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| Richard Wright, photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1939. |
Richard Wright from "Blueprint for Negro Writing"
The Negro writer who seeks to function within his race as a purposeful agent has a serious responsibility. He is being called upon to do not less than create values by which his race is to struggle, live and die. . .create the myths and symbols that inspire a faith in life. It means that in the lives of Negro writers must be found those materials and experiences which will create in them a meaningful and significant picture of the world today. . . And the time has come to ask questions, to theorize, to speculate, to wonder our of what materials can a human world be built.
Wright's Black Boy, Native Son, and American Hunger are available for checkout from the library at call number PS3545 .R815 .
Wright's Black Boy, Native Son, and American Hunger are available for checkout from the library at call number PS3545 .R815 .
Toni Morrison
My parallel is always the music, because all the strategies of the art are there. . . Music makes you hungry for more of it. . . It slaps and it embraces; music is the mirror that gives me necessary clarity. . . The literature ought to do the same thing.
[quoted in Paul Gilroy's Small Acts, published by Serpent's Tail, 1993.]
Toni Morrison is a novelist, professor and Nobel Laureate. Hear her Nobel Lecture here. (33 minutes)
Langston Hughes from Selected Poems
[T]he police beating Negroes' heads, that ole club says, Bop, Bop, Be Bop! That's where Bebop came from, beaten right out of some Negroes' heads into their horns.
You can find Langston Hughes' plays and poetry on the lower level at call number PS 3515 .U274.
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| Langston Hughes, photo by Carl Van Vechten, 1936. |
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| John Edgar Wideman, photo by Geoffrey A. Landis, 2011 |
John Edgar Wideman, from the Preface of Breaking Ice edited by Terry McMillan:
Good stories transport us to these extraordinarily diverse regions where individual lives are enacted. For a few minutes we can climb inside another's skin. Mysteriously, the dissolution of ego also sharpens the sense of self, reinforces independence and relativity of point of view. People's lives resist a simple telling, cannot be understood safely, reductively from some static still point, some universally acknowledged center around which all other lives orbit. Narrative is a reciprocal process, regressive and progressive, dynamic. . . . Minority writers hold certain peculiar advantages in circumstances of cultural breakdown, reorientation, transition. We've accumulated centuries of experience dealing with problems of marginality, problems that are suddenly on center stage for the whole society: inadequacy of language, failure of institutions, a disintegrating metropolitan vision that denies us or swallows us, that attracts and repels, that promises salvation and extinction.. . . Our stories can place us back at the center, at the controls; they can offer alternative realities, access to the sanctuary we carry around inside our skulls.
Fogelson Library has a copy of Wideman's collection of early African-American writing with the exquisite title:
My Soul Has Grown Deep (Call number E185.96 .W52 2001) as well as five other works by him.
Fogelson Library has a copy of Wideman's collection of early African-American writing with the exquisite title:
My Soul Has Grown Deep (Call number E185.96 .W52 2001) as well as five other works by him.
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| Walter Mosley, 2007. Photo by David Shankbone. |
Walter Mosley Life Out of Context
If I don't write, I feel that I'm not participating in my own, internal, life. Somewhere along the way I did learn that there is a personal context for me, and that background is writing. I wake up in the morning, in this skin filled with desires that have no immediate language. Finding that language is my job if not my destiny, and failing to write is as serious a crime as a sentry going to sleep at his post during wartime.
Mosley is the author of the Easy Rawlins mystery novels. A versatile author, artist and really interesting human being, you can find out more about him here: waltermosley.com
Mosley is the author of the Easy Rawlins mystery novels. A versatile author, artist and really interesting human being, you can find out more about him here: waltermosley.com
Works quoted above, and many other books dealing with literature of the African Diaspora, are on display near the circulation counter this week. Check them out!
