them and their people.
Maria W. Stewart. Mary Seacole. Harriet E. Wilson. Mwana Kupona. Harriet Jacobs. Ann Plato. Harriet Tubman. Henrietta Fullor. Frances Ellen Watkins Harper. Lucy Delaney.I would not exist without these black women. My town would not exist without these black women. My country would not exist without these black women, a country that today murders them for parking tickets and claims they have killed themselves, utilizes medicine born on their tortured wombs and unborn children, combats calls for representation with "You weren't there then. You are not there now. Your history is where we say it, and where we do not know we call anathema."
Charlotte Forten Grimké. Bethany Veney. Mattie J. Jackson. Susie King Taylor. Pauline Elizabeth Hopkins. Anna Julia Cooper. Annie L. Burton. Kate Drumgoold. Ida B. Wells-Barnett. Mary Church Terrell. Adelaide Casely-HayfordYesterday, on the anniversary of the magnificent Ida B. Wells-Barnett's birthday, she was featured by a Google Doodle. Goodreads' quote of the day, usually so in tune with the birthdays and the like, offered up one by January born J.D. Salinger. Knowledge, you see, is power.
Alice Dunbar-Nelson. Baba. Angelina Weld Grimké. Jessie Redmon Fauset. Anne Spencer. Elise Johnson McDougald. Georgia Douglas Johnson. Zora Neale Hurston. Nella Larsen.Now come the autobiographies claimed by anthropologists, the first poets included by that steamroller Norton, the ushering in of the Harlem Renaissance and all without a profile to their name. You see the owner of the once unmarked, then rediscovered grave by descendants above? What of the others, is what you should be thinking.
Amy Jacques Garvey. Marita Bonner. Gwendolyn B. Bennett. Gladys May Casely-Hayford. Una Marson. Mabel Dove-Danquah. Pauli Murray. Virginia Brindis de Salas. Ann Petry. Dorothy WestWives of famous men, daughters of Victorian black women, unknown Harlem Renaissance and Uryguan poets. Who is she you are most surprised by, standing on her own two feet?
Carolina Maria de Jesus. Ellen Kuzwayo. Billie Holiday. Claudia Jones. Margaret Walker. Gwendolyn Brooks. Marie Vieux-Chauvet. Caroline Ntseliseng Khaketla. Aída Cartagena Portalatín. Louise Bennett-Coverley. Alice Childress.'The book you are adding may already exist in our database. If it appears below, please use that edition instead of adding a new one.' Ha. I wish.
Nisa. Noni Jabavu. Naomi Long Madgett. Louise Meriwether. Mari Evans. Beryl Gilroy. Efua Sutherland. Rosa Guy. Alda do Espírito Santo. Noémia de Sousa. Annette Mbaye d'Erneville. Maya AngelouTired of all the unfamiliar names? Wondering what's up with the Latin American-looking ones? Welcome to the realities you've had no interest in reading about. Enjoy your stay.
Sylvia Wynter. Mariama Bâ. Citèkù Ndaaya. Paule Marshall. Lorraine Hansberry. Alda Lara. Grace Ogot. Mabel Segun. Charity Waciuma. Lourdes Teodoro. Toni Cade Bambara. Kristin Hunter Lattany. Toni Morrison.What is the publishing date of an oral performance of poetry prepared for an entire life? Are we familiar with this for the sake of progress, or for it progressing in what we consider the right direction? In the year 1992, the year of this compilation, there was no woman of African heritage who had won the Nobel Prize for Literature. What arrogance, then. All this.
Flora Nwapa. Lauretta Ngcobo. Marta Rojas. Alice Perry Johnson. Rebeka Njau. Adaora Lily Ulasi. Miriam Tlali. Marion Patrick Jones. Audre Lorde. Sonia Sanchez. Zulu Sofola. Lucille Clifton.The ancestry begins to call in earnest to the diaspora. Theory burgeons. Names are claimed in an inheritance never to be understand by most of the canon.
Jayne Cortez. Georgina Herrera. June Jordan. Awa Thiam. Maryse Condé. Bessie Head. Velma Pollard. Simone Schwarz-Bart. Erna Brodber. Anne Moody.More 500 GBBW, more countries outside of the US, the first of the NYRB Classics. The latter needs to get on that a hell of a lot more.
Nafissatou Diallo. Zee Edgell. Aminata Sow Fall. Ama Ata Aidoo. Pamela Mordecai. Carolyn M. Rodgers. Pilar López Gonzales. Hattie Gossett. Micere Githae Mugo. Eulalia Bernard. Christine Craig. Joyce SikakaneTiring? Imagine if all these names still held blankness beyond them.
Olive Senior. Nikki Giovanni. Angela Y. Davis. Thadious M. Davis. Akasha Gloria Hull. Eintou Pearl Springer. Merle Hodge. Amryl Johnson. Red Jordan Arobateau. Joan Cambridge. J. California Cooper. Jane Tapsubei Creider.Some of these had not yet discovered their names at the time of this compilation. Others had not yet embraced their identity. Many of them, however, are still kicking, if you'd bother to be intrigued beyond the small few of the shiniest names above.
Barbara C. Makhalisa. Myriam Warner-Vieyra. Amelia Blossom House. Ifi Amadiume. Grace Akello. Lina Magaia. Alice Walker. Nancy Morejón. Buchi Emecheta. J.J. Phillips. Sherley Anne Williams.(continued in comment 1)