'This is where we must go'

 

“I try for a poetic language thatsays, ‘This is who we are, where we have been, where we are. This is where wemust go. And this is what we must do.’” – MariEvans

 

Born in Toledo, Ohio on this date in1923, Evans was and remains one of America’s most influential Black writers,authoring poetry, children’s literature and plays, and editing countless worksof others.  She also edited the definitive and award-winning BlackWomen Writers (1950–1980): A Critical Evaluation. 

 

Evans, who died in 2017, attendedthe University of Toledo and taught at Purdue and Cornell.  In 1968she wrote AND produced the award-winning television program, “The BlackExperience.”   Her poem “Who Can Be Born Black” – oftenanthologized – was part of the collection Where Is All the Music? andestablished her as a major poetic writer. Then her collection, I Am a Black Woman, earned herworldwide acclaim.

 

I Am A Black Woman notonly resonated with the power and beauty of Black women but set the bar formany of her fellow female Black writers in the latter part of the 20thcentury.  

 

“I am a black woman,” Evans wrote,“tall as a cypress, strong beyond all definition, still defying place and timeand circumstance, assailed, impervious, indestructible.”