Nava Atlas's Blog, page 90

March 5, 2018

The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont & Manjit Thapp

The Little Book of Feminist Saints by Julia Pierpont & Manjit Thapp is an inspiring, beautifully illustrated collection that honors one hundred exceptional women throughout history and around the world. It’s being published just in time for International Women’s Day on March 8, 2018.


In this luminous volume, New York Times bestselling writer Julia Pierpont and British artist Manjit Thapp match short, vibrant and surprising biographies with stunning full-color portraits of secular female ‘saints’: champions of strength and progress.


These women broke ground, broke ceilings, and broke molds. Reaching all around the world, from 630 B.C. to the present day, each woman is assigned their own special day so that readers can open any page to find daily inspiration and lasting delight. The feminist ‘saints’ include, among others: 


Maya Angelou

Jane Austen

Ruby Bridges

Rachel Carson

Shirley Chisholm

Hillary Clinton

Marie Curie & Irene Joliot Curie

Isadora Duncan

Amelia Earhart

Artemisia Gentileschi

Grace Hopper

Dolores Huerta

Frida Kahlo

Billie Jean King

Audre Lorde

Wilma Mankiller

Toni Morrison

Michelle Obama

Sandra Day O’Connor

Sally Ride

Eleanor Roosevelt

Margaret Sanger

Sappho

Nina Simone

Gloria Steinem

Kanno Sugako

Harriet Tubman

Mae West

Virginia Woolf

Malala Yousafzai


Here’s an excerpt from The Little Book of Feminist Saints:



Maya Angelou

B. 1928, U.S.

MATRON SAINT OF STORYTELLERS

Feast Day: April 4


Maya Angelou portrait by Manjit Thapp

“In times of strife and extreme stress, I was likely to retreat to mutism. Mutism is so addictive. And I don’t think its powers ever go away.”


A surprising admission for a woman who, by age forty, had lived in Egypt, in Ghana, and all around the United States; who’d worked as a professional dancer, a prostitute, an activist, a singer, a lecturer; and who would become a prolific writer.


Severe childhood trauma triggered Maya Angelou’s mutism at the age of eight: she’d been raped, and after her testimony in court, her rapist had been violently murdered. Her muteness lasted for nearly five years before lifting—but its dark appeal never left her.


“It’s always there saying, ‘You can always come back to me. You have nothing to do—just stop talking.” Angelou resisted the urge.


At forty-one, she published her first and best-known book, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, which tells the story of that early trauma. In plays, in poems, in autobiographies and spoken-word albums and children’s books, she would tell stories for the rest of her life.


“The writer has to take the most used, most familiar objects—nouns, pronouns, verbs, adverbs—ball them together and make them bounce, turn them a certain way and make people get into a romantic mood; and another way, into a bellicose mood,” she said at age seventy-five. “I’m most happy to be a writer.”


The Little Book of Feminist Saints is available on Amazon U.S. and Amazon U.K., and wherever books are sold.



About the author and illustrator


Julia Pierpont (Author) is the author of the New York Times bestseller Among the Ten Thousand Things, winner of the Prix Fitzgerald in France. She is a graduate of Barnard College and the MFA program at New York University. Her writing has appeared in the Guardian, New Yorker, New York Times Book Review and Guernica. She lives and teaches in New York.


Manjit Thapp (Illustrator) is an illustrator from the United Kingdom. She graduated with a BA in illustration from Camberwell College of Arts in 2016. Her illustrations combine both traditional and digital media, and her work has been featured by Instagram, Dazed, Vogue India and Wonderland Magazine. Find out more https://www.manjitthapp.co.uk/about/ or on Instagram @manjitthapp.



*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on March 05, 2018 18:39

March 4, 2018

Gertrude Stein

Gertrude Stein (February 3, 1874 – July 27, 1946) was an American author, poet, and art collector. She’s considered one of the most significant writers of the early twentieth century. Though some consider her writing incoherent or absurd, others view it as a singular voice.


Born into a well-to-do family Jewish family in Pennsylvania, Stein went to college at Radcliffe and then studied medicine for four years at Johns Hopkins University.


Stein lived most of her adult life in Paris, where she moved in 1903. She and her brother Leo Stein amassed an important art collection; the two lived together in Paris for some years, but after she met her life partner, Alice B. Toklas, a rift grew between the sibling. Leo resented Toklas and called her “a kind of abnormal vampire.” 


“The Lost Generation”

Stein met Alice B. Toklas on September 8, 1907, the day after the latte arrived in Paris from her native San Francisco. Their apartment at 27 rue de Fleurus became an intellectual hub. It served as a salon, where Stein famously championed notable artists before and after they became famous, including Pablo Picasso, Georges Braque, Henri Matisse, and Juan Gris.


She coined the term “The Lost Generation” to describe the expatriate writers of the 1920s, notably, F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ernest Hemingway. Other writers who frequented rue de Fleurus included Thornton Wilder, Sherwood Anderson, and James Joyce. Stein, formidable as she was, served as a nurturing, encouraging figure.


Her relationship with Hemingway was complicated. He helped her type one of her most important works, The Making of Americans, which was finally published in 1925 after having been written some twenty years earlier. On the other hand, in his posthumous memoir of his Paris years, Hemingway maligns her and her relationship with Toklas.


From most accounts, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas were a most devoted couple. Toklas was a legendary cook, and played the wifely role as Stein held court with the writers and artists who frequented their salon. The two remained together until Stein’s death, after which Toklas took upon herself the role of widow, doing what she could to preserve her life partner’s legacy.



gertrude stein and alice b. toklas


You might also like: Gertrude Stein Quotes to Perplex and Delight



Experiments in poetry and prose

Her poems were unlike any others — each almost like a piece of abstract art to experience throughout the senses. Stein’s most popular work was The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, which is written as though through Alice’s point of view. Aside from poetry and novels, Stein also wrote plays, operas, and gave many lectures.


Her experiments in prose, which may have originated with automatic writings, were highly influential. According to The Penguin Companion to American Literature:


These experiments may be seen in various stages of development in Three Lives (1909), Tender Buttons (1914), and Geography and Plays (1922). These books gave her a reputations for extreme unintelligibility, and she became in the eyes of many the leader of the avant garde in American writing. 


Her syntactical manipulations perhaps blinded her first readers to the homespun quality of her feelings about place and country — she was the only modernist who was always ‘patriotic’…


The really radical departure in her stylistic experimentation was her attempt to develop a ‘cubist’ literature, a prose independent of meaningful associations, relying merely on sound-orchestration. 



Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas


Stein and Toklas



The Making of Americans and The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas

The Making of Americans: Being a History of a Family’s Progress (1925) is her most weighty work, It this 900-plus-page modernist novel she presents a history of American life in excruciating detail through the accounts of the fictional Hersland and Dehning family. She disrupts the novelistic space with meditations on the process of writing.


The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas (1933), which was written by Stein and not Toklas, was less experimental and in fact helped Stein gain a wider readership. Once again, from The Penguin Guide to American Literature:


The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, combined with her lecture tour of America in 1934 — out of which came her Lectures in America (1935) — and her ‘mothering’ of American G.I.s during World War II, brought her into public prominence. Her writing took a turn for the lucid, and her naïve posture — which many had thought drollery — combined with a new lucidity, made her a lost leader in the eyes of … aesthetic intellectuals. 



Last years

She either thought quite highly of herself and her genius, or else was pulling the wool over everyone’s eyes — with the formidable Gertrude Stein, it was often hard to tell. She wrote, ostensibly writing of herself, “It takes a lot of time to be a genius. You have to sit around so much, doing nothing, really doing nothing.”


Gertrude Stein seemed to enjoy life more than ever in her last hears. Her only children’s book, The World is Round (1939) is a play off of her most famous poetic lines, “A rose is a rose is a rose.”


Also among her last works were Paris France (1940); Picasso (1939), in which her lifelong appreciation of art is crystallized; and Wars I Have Seen (1945). For those just getting acquainted with her work, Selected Writings of Gertrude Stein edited by Carl Van Vechten (1946, 1962) is a good place to start.


Stein died in Paris on July 27, 1946 at the age of 72 from complications from stomach cancer surgery after surgery. She is buried in Paris, in the Père Lachaise Cemetery.



Tender Buttons by Gertrude Stein


Gertrude Stein page on Amazon



More about Gertrude Stein on this site



Gertrude Stein Quotes to Perplex and Delight
10 Slightly Absurd Quotes by Gertrude Stein

Major Works



Three Lives  (1909)
Tender Buttons  (1914)
The Making of Americans  (1925)
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas  (1933)
Everybody’s Autobiography  (1938)
Picasso (1939)
Paris France (1940)
Wars I have Seen (1945)
Ida
The World is Round  (1909)


Biographies about Gertrude Stein



Gertrude and Alice by Diana Souhami
Stein: In Words and Pictures by Renate Stendhal
Charmed Circle: Gertrude Stein and Her Circle by James R. Mellow


More Information



Wikipedia
The Gertrude Stein Repertory Theatre
Gertrude Stein Society
Reader discussion of Stein’s books
Stein’s book page on Amazon

Articles, News, Etc.



Jewish Hall of Fame
The Material Archive of Stein & Toklas
From Stein to Warhol: Dramatic Readings of Famous Rejection Letters
Stein’s Brow-Furrowing Children’s Book Gets a Royal Reissue
Stein Visits the Poe Museum
Of Genius, Cable Cars and Duck Shoes
Stein in Love
Expat, Art Collector, Writer, and Pure Genius
Stein and Cultural Femicide

Visit Gertrude Stein



Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas PapersYale University, New Haven, CT


*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on March 04, 2018 04:04

March 3, 2018

Frankenstein by Mary Shelley: A Synopsis and View from the 19th Century

Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley (1797 – 1851), the British author, is best known for the classic thriller, Frankenstein. In the summer of 1814, Mary, at age 17, ran off to Europe with the married poet Percy Bysshe Shelley. There she joined his literary circle, which included Lord Byron. The events that inspired the creation of the tale took place during the couple’s sojourn in Italy. It was published in 1818, when Mary was barely 21 years old.


You can read in Mary Shelley’s own words how she, a sheltered young woman, came to write one of the most haunting tales of all time. For a detailed synopsis of Frankenstein, this excerpt, adapted from Mrs. Shelley (1890)  by Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti, provides an excellent outline of the plot, with a  late 19th-century perspective:



Frankenstein begins with a series of letters

That a work by a girl of nineteen should have held its place in romantic literature so long is no small tribute to its merit; this work, wrought under the influence of Lord Byron and Percy Shelley, and conceived after drinking in their enthralling conversation, is not unworthy of its origin.


The story of Frankenstein begins with a series of letters of a young man, Robert Walton, writing to his sister, Mrs. Saville in England, from St. Petersburg, where he is about to embark on a voyage in search of the North Pole. He is bent on discovering the secret of the magnet, and is deluded with the hope of a never absent sun.



Encountering a gigantic being

When advanced some distance towards his longed-for goal, Walton writes of a most strange adventure which befalls them in the midst of the ice regions—a gigantic being, of human shape, being drawn over the ice in a sledge by dogs. Not many hours after this strange sight a fresh discovery was made of another man in another sledge, with only one living dog to it: this time the man was seen to be a European, whom the sailors tried to persuade to enter their ship.



A skeletal and bedraggled stranger

On seeing Walton, the stranger, speaking English, asked whither they were bound before he would consent to enter the ship. This naturally caused intense excitement, as the man, reduced to a skeleton, seemed to have but a short time to live. However, on hearing that the vessel was bound northwards, he consented to enter, and with great care he was restored for the time. In answer to an inquiry as to his object … he replied, “To seek one who fled from me.” An affection springs up and increases between Walton and the stranger, till the latter promises to tell his sad and strange story, which he had hitherto intended should die with him.



Frankenstein title page original


See also: How Mary Shelley Came to Write Frankenstein (1818)



The story told by the dying man

This commencement leads to the story being told in the form of a long narrative by the dying man, whose name is Victor Frankenstein. The stranger describes himself as of a Genovese family of high distinction, and gives an interesting account of his father and juvenile surroundings, including a playfellow, Elizabeth Lavenga, whom we encounter much later in his history.


All his studies are pursued with zest, till coming upon the works of Cornelius Agrippa he is led with enthusiasm into the ideas of experimental philosophy; a passing remark of “trash” from his father, who does not explain the difference between past and modern science, is not enough to deter him and prevent the fatal consequence of the study he persists in, and thus a pupil of Albertus Magnus appears in the eighteenth century. The effects of a thunderstorm, described from those Mary had recently witnessed, decided him in his resolution, for electricity now was the aim of his research.


After having passed his youth in a happy Swiss home with his parents and dear friends, on the death of his loved mother he starts for the University of Ingolstadt. Here he is rebuked by the professors for his useless studies, until one, Mr. Waldeman, sympathises with him, and explains how Cornelius Agrippa and others, although their studies did not bring the immediate fruit they expected, nevertheless helped on science in other directions, and he advises Frankenstein to pursue his studies in natural philosophy, including mathematics.



Discovering the principle of life

The upshot of this advice is that two years are spent in intense study and thought. He is contemplating a visit to his home, when, making some fresh experiment, he finds that he has discovered the principle of life; this so overcomes him for a time that, oblivious of all else, he is bent on making use of his discovery. He determines to create a being superior to man, so that future generations shall bless him.


In the first place, by the help of chemistry, he has to construct the form which is to be animated. A grave has to be ransacked in the attempt, and Frankenstein describes with loathing some of the details of his work, and shows the danger of overstraining the mind in any one direction—how the virtuous become vicious, and how virtue itself, carried to excess, lapses into vice.


The form is created in nervous fear and fever. Frankenstein being the ideal scientist, devoid of all feeling for art, without any ideal of proportion or beauty, reaches the point where he considers nothing but the infusion of life necessary. All is ready, and in the first hour of the morning he applies his fatal discovery.



The monster is animated

Breath is given, the limbs move, the eyes open, and the colossal being or monster, as he is henceforth called, becomes animated; though copied from statues, its fearful size, its terrible complexion and drawn skin, scarcely concealing arteries and muscles beneath, add to the horror of the expression. Overwhelmed by disgust, his creator can only rush from the room, and finally falls exhausted on his bed, only to wake to find his monster grinning at him. [editor’s note: keep in mind that Victor Frankenstein is the scientist; we’ve come to call the monster by the name Frankenstein, but he’s technically Frankenstein’s monster or creature]


Frankenstein hurries on, but coming across his old friend Henri Clerval at the stage coach, he recalls to mind his father, Elizabeth, his former life and friends. He returns to his rooms with his friend. Reaching his door, he trembles, but opening it, finds himself delivered from his self-created fiend. His frenzy of delight being attributed to madness from overwork, Clerval induces Frankenstein to leave his studies, and, finally (after he had for months endured a terrible illness), to accompany him to his native village.



Mysterious death of Victor Frankenstein’s young brother

Various delays occurring, they are detained too late in the year to pass the dangerous roads on their way home. Health and peace of mind returning to some decree, Frankenstein is about to proceed on his journey homewards, when a letter arrives from his father with the fatal news of the mysterious death of his young brother.


This event hastens still further his return, and gives a renewed gloomy turn to his mind; not only is his loved little brother dead, but the extraordinary event points to some unknown power. From this time Frankenstein’s life is agony. One after another, all whom he loves fall victims to the demon he has created; he is never safe from his presence; in a storm on the Alps he encounters him; in the fearful murders which annihilate his family he always recognizes his hand.



The monster seeks a truce

On one occasion his creation wished to have a truce and to come to terms with his creator. This, after his most fearful treachery had caused the innocent to be sentenced as the perpetrator of his fearful deeds. On meeting Frankenstein he recounts the most pathetic story of his falling away from sympathy with humanity: how, after saving the life of a girl from drowning, he is shot by a young man who rushes up and rescues her from him.


He became the unknown benefactor of a family for some period of time by doing the hard work of the household while they slept. Having taking refuge in a hovel adjoining a corner of their cottage, he hears their pathetic and romantic story, and also learns the language and ways of men; but on his wishing to make their acquaintance the family are so horrified at his appearance that the women faint, the men drive him off with blows, and the whole family leave a neighborhood, the scene of such an apparition.


After these experiences he retaliates, till meeting Frankenstein he proposes these terms: that Frankenstein shall create another being as repulsive as himself to be his companion—in fact, he desires a wife as hideous as he is. These were the conditions, and the lives of all those whom Frankenstein held most dear were in the balance; he hesitated long, but finally consented.



Frankenstein by Mary Shelley


You might also like:

Quotes from Frankenstein by Mary Shelley



For the love of Elizabeth

Everything now had to be put aside to carry out this fearful task — his love of Elizabeth, his father’s entreaties that he should marry her, his hopes, his ambitions, go for nothing.  To save those who remain, he must devote himself to his work. To carry out his aim he expresses a wish to visit England, and, with his friend Clerval, descends the Rhine.


After passing London and Oxford and various places of interest, he expresses a desire to be left for a time in solitude, and selects a remote island of the Orkneys, where an uninhabited hut answers the purpose of his laboratory. Here he works unmolested till his fearful task is nearly accomplished, when a fear and loathing possess his soul at the possible result of this second achievement.



A companion for the monster?

Although the demon already created has sworn to abandon the haunts of man and to live in a desert country with his mate, what hold will there be over this second being with an individuality and will of its own? What might be the future consequences to humanity of the existence of such monsters? He forms a resolution to abandon his dreaded work, and at that moment it is confirmed by the sight of his monster grinning at him through the window of the hut in the moonlight.



The loss of a friend, a wife, a father

Not a moment is lost. He tears his just completed work limb from limb. The monster disappears in rage, only to return to threaten eternal revenge on him and his; but the time of weakness is passed; better encounter any evils that may be in store, even for those he loves, than leave a curse to humanity. From that time there is no truce. Clerval is murdered and Frankenstein is seized as the murderer, but respited for worse fate; he is married to Elizabeth, and she is strangled within a few hours.


When goaded to the verge of madness by all these events, and seeing his beloved father reduced to imbecility through their misfortunes, he can make no one believe his self-accusing story; and if they did, what would it avail to pursue a being who could scale the Alps, live among glaciers, and pass unfathomable seas?



Self-imposed torture

Only in sleep and dreams did Frankenstein find forgetfulness of his self-imposed torture, for he lived again with those he had loved; he endured life in his pursuit by imagining his waking hours to be a horrible dream and longing for the night, when sleep should bring him life.


When hopes of meeting his demon failed, some fresh trace would appear to lead him on through habited and uninhabited countries; he tracks him to the verge of the eternal ice, and even there procures a sledge from the wretched and horrified inhabitants of the last dwelling-place of men to pursue the monster, who, on a similar vehicle, had departed, to their delight.



The fatal scientific secret

Onwards, over the eternal ice they pass, the pursued and the pursuer, till consciousness is nearly lost, and Frankenstein is rescued by those to whom he now narrates his history; all except his fatal scientific secret, which is to die with him shortly, for the end cannot be far off.


The story is told; and the friend — for he feels the utmost sympathy with the tortures of Frankenstein — can only attempt to soothe his last days or hours, for he, too, feels the end must be near; but at this crisis in Frankenstein’s existence the expedition cannot proceed northward, for the crew mutiny to return.



Final battle with the monster

Frankenstein determines to proceed alone; but his strength is ebbing, and Walton foresees his early death. But this is not to pass quietly, for the demon is in no mood that his creator should escape unmolested from his grasp. Now the time is ripe, and, during a momentary absence, Walton is startled by fearful sounds, and then, in the cabin of his dying friend, a sight to appall the bravest; for the fiend is having the death struggle with him — then all is over.


Some last speeches of the demon to Walton are explanatory of his deed, and of his present intention of self-immolation, as he has now slaked his thirst to wreak vengeance for his existence. Then he disappears over the ice to accomplish this last task.


Surely there is enough weird imagination for the subject. Mary Shelley didn’t merely intend to depict the horror of such a monster, but evidently wished also to show what a being, with no naturally bad propensities, might sink to when under the influence of a false position.



Some weak points and incongruities

Some weak points, some incongruities, it would be unreasonable not to expect. Mary Shelley’s facility in writing was great, and having visited some of the most interesting places in the world, with some of the most interesting people, she is saved from the dreary dulness of the dull. Her ideas, also, though sometimes affected, are genuine, not the outcome of some fashionable foible to please a passing faith or superstition.


The last passage in the book is perhaps the weakest. It is scarcely the climax, but an anticlimax. The end of Frankenstein is well conceived, but that of the Demon fails. It is ridiculous to conceive anyone, demon or human, having ended his vengeance, fleeing over the ice to burn himself on a funeral pyre where no fuel could be found. Surely the tortures of the lowest pit of Dante’s Inferno might have sufficed for the occasion.


— adapted from Mrs. Shelley (1890) by Lucy Madox Brown Rossetti, Chapter VII, “Frankenstein” 



 


Frankenstein by Mary Shelley


Frankenstein by Mary Shelley  on Amazon



More about Frankenstein by Mary Shelley



Wikipedia
Reader discussion on Goodreads
Full text on Project Gutenberg
The Science of Life and Death in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein
How Frankenstein’s Monster Became Human






*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on March 03, 2018 06:21

March 2, 2018

Poetic Quotes from Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks

Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks is the only novel by this esteemed and much honored American poet. Published in 1951, its language is both spare and profound; it reads beautifully and poetically without seeming affected. It’s the story of a middle-class, mid-twentieth century black woman leading an ordinary, extraordinary life.


The story opens when Maud Martha is seven, observing the adults around her with wonder and bafflement. The story begins to grip as she enters adulthood, with its dating rituals, love, jealousy, marriage, motherhood, disappointment, loss, contentment and joy. It skims the surface of segregation and bias, and explores familial and neighborly bonds —  all within a surprisingly short novel. 


Here are selected quotes from Maud Martha by Gwendolyn Brooks, a book that deserves to be rediscovered and treasured:



“What she liked was candy buttons, and books, and painted music (deep blue, or delicate silver) and the west sky; so altering, views from the steps of the back porch; and dandelions.”



“She was going to keep herself to herself. She did not want fame. She did not want to be a ‘star.’ To create — a role, a poem, picture, music, a rapture in stone: great. But not for her. What she wanted was to donate to the world a good Maud Martha. That was the offering, the bit of art, that could not come from any other.”



Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks


See also: Annie Allen by Gwendolyn Brooks



“For Russell lacked — what? He was — nice. He was fun to go out with. He did things, he said things, with a flourish. That was what he was. He was a flourish. He was a dazzling, long, and sleepily swishing flourish.”



“The name ‘New York’ glittered in front of her like the silver in the shops on Michigan Boulevard. It was silver, and it was sold, and it was remote: it was behind glads like the silver in the shops. It was not for her. Yet.”



“She toasted rye strips spread with pimento cheese and grated onion. She made cocoa. They ate, drank, and read together. She read Of Human Bondage. He read Sex in the Married Life. They were silent.”



“Could be, she mused, a marriage. The marriage shell, not the romance, or love, it might contain. A marriage, the plainer, the more plateaulike, the better. A marriage made up of Sunday papers and shoeless feet, baking powder biscuits, baby baths, and matinees and laundrymen, and potato plants in the kitchen window.”



“As he played, he kept a lookout for his mother, who usually arrived at seven, or near that hour. When he saw her rounding the corner, his little face underwent a transformation. His eyes lashed into brightness, his lips opened suddenly and became a smile, and his eyebrows climbed toward his hairline in relief and joy.”



A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun - Gwendolyn Brooks - Angela Jackson


A recent biography of Gwendolyn Brooks:

A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun



“Then she thought of her life. Decent childhood, happy Christmases; some shreds of romance, a marriage, pregnancy and the giving birth, her growing child, her experiments in sewing, her books, her conversations with her friends and enemies. ‘It hasn’t been bad,’ she thought.”



“On the whole, she felt, life was more comedy than tragedy. Nearly everything that happened had its comic element, not too well buried, either. Sooner or later one could find something to laugh at in almost every situation. That was what, in the last analysis, could keep folks from going mad.”



“But the sun was shining, and some of the people in the world had been left alive, and it was doubtful whether the ridiculousness of man would ever completely succeed in destroying the world — or, in fact, the basic equanimity of the least and commonest flower: for would its kind not come up again in the spring?”



RELATED POSTS


Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes on Writing and Life

5 Things to Love About Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks: The Poet as Working Mother






*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


 


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Published on March 02, 2018 07:49

March 1, 2018

Zora Neale Hurston Books, Quotes, and Other Writings

Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960) was an African-American novelist, memoirist, and folklorist. Born in Notasulga, Alabama, she was raised in Eatonville, Florida. With her determined intelligence and bold personality, she quickly became a big name in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s.


Having had a remarkable dual career as a writer (producing novels, short stories, plays, and essays) and as an anthropologist, it’s surprising that she died largely alone and forgotten. Yet how fortunate that her rediscovery, spearheaded by Alice Walker, reignited interest in her words and work. Here’s our Literary Ladies Guide to Zora Neale Hurston books, quotes, excerpts and other literary musings that can be found on our site.



Biography

Zora Neale Hurston


Books by Zora Neale Hurston

Note: This list of books is what’s on this site thus far; it will continue to grow.



Mules and Men (1935)
Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937)
Tell My Horse (1938)
Moses, Man of the Mountain (1939)
I Love Myself When I Am Laughing (posthumous anthology, 1979)
Every Tongue Got to Confess (posthumous anthology, 2001)


zora neale hurston

Quotes and Other Excerpts

Zora Neale Hurston Quotes and Life Lessons
5 Quotes from “How it Feels to Be Colored Me”
“Crazy for This Democracy”
Quotes from Their Eyes Were Watching God
What White Publishers Won’t Print


Literary Musings

1934 Interview with Zora Neale Hurston
Fannie Hurst and Zora Neale Hurston, a Literary Friendship
Zora and Money Matters
Zora Neale Hurston’s “Sweat”: An Ecofeminist Master Class in Dialect and Symbolism
Zora on Books, Publishing, and Publishers

The post Zora Neale Hurston Books, Quotes, and Other Writings appeared first on Literary Ladies Guide.

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Published on March 01, 2018 12:15

Jessie Redmon Fauset

Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 – April 30, 1961) was an American editor, poet, essayist, and novelist who was deeply involved with the Harlem Renaissance literary movement. Born in Camden County, New Jersey, and raised in Philadelphia, she was the daughter of a Methodist Episcopal minister. Her mother died when she was quite young.


Bright and studious, Jessie Fauset was the first African-American to graduate from the Philadelphia High School for Girls. A stellar student, she wished to continue her studies at Bryn Mawr College, but the institution got around admitting a black student by securing a scholarship for her at Cornell University. There she studied classical languages, and later earned a Master’s degree in French from the University of Pennsylvania.


After graduating in 1905, she wanted to teach in Philadelphia, but found the schools once again unwelcoming to an African-American woman.She taught French in Baltimore and Washington, D.C. schools.



Literary editor of The Crisis

In 1912, Fauset began to submit poems, stories, and essays to the NAACP’s magazine,The Crisis. The magazine’s chief editor, the eminent scholar W.E.B. Du Bois, must have been quite impressed with her work, as he wasn’t easy to please. She was still teaching at the time, but he convinced her to move to New York City and work as the magazine’s literary editor. She accepted and began this new chapter in her life in 1919.


She quickly proved to have a keen eye for talent, introducing readers to Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, Jean Toomer, Claude McKay, and other notable authors and poets of the era. Fauset also oversaw the African-American children’s magazine Brownies’ Book, which was also under the auspices of the NAACP and Du Bois. Published monthly from 1920 to 1921, it aimed to instill pride in African-American children about their history and heritage.


She also contributed her own writings — editorials, poetry, short stories, translations from the French of writings by black authors from Europe and Africa, as well as accounts of her worldwide travels. Such was her influence that Fauset has long been considered one of the “midwives” of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement. 


Fauset’s first novel, There is Confusion, was published in 1924, coming in the midst of her years as literary editor of The Crisis.



jessie redmon fauset


You might also like: 6 Poems by Jessie Redmon Fauset



A prolific poet and essayist

Fauset had the opportunity to publish her own work during her tenure atThe Crisis, which included editorials, stories, and  poetry, all of which were appreciated by readers and literary critics. She edited and published the work of many noted Harlem Renaissance figures during her tenure at The Crisis; such was her influence that she’s considered one of the “midwives” of the Harlem Renaissance literary movement.


Some of the subject matter of her poetry was dark and rather grim, which can be sampled in 6 Poems by Jessie Redmon Fauset.  “Oblivion” tells of a desire to lie in a deserted, neglected grave far from everyone and everything. Others, like “Dead Fires” and “La Vie C’est la Vie” seem rather fatalistic. It can be argued that the poems were an outlet for the frustration that this talented and capable woman had to endure because of race, but they allude to thwarted love and loneliness as well.



There is confusion ad - Jesse Redmon Fauset


See also Literary Midwife: Jessie Redmon Fauset



More novels, and a return to teaching

After leaving The Crisis in 1926, Fauset wanted to work in publishing. Despite her experience and expertise, she was unable to find work because she was black. She even offered to work from home, but that didn’t help. She returned to teaching, and over the next several years wrote three more novels.


After 1924’s There is Confusion came Plum Bun (1928), The Chinaberry Tree (1931), and Comedy, American Style (1933). Up until the early 1920s, African-Americans were portrayed in stereotypical fashion by white authors in fiction. This inspired Fauset to write a novel portrayed black Americans in a middle-class settings. This was quite revolutionary at the time. 


The educated, middle class characters in Fauset’s novels still experienced their share of prejudice, and like many works by black authors of the period, deal with themes of identity and passing.


Her novels received mixed reviews from African-American critics and colleagues. Some praised her for depictiing an aspect of black life that often didn’t see the light of print; others criticized her for an overly bourgeoise point of view. The Chinaberry Tree and Comedy: American Style were published in the depths of the Depression and weren’t as successful as her others. Her prolific pace of writing slowed considerably, and she virtually disappeared from literary circles.



Leaving the literary life to teach

Jessie Fauset seemed to have abandoned the literary life to pursue a teaching career. After her eight years at The Crisis, Fauset began to teach French at DeWitt Clinton High School in the Bronx. She remained at the same school until her retirement in 1944.



Jessie Fauset by Laura Wheeler Waring


You might also like Quotes by Jessie Redmon Fauset



A later-life marriage and legacy

Going back to 1929, Fauset was 47 years old when she married Herbert Harris, an insurance broker, in 1929. They remained together until his death in 1958. In her later years, she moved back to Philadelphia, where she died at age 79 in 1961.


A 2017 article in The New YorkerThe Forgotten Work of Jessie Redmon Fauset, quotes Cheryl A. Wall, author of Women of the Harlem Renaissance as saying, “I think we lose a bit of our literary history if we do not acknowledge the contributions of Jessie Fauset.” There’s ample evidence that Fauset felt the lack of appreciation for her contributions. Further, the article goes on to state, David Levering Lewis wrote of Fauset in When Harlem Was in Vogue: “There is no telling what she would have done had she been a man, given her first-rate mind and formidable efficiency at any task.”


Though she dropped out of the literary scene in the early 1930s, Jessie Fauset should be appreciated for her eye for talent, and supporting emerging voices from the Harlem Renaissance, many of whom are still read today. Though she may not have become as well known as some of those she nurtured and supported, it’s indisputable that she was one of the most important figures of the Harlem Renaissance.



More about Jessie Fauset on this site



6 Poems by Jessie Redmon Fauset
Literary Midwife: Jessie Redmon Fauset
Quotes by Jessie Redmon Fauset

Major works (novels)



There Is Confusion (1924)
Plum Bun: A Novel Without a Moral (1928)
The Chinaberry Tree (1931)
Comedy, American Style (1933)

Short stories, and essays (very select – her output of short works was enormous)



“Emmy” (1912):
“My House and a Glimpse of My Life Therein,” (1914)
“Double Trouble,” (1923)
“Impressions of the Second Pan-African Congress” (1921)
“What Europe Thought of the Pan-African Congress.” (1921)

More information



Wikipedia
Jessie Redmon Fauset entry at Perspectives in American Literature
Reader discussion of  Fauset’s works on Goodreads
Jessie Redmon Fauset page on amazon.com

Articles, news, etc.



Fauset portrait by Laura Wheeler Waring at National Portrait Gallery
Jessie Fauset tells how to face despair
The Forgotten Work of Jessie Redmon Fauset






*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on March 01, 2018 05:08

Gwendolyn Brooks

Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 – December 3, 2000) was an American poet whose works included sonnets and ballads as well as blues rhythm in free verse. She also created lyrical poems, some of which were book-length. Though her work reflected urban African-American life, its underlying themes were universal to the human experience. Brooks’  lifetime output encompassed more than twenty books, including children’s books.


Brooks was born in Topeka, Kansas; her family moved to Chicago during the period known as the Great Migration, when African-Americans moved in great numbers to Northern cities. She started writing and reading classic authors and poets when she was young. Her first poem was published in a children’s magazine when she was 13 years old. Having been expelled from several schools merely because she was African-American, these experiences informed her views on race, and eventually influenced her work as a writer.



The Chicago Defender


As a young adult, Brooks worked as a secretary while trying to get her work published. Some of her first poems were published in the legendary African-American newspaper, The Chicago Defender. She also participated in poetry workshops, which helped her writing career get off the ground.



Major works, and a Pulitzer Prize 

In 1945 broke into book publishing with the well-received A Street In Bronzeville, referring to an area in the Chicago’s South Side. This collection led to her winning a Guggenheim Fellowship.


Annie Allen (1949) earned a Pulitzer Prize in 1950, making her the first African-American to win this award. The book follows the life of Annie, an African-American girl, from birth to womanhood. The poems reflect on the violence and racism that are part of Annie’s milieu, yet end with her hopes for a better world than the one she has inhabited. Like some of Brooks’ other books, this one isn’t easy to find. 


The Bean Eaters (1960) was another well-received collection of poems. Critics such as the one who wrote this review noted her ability to tap into both specific and universal experiences:  “Her poems are clear, not because they are childishly simple but because they strike at the thought and feelings common to mature people.”


In the Mecca (1968) refers to an 1891 apartment building in the Chicago’s South Side, a fortress-like structure that deteriorated into a slum. The first half of the book is a long poem about this environment, the second half consists of individual poems, the best known of which are “Malcolm X” and “Boy Breaking Glass.” It was nominated for the National Book Award for Poetry.


Maud Martha (1951) was Brooks’ only novel. It wasn’t widely read when first published, but has gained respect over the years as a story that speaks to the challenges and joys in a mid-century black woman’s life, centering on universal themes.



Gwendolyn Brooks younger


See also: Gwendolyn Brooks Quotes on Writing and Life



Poet Laureate of Illinois and other awards

In 1968, Brooks was named Poet Laureate for the state of Illinois. From 1985 to 1986 she was Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress. Her work continued to be recognized for its excellence with prestigious awards, including those from the American Academy of Arts and Letters award, the Frost Medal, National Endowment for the Arts, The Shelley Memorial Award, and others.



A teaching career

Gwendolyn Brooks taught as part of her career, leading classes at Columbia College in Chicago, Northeastern Illinois University, Columbia University, and the University of Wisconsin. When she became a professor of English at Chicago State University in 1990, she the position until her death in 2000.



A writing mother

Throughout her career in the writing field, Gwendolyn Brooks maintained a family life, with a husband (whom she married in 1939) and their two children. When she was awarded the Pulitzer prize in 1950, Brooks already had a young son, Hank, and about a year and a half later her daughter Nora was born.


In the 2017 biography of Gwendolyn Brooks, A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun, author Angela Jackson tells of the challenges the poet faced as a writer and mother. Shortly after Nora was born, for example, Brooks was supposed to travel to receive an award, but could’t find a babysitter for the children. Nora later recollected that her mother limited travels until she and her brother were a little older. According to Jackson:


“This is not to say she did not struggle between motherhood and writing. In December, 1951, when Hank was eleven and Nora a three-month-old infant, Gwendolyn confided in a letter to Langston Hughes that her duties and responsibilities as a mother were so overwhelming that she felt she was without time ‘to call my soul my own.’ She barely had a moment for herself, much less to write.”


Read more about how Brooks negotiated the balance between family life and writing in Gwendolyn Brooks: The Poet as Working Mother.



Legacy

Gwendolyn Brooks used her poetic voice to spread tolerance and understanding the black experience in America. A prolific writer, she produced hundreds of poems, had twenty books published, and was recognized and honored with multiple prestigious awards during her lifetime. Yet despite her standing as a great American poet, many of her books are not easy to come by. It’s our hope that a wise publisher will change that, so that she can be more readily studied and appreciated. Gwendolyn Brooks died of cancer at the age of 83, in 2000.



6 Classic African-American Women Authors


You might also like:

6 Classic African-American Authors You Should Know More About



More on this site



Quotes on Writing and Life
5 Things to Love About Gwendolyn Brooks
The Poet as Working Mother
Poetic Quotes from Maud Martha

Major Works (selected)



A Street in Bronzeville (1945)
Annie Allen  (1949)
Maud Martha  (1951)
Bronzeville Boys and Girls (1956)
The Bean Eaters  (1960)
Selected Poems  (1963)
In the Mecca (1968)
Riot  (1969)
Primer for Blacks  (1980)
Young Poet’s Primer (1980)
To Disembark (1981)
The Near-Johannesburg Boy and Other Poems (1986)
Blacks (1987)
Winnie (1988)
Children Coming Home (1991)

Autobiographies, Biographies, and Literary Criticism



A Surprised Queenhood in the New Black Sun by Angela Jackson
Conversations with Gwendolyn Brooks – Edited by Gloria Wade Gayles
The World of Gwendolyn Brooks
Report From Part One: An Autobiography
A Life of Gwendolyn Brooks by George Kent
On Gwendolyn Brooks: Reliant Contemplation  by Stephen Caldwell Write
The Poetry of Gwendolyn Brooks – an Analysis by David Wheeler
Maud Martha: A Critical Collection  by Bryant and Blakely


Gwendolyn Brooks and family, 1945


Gwendolyn Brooks with her husband and son, Milwaukee, 1945



More Information 



Wikipedia
Library of Congress Online Resources
The Poetry Foundation
Modern American Poetry: Gwendolyn Brooks
Her books on Amazon
Reader discussion on Goodreads

Articles, News, Etc.



Confronting the Warpland
Poetry Foundation:  From the Archive
The Roads Taken
Sweet Bombs

Visit



Gwendolyn Brooks Grave – Lincoln Cemetery, Blue Island, IL
Gwendolyn Brooks Cultural Center – Western Illinois University, Macomb, IL
Gwendolyn Brooks Center – Chicago State University, Chicago, IL





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Published on March 01, 2018 03:11

February 28, 2018

10 Poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson

Though she was considered an important member of the Harlem Renaissance, Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966) wasn’t a New York City resident during the movement. Instead, she and her family lived in Washington, D.C. Their house on S Street NW came to be known as the “S Street Salon” — a kind of satellite for writers of the Harlem Renaissance while visiting the nation’s (very segregated) capital.


Among her colleagues were many of the leading lights and fellow poets of the Renaissance: Langston Hughes, Jean Toomer, Alain Locke, and many of the noted women writers of the Harlem Renaissance. She hosted them and many others at her family’s Washington, D.C. home.


Georgia’s first poems were published in the NAACP’s magazineThe Crisis. in 1916. She published four poetry collections: The Heart of a Woman (1918), Bronze (1922), An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and after a long gap, Share My World (1962). As a mixed-race woman, her poems addressed issues of bias and prejudice. She also wrote many that were intensely personal. The constraining roles of devoted wife and mother clashing with the desire to be a creative artist were explored in her poetry.


Jessie Redmon Fauset, an important editor of the era and a poet in her own right helped Georgia select the works for The Heart of a Woman collection. The Heart of a Woman was indeed the influence for Maya Angelou‘s memoir of the same title. In addition to poetry, Georgia wrote nearly thirty plays. Though some of her work was destroyed around the time of her death, there was a large enough body left to prove her talent and standing as an important member of the Harlem Renaissance. Here are 10 poems by Georgia Douglas Johnson, who deserves to be read and studied.



The Heart of a Woman

The heart of a woman goes forth with the dawn,

As a lone bird, soft winging, so restlessly on,

Afar o’er life’s turrets and vales does it roam

In the wake of those echoes the heart calls home.

The heart of a woman falls back with the night,

And enters some alien cage in its plight,

And tries to forget it has dreamed of the stars

While it breaks, breaks, breaks on the sheltering bars.



Common Dust

And who shall separate the dust

What later we shall be:

Whose keen discerning eye will scan

And solve the mystery?


The high, the low, the rich, the poor,

The black, the white, the red,

And all the chromatique between,

Of whom shall it be said:


Here lies the dust of Africa;

Here are the sons of Rome;

Here lies the one unlabelled,

The world at large his home!


Can one then separate the dust?

Will mankind lie apart,

When life has settled back again

The same as from the start? 



I Want to Die While You Love Me

I want to die while you love me,

While yet you hold me fair,

While laughter lies upon my lips

And lights are in my hair.

I want to die while you love me,

And bear to that still bed,

Your kisses turbulent, unspent

To warm me when I’m dead.

I want to die while you love me

Oh, who would care to live

Till love has nothing more to ask

And nothing more to give!

I want to die while you love me

And never, never see

The glory of this perfect day

Grow dim or cease to be. 



Your World

Your world is as big as you make it.

I know, for I used to abide

In the narrowest nest in a corner,

My wings pressing close to my side.

But I sighted the distant horizon

Where the skyline encircled the sea

And I throbbed with a burning desire

To travel this immensity.

I battered the cordons around me

And cradled my wings on the breeze,

Then soared to the uttermost reaches

With rapture, with power, with ease!



Women writers of the Harlem Renaissance


You might also enjoy

Renaissance Women: 12 Female Writers of the Harlem Renaissance



Prejudice

These fell miasmic rings of mist, with ghoulish menace bound,

Like noose-horizons tightening my little world around,

They still the soaring will to wing, to dance, to speed away,

And fling the soul insurgent back into its shell of clay:

Beneath incrusted silences, a seething Etna lies,

The fire of whose furnaces may sleep — but never dies!



Credo

I believe in the ultimate justice of Fate;

That the races of men front the sun in their turn;

That each soul holds the title to infinite wealth

In fee to the will as it masters itself;

That the heart of humanity sounds the same tone

In impious jungle, or sky-kneeling fane.

I believe that the key to the life-mystery

Lies deeper than reason and further than death.

I believe that the rhythmical conscience within

Is guidance enough for the conduct of men.



Hope

Frail children of sorrow, dethroned by a hue,

The shadows are flecked by the rose sifting through,

The world has its motion, all things pass away;

No night is omnipotent, there must be day!

The oak tarries long in the depths of the seed

But swift is the season of nettle and weed,

Abide yet awhile in the mellowing shade

And rise with the hour for which you were made.

The cycle of seasons, the tidals of man,

Revolve in the orb of the infinite plan;

We move to the rhythm of ages long done,

And each has his hour — to dwell in the sun!



Interracial

Let’s build bridges here and there

Or sometimes, just a spiral stair

That we may come somewhat abreast

And sense what cannot be exprest,

And by these measures can be found

A meeting place—a common ground

Nearer the reaches of the heart

Where truth revealed, stands clear, apart;

With understanding come to know

What laughing lips will never show:

How tears and torturing distress

May masquerade as happiness:

Then you will know when my heart’s aching

And I when yours is slowly breaking.

Commune—The altars will reveal . . .

We then shall be impulsed to kneel

And send a prayer upon its way

For those who wear the thorns today.

Oh, let’s build bridges everywhere

And span the gulf of challenge there.



Bronze (1922 Poetry collection) by Georgia Douglas Johnson



Little Son

The very acme of my woe,

The pivot of my pride,

My consolation, and my hope

Deferred, but not denied.

The substance of my every dream,

The riddle of my plight,

The very world epitomized

In turmoil and delight.



Black Woman
Don’t knock at the door, little child,
I cannot let you in,
You know not what a world this is
Of cruelty and sin.
Wait in the still eternity
Until I come to you,
The world is cruel, cruel, child,
I cannot let you in!

Don’t knock at my heart, little one,
I cannot bear the pain
Of turning deaf-ear to your call
Time and time again!
You do not know the monster men
Inhabiting the earth,
Be still, be still, my precious child,
I must not give you birth!

 


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Published on February 28, 2018 08:02

12 Fast Facts About Octavia Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) was a pioneering African-American female author of science fiction at a time when the genre was male-dominated. Best known for her novel Kindred and the Patternist series, Butler developed her determination to become a writer at an early age . She was drawn to science fiction magazines like Amazing Stories, whose contents inspired unlimited possibilities and endless imagination. Here are some lesser-known facts about Octavia Butler: 



Supported herself with odd jobs, including potato chip inspector

Butler would wake at 2 a.m. to write before going to work as a potato chip inspector. She credits many of her odd jobs with providing interesting details for her writing.



Kindred was inspired by her mother

Kindred follows the story of a writer who travels back in time to the antebellum south and meets her ancestors, a white plantation owner and a black slave.


Butler’s own mother was a housemaid, and many of Butler’s earliest memories were of the degradations her mother endured as a domestic. “I got to see her not hearing insults and going in back doors, and even though I was a little kid, I realized it was humiliating,” Butler said in an interview.  



Never drove a car

In part due to her dyslexia, Butler never drove and remained a loyal public transportation user.



Awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship

She was the first science fiction author to be awarded this grant, female to boot!



Was 6 feet tall by the age of 15

Her height contributed to much of Butler’s shyness and reservation.



Kindred

You might also enjoy: Octavia Butler Quotes on Writing and Human Nature



Raised by women

Butler’s father died when she was an infant, and was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother.



Her childhood nickname was “Junie”

Sharing the same name as her mother, she was referred to as “Junior” which later was shortened to “Junie.”



Moved to Seattle with 300 boxes of books

After her mother’s death, Butler relocated to Lake Forest Park, Washington in 1999. She brought with her 300 boxes of books. They were part of her growing collection that she was gifted by her mother, who brought home the tattered copies from the homes she cleaned.



Friends with Samual R. Delany

At the age of 23, Butler attended the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop where she met and became lifelong friends with fellow sci-fi author Samuel R. Delany.



Knew her own destiny by age 9

After watching the 1945 movie Devil Girl From Mars on television, it hit her. She thought to herself, “I can write a better story than that,” and eventually, she did.



Octavia Butler

See also: Octavia Butler’s Best Advice For Beginning Writers



A wanderlust spirit

Butler traveled extensively, including to Peru and hiking Huayna Picchu, the tallest mountain peak in Machu Picchu.



Unconfirmed cause of death

On February 24, 2006, Octavia E. Butler died in her Seattle home at the young age of 58. It’s been noted that she battled with a variety of health issues, such as severe hypertension, but the actual cause of death was never clarified.



More information:



Octavia E. Butler website
Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network





*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through this review, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on February 28, 2018 04:23

Fast Facts About Octavia Butler

Octavia Estelle Butler (1947 – 2006) was a pioneering African-American female author of science fiction at a time when the genre was male-dominated. Best known for her novel Kindred and the Patternist series, Butler developed her determination to become a writer at an early age . She was drawn to science fiction magazines like Amazing Stories, whose contents inspired unlimited possibilities and endless imagination. Here are some lesser-known facts about Octavia Butler: 



Supported herself with odd jobs, including potato chip inspector

Butler would wake at 2 a.m. to write before going to work as a potato chip inspector. She credits many of her odd jobs with providing interesting details for her writing.



Kindred was inspired by her mother

Kindred follows the story of a writer who travels back in time to the antebellum south and meets her ancestors, a white plantation owner and a black slave.


Butler’s own mother was a housemaid, and many of Butler’s earliest memories were of the degradations her mother endured as a domestic. “I got to see her not hearing insults and going in back doors, and even though I was a little kid, I realized it was humiliating,” Butler said in an interview.  



Never drove a car

In part due to her dyslexia, Butler never drove and remained a loyal public transportation user.



A line of jewelry was inspired after her work

Rachel Stewart created a line of necklaces called “Kindred” and “Wild Seed”, and earrings called “Lillith’s Brood” all inspired by characters in Butler’s works.



Kindred

You might also enjoy: Octavia Butler Quotes on Writing and Human Nature



Raised by women

Butler’s father died when she was an infant, and was raised by her mother and maternal grandmother.



Her childhood nickname was “Junie”

Sharing the same name as her mother, she was referred to as “Junior” which later was shortened to “Junie.”



Moved to Seattle with 300 boxes of books

After her mother’s death, Butler relocated to Lake Forest Park, Washington in 1999. She brought with her 300 boxes of books. They were part of her growing collection that she was gifted by her mother, who brought home the tattered copies from the homes she cleaned.



Friends with Samual R. Delany

At the age of 23, Butler attended the Clarion Science Fiction Workshop where she met and became lifelong friends with fellow sci-fi author Samuel R. Delany.



Knew her own destiny by age 9

After watching the 1945 movie Devil Girl From Mars on television, it hit her. She thought to herself, “I can write a better story than that,” and eventually, she did.



Octavia Butler

See also: Octavia Butler’s Best Advice For Beginning Writers



A wanderlust spirit

Butler traveled extensively, including to Peru and hiking Huayna Picchu, the tallest mountain peak in Machu Picchu.



Unconfirmed cause of death

On February 24, 2006, Octavia E. Butler died in her Seattle home at the young age of 58. It’s been noted that she battled with a variety of health issues, such as severe hypertension, but the actual cause of death was never clarified.



She also…

Was 6 feet tall by the age of 15
Was the first science fiction author to be awarded a MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship


More information:



Octavia E. Butler website
Octavia E. Butler Legacy Network





*This post contains affiliate links. If the product is purchased by linking through this review, The Literary Ladies Guide receives a modest commission, which helps maintain our site and helps it to continue growing!


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Published on February 28, 2018 04:23