Alice Walker: Seeing Purple in a Field

Walker was educated at Spelman College in Atlanta, and later at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, during which time she became actively involved with the Civil Rights Movement. In June of 1966, she began her most effective Civil Rights activism work through her involvement with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., commonly referred to at the time by its members as “The Inc. Fund” (White 136). Through The Inc. Fund, Walker and several others helped those whose rights were revoked as a result of attempting to register to vote. Because of her outstanding writing skills, Walker was assigned to take depositions by those sharecroppers who had been evicted from their homes in various lawsuits against whites who acted against the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which overturned the Jim Crow laws already in place in the South. She also worked closely with the Student Nonviolence Coordinating Committee (SNCC), which played a major role in such monumental Civil Rights events as peaceful sit-ins, Freedom Rides, and the 1963 March on Washington (Carson). As SNCC was founded by and primarily organized and run by African-American women, Walker fit right in as a productive part of the team, promoting the ideology behind the activist organization in the face of a highly segregated and sexist South. The pairing of her small town upbringing and her extremely public and political work in the Movement allowed Walker’s sympathies for low income African-Americans – most specifically women – to become prominent components of her literary work.

Photo: Dennis Whitehead, 1982

Maya Angelou In Her Own Words

http://www.biography.com/broadband/main.do?video=mf230_courage_96

Maya Angelou discusses the affect of the Civil Rights Movement around the world.

Sue Monk Kidd - Her wonderful achievements

It has been a real joy doing hours and hours of research on Sue Monk Kidd's life, achievements, and books she has written. There are six books and stories that she has written and Kidd has put her heart and soul into these books and their stories. They are as follows: God's Joyful Surprise (nonfiction), When the Heart Waits (nonfiction), The Dance of the Dissident Daughter: A Journey from the Christian Tradition to the Sacred Feminine (nonfiction), The Secret Life of Bees (novel), The Mermaid Chair (novel), and Firstlight: The Early Inspirational Writings of Sue Monk Kidd (nonfiction).

Sue Monk Kidd has recieved many awards and achievements throughout her writing career. Here are just a few writing awards that she has recieved:
•2004 Book Sense Book of the Year in paperback for The Secret Life of Bees
•Winner of the 2003 SEBA Book of the Year for The Secret Life of Bees
•Nominated for the 2004 International IMPAC Dublin Literary Award for The Secret Life of Bees
•Finalist for the 2003 Book Sense Book of the Year Award for fiction – The Secret Life of Bees
•Citation in “100 Distinguished Stories” by Best American Short Stories 1994 for The Secret Life of Bees
•Finalist for the 2003 Boeke Prize in South Africa for The Secret Life of Bees

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Shirley Ann Grau breaks-down racial boundaries

The World According to Grau

J. Douglas Allen-Taylor of Metroactive.com, a website highlighting news, music, arts & events in the Silicon Valley (much like NOLA.com), interviews Grau on "cross[ing] the color line" in her novels.

In her work, Grau has created much debate over a white woman's ability to accurately portray black characters. Although it seems a quite audacious attempt, her objective, even indifferent, attitude toward her characters open up boundaries that may have hindered a Southern white writer in the past. As a New Orleans native and former Alabama resident, she is no stranger to both black and white cultures, rural and affluent. The question remains: Do her characters really translate to actual life in the mid 20th century South?

The Illuminating Black Madonna by Sue Monk Kidd

National Cathedral - Washington, DC

www.cathedral.org/cathedral/video/kidd050413.shtml

Sue speaks before an audience of more than 800 at the National Cathedral in Washington D.C. on the Black Madonna in The Secret Life of Bees.

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"Still I Rise" by Maya Angelou

You may write me down in history

With your bitter, twisted lies,

You may trod me in the very dirt

But still, like dust, I'll rise.

Does my sassiness upset you?

Why are you beset with gloom?

'Cause I walk like I've got oil wells

Pumping in my living room.

Just like moons and like suns,

With the certainty of tides,

Just like hopes springing high,

Still I'll rise.

Did you want to see me broken?

Bowed head and lowered eyes?

Shoulders falling down like teardrops,

Weakened by my soulful cries.

Does my haughtiness offend you?

Don't you take it awful hard

'Cause I laugh like I got gold mines

Diggin' in my own back yard.

You may shoot me with your words,

You may cut me with your eyes,

You may kill me with your hatefulness,

But still, like air, I'll rise.

Does my sexiness upset you?

Does it come as a surprise

That I dance like I've got diamonds

At the meeting of my thighs?

Out of the huts of history's shame

I rise

Up from a past that's rooted in pain

I rise

I'm a black ocean, leaping and wide,

Welling and swelling I bear in the tide.

Leaving behind nights of terror and fear

I rise

Into a daybreak that's wondrously clear

I rise

Bringing the gifts my ancestors gave,

I am the dream and the hope of the slave.

I rise

I rise

I rise.

Maya Angelou In Her Own Words

http://www.biography.com/broadband/main.do?video=mf229_childhood_138

Maya Angelou discusses her childhood.

Maya Angelou: Poet, Activist, and Phenomenal Woman

Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri in 1928. After the divorce of her parents when she was three years old, she moved to live with her grandmother in Stamps, Arkansas. Angelou’s life changed at age seven when she went to visit her mother in Chicago. Angelou was raped by her mother’s boyfriend, and the man was beaten to death by one of Angelou’s family members. The trauma of the event prompted her to become mute. She did not begin speaking again until age thirteen because she felt that her words had killed her attacker. Angelou credits her teacher, Bertha Flowers, for helping her to speak again and for introducing her to classic literature. The double bonds of being black and being a woman was something that Angelou certainly faced throughout her life. Growing up, she was a victim of the bitter racism of the south. She also understood from an early age how brutal the world could be for women after her assault. Angelou's life experiences have been a major influence on her work.

Angelou’s work reflects her involvement and commitment to civil rights. A recurring theme in Angelou’s work is racial pride, despite the demeaning way in which society has sometimes portrayed blacks. Her works are often centered on the evolution of the black community, as well as the challenges of being a woman. In Angelou’s personal life, she was extensively involved in activism. To combat the injustice that she saw, she became very active in the Civil Rights Movement during the 1960s. Angelou met and became close to some of the most influential civil rights activists of all time. While living in Ghana, Angelou became friends with civil rights leader, Malcolm X. She planned to return to the United States to help him to launch a new organization called the Organization of African American Unity, but their plans were thwarted when he was assassinated in 1965. Angelou was also very close to civil rights icon Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. because of her role as northern coordinator of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (SCLC).

Although Angelou was devoted to civil rights, the movement was largely based on the ideals of black men. Sexism was prevalent in the Movement. It was sometines thought that the women of the movement should only be doing “women’s jobs” instead of being in the forefront. Women were often not taken seriously, and many of the jobs available to them were things like working as secretaries for the men who lead the movement. Moreover, feminism was largely a movement for white women, so black women were excluded from the Women’s Movement as well. Black women were put in an awkward situation. In a time in which people were seemingly so enthralled in achieving equality, the black woman had no one fighting for her.

In Angelou’s autobiography, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, she tells stories of racism that she and her family endured while living in Arkansas. She was blatantly harassed, treated with contempt, forced to sit in “colored only” sections in public, and sometimes refused services because of her race. During an interview with the Academy of Achievement, Angelou was asked how she dealt with the racism that she has faced throughout her life. She replied, “The truth is, you cannot get rid of it. It is there. What you can do is put positive things in there along with the negative. But it’s a given that you will remember that the rest of your life.”

Angelou’s poem, “Still I Rise,” is one of her most beautiful and eloquent condemnations of racism and prejudice. The pride, sassiness, and inspirational message of the poem has made it a favorite of many. Angelou has said that she reflects on this poem when facing challenges or difficulties. She has also written a poem specifically for women. “Phenomenal Woman,” Angelou explains, was written for all women. The poem is meant to be inspirational for women of all races, backgrounds, and body types. The poem evokes the same sense of pride found in “Still I Rise.” Angelou puts power in the hands of women, challenging the notion that women should be defined by men and that women should be judged on the basis of their looks.

Angelou's pride in being a black and being a woman is evident in her writing. Her personal life and involvement in the Civil Rights Movement has made her work what it is today. She has an unrelenting hope and confidence, despite the abuse that she has endured. Angelou’s life is proof of the futility of racism and sexism. Her work is a testament to what can be accomplished, no matter what society may insist. As a black woman, Angelou is theoretically considered to be the most inconsequential of citizens; however, she continues to break down the barriers ascribed to her, and she serves as an inspiration to many.

Shirley Ann Grau's objective perspectives

Grau was born on July 8, 1929 in New Orleans, LA. As an adolescent she moved to Montgomery, Alabama and went to Booth (elementary) School until her high school years, when she moved back to New Orleans and attended Ursuline Academy. She continued her studies as an English major at the Newcomb College at Tulane University, graduating with the class of 1950, and later completed one year of graduate studies. Grau's original career plans were to get a Ph.D.in English and teach and write, but the university had different plans. Grau explains, “It seemed like a good idea... But, anyway the head of the department said no women would be teaching assistants in his department... Just about the time my free-lance pieces began to show. So I said, O.K., follow where the doors open.”

From these free-lance works came a well-received debut publication, The Black Prince and Other Stories (1955). A book in which most of the stories were centered around black characters was almost unheard of at the time. “When I started writing black stories," she says, "it just was not done.... And then there was a flip-flop after the 1960s, and that's all they wanted." On August 4th of that same year she married James Kern Feibleman, a Tulane professor, and with him bore two sons and two daughters: Ian James, Nora Miranda, William Leopold, and Katherine Sara.

Three years later she published The Hard Blue Sky. In this novel, Grau showcases her ability to describe nature; where critic Ann Pearson notes that even the title “indicates the dominance of the elements over the lives of the...fishermen.” The story is set on a primitive island, Isle aux Chiens, at the mouth of the Mississippi. This book does not carry a traditional plot set-up. On the other hand, Grau writes “interwoven episodes and flashbacks to dramatize a series of crises in the lives of individual islanders." Drama laden with the passions of love and sex ensue as these island citizens await the first hurricane of the season.

One could describe Grau as a “novelist of manners” in that her approach to her characters is unsentimental which allows her to exercise perfect objectivity. The House on Coliseum Street (1961) was indeed “a novel of manners.” As she often does, Grau “explores the perversion of ethics in modern society." This story of “divorce and sexual promiscuousness” is meant to criticize the moral hypocrisy of the Southern upper-class.

One of the more prominent themes in Grau's work is the interaction between whites and black in the South at a time when the two were separated by law. She is a “white author who deals with... the black subculture,” an “anomaly” of her time. Yet, unlike many novels of the genre, her black characters are not mere caricatures of servants and house maids. Rather, she writes of the deep South, where interaction between races is inevitable and almost always controversial.

Her next work would be the most famous to-date. In 1964, her novel The Keepers of the House received the Pulitzer Prize for fiction. In this story, Southern white widower Bill Howland, after his late wife dies, secretly marries an African American woman, Margaret. They have three children and even more grandchildren that are “mired in racial politics." Grau achieved such noteworthy acclaim by separating herself from the usual genre of female Southern writers. Time magazine critic R. Z. Sheppard said, “...Grau has usually played to her strength—a cautious application of talent to Southern traditions and people she knows best.”

Grau followed with The Condor Passes (1971) and Evidence of Love (1977). Her most recent work is Roadwalkers, published in 1994. This story follows the life of Baby, a black girl growing up in the Depression-era South. Her journey begins by wandering the countryside for food and shelter. After a confrontation with a white land owner, she is sent to an orphanage where nun Rita Landry takes over the narration for her teen years. After leaving the orphanage at 18, Grau's books takes a bold shift to the first person in which Baby gives the account to her daughter, Nanda, who grows up with all of the privileges her mother lacked. The story ends with the despairing story of her unfortunate marriage. While the critics looked to the story with “a mixture of admiration and puzzlement," the story nevertheless adds to her collection of racially controversial, yet objective portraits of the old South.

Photograph provided by washingtonpost.com

Movie production begins for, The Secret Life of Bees,
Fox Searchlight began principal filming for the screen adaptation of The Secret Life of Bees on January 9th in North Carolina.Written and directed by Gina Prince-Blythewood, the movie stars Dakota Fanning as Lily Owens and Academy Award Winner Jennifer Hudson as her caretaker and "stand-in" mother, Rosaleen. The two soon discover a trio of beekeeping sisters played by Queen Latifah (August), Alicia Keys (June) and Sophie Okonedo (May). Completing the cast is Paul Bettany as T. Ray, Tristan Wilds (Zach), Nate Parker (Neil) and Hilarie Burton (Deborah).Producing for The Donner's Company are Lauren Shuler Donner and Jack Leslie and for Overbrook Entertainment, Will Smith and James Lassiter. Joe Pichirallo will also produce.In theaters on October 17, 2008

Fox Searchlight Press Release

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The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd

The South in the 1960s is the setting for a large number of plays, movies, novels, and stories. Southern writers who are old enough to have lived through that era have frequently attempted to come to terms with their experiences of racism and the progress and disappointments of the civil rights movement from both sides of the color line. Kidd’s book, The Secret Life of Bees, is set specifically during the aftermath of the signing of the Civil Rights Act in July 1964; a time marked by often brutal, racially motivated violence in the South and is alluded to in the novel.

The Secret Life of Bees demonstrates the irrationality of racism by not only portraying black and white characters with dignity and humanity, but by also showing how Lily, the main character, struggles with and ultimately overcomes her own racism. One theme in the book that is present in a large part of the novel is the struggle for equal rights. There are many difficulties that Rosaleen, the three sisters, Zach and other black characters face because of their color. Blacks are still looked at as the lesser minority and slaves to the white population. This is happening even after the Civil Rights Act. Blacks were facing racism every time they stepped out of their doors.

The Secret Life of Bees has sold more than 4.5 million copies, spent over two years on the New York Times bestseller list and has been published in more than 23 languages. It is taught widely now in college and high school classrooms and is fast becoming a modern classic. It has been produced on stage in New York by The American Place Theater and has been adapted into a movie. The movie is scheduled to be in theaters on October 17, 2008.

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Harriet Jacobs Life in Art

Steppenwolf Theatre Company continues its Steppenwolf for Young Adults 2007-2008 Season with the world premiere of Harriet Jacobs by Lydia R. Diamond and directed by Hallie Gordon. The play is based on the life of Harriet Jacobs, author of the book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. The production, featuring Christoph Horton Abiel, Kenn E. Head, Errón Jay, Nambi E. Kelley, Leslie Ann Sheppard, Celeste Williams, Genevieve VenJohnson and Sean Walton, runs February 5 – March 2, 2008 in the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, 1650 N. Halsted.

In her book Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Harriet Jacobs describes with brutal honesty the hardships she endures under slavery, including the extraordinary choices she makes to be near her children. To survive, she escapes into her imagination and through writing, discovers hope for a better life. Accompanied by the rich musical traditions of slave spirituals, Harriet Jacobs is an inspiring look at a young woman's fascinating journey from slavery to freedom.

Lydia R. Diamond's adaptation of Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye was produced in 2005 and 2006 in the Steppenwolf Upstairs Theatre, directed by Hallie Gordon. The production transferred Off-Broadway to The New Victory Theatre in November of 2006. Diamond and Gordon developed Harriet Jacobs at the Kennedy Center New Visions/New Voices program. Harriet Jacobs is a world premiere funded by the Steppenwolf New Plays Initiative.

Harriet Jacobs is directed by Hallie Gordon. The design team includes: Collette Pollard (sets), JR Lederle (lights), Ana Kuzmanic (costumes), Victoria DeIorio (sound), Lisa Johnson-Willingham (choreography) and McKinley Johnson (composer) Jocelyn Prince is the dramaturg. Calyn P. Swain is the stage manager.

Performance schedule: February 8-10, 15-17, 22-24, 29 and March 1-2. Show times: Fridays at 7:30 p.m., Saturdays at 3:00 p.m. & 7:30 p.m. and Sundays at 3:00 p.m.

Tickets ($20) are available at 1650 N. Halsted, calling (312) 335-1650 or visit www.steppenwolf.org

Nambi E. Kelley (Harriet) in Harriet Jacobs. Photo by Sandro.

A Mother's Agony

Jacobs’ time with the Norcom family was certainly full of turmoil. Dr. Norcom started by whispering negative, albeit sexual things into her ear. From there, he began trying to physically force her into having sexual relations. Although it was improper behavior, Dr. Norcom certainly did not try to control his actions publicly, but rather became more and more bold as time went on. Eventually he had to build a cottage for Jacobs about four miles from town, because his wife began to notice his behavior. At a certain point during her time with the Norcom family, Harriet decided that she wanted to marry, but because she had refused Dr. Norcom’s sexual advances towards her, he would not give her the permission that she needed in order to be legally married to a free black man. However, Jacobs had become good friends with Samuel Sawyer, an unmarried white lawyer, with whom Jacobs had two children on the pretense that this would upset Norcom and he would sell her and her two children. If Norcom would be upset enough to get rid of Jacobs and her children, it seems she thought her quality of life would greatly improve. In order to further his reign of terror on her life, Norcom also made threats of selling her children away from her.
Eventually, Harriet would escape staying with varying different people, until she moved into a small crawlspace above a porch built by her grandmother and uncle. The space was nine feet long, seven feet wide and had a sloping ceiling, which at it’s lowest point was only three feet high, therefore so small that Jacobs could not turn around while laying down. Jacobs dealt with rats and mice crawling over her, no light and no fresh air, all for to look through the small hole she drilled to watch her children play .

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Sue Monk Kidd

•Sue Monk Kidd was born on August 12, 1948 in Sylvester, Georgia
•Married to Sanford Kidd and has 2 children
•Graduated from Texas Christian University in 1970
•She is a Registered Nurse and an Author
•Resides near Charleston, South Carolina and is currently writing a book with her daughter




Sue Monk Kidd was born on August 12, 1948, in Sylvester, Georgia and lived on a plot of land that had belonged to her family for more than 200 years. She spent all of her childhood in Sylvester, a safe, small, rural town she has called “endearing” and “Mayberry-esque” in interviews, even though the town was the site of racial injustices so prevalent in the South during that time. As a child Kidd observed the deeply ingrained segregation between white and black southerners. As a teenager in the mid 1960s, Kidd witnessed the beginnings of desegregation, and the injustices she encountered left a lasting impression on her. This would come to guide her early years as a writer.





Her first and most famous novel, The Secret Life of Bees, is set in South Carolina between 1964 and 1965. This occured when the President of the United States, Lyndon Johnson, signs the Civil Rights Act into law. Kidd includes the Civil Rights Act and Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. within her story to show the rise of deep-seated resentment, creating tension and an incredibly powerful and moving plot!


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Alice Walker: The High Priestess of the Left and the Left-Behind

Born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, the youngest of eight children of sharecroppers, Alice Walker's beginnings in the rural South set her on a course to become one the world's most revered literary figures and activists. At the age of eight, an accident with a BB gun left her blind and badly scarred in her right eye after a game of Cowboys and Indians with her brother went awry. As a result, she became an intensely solitary person, passionately delving into the art of the word. What became of Alice Walker after that day changed the face of southern women's writing, and American literature as a whole.

Walker furthered her education in the early 1960s at Spelman College in Atlanta, and later at Sarah Lawrence College in New York, during which time she became actively involved with the Civil Rights Movement. After receiving her BA form Sarah Lawrence, she moved to Jackson, Mississippi with her new husband, Melvin Rosenthal, a white civil rights attorney. The two sparked a furor in highly-segregated Mississippi, as interracial marriages were still deemed illegal.

In 1968, Walker published her first volume of Poetry, Once. The collection described her experiences during the Civil Rights Movement in America, encounters while traveling in Africa, and her battle against depression and thoughts of suicide after deciding to undergo an abortion. The Third Life of Grange Copeland was her first novel, published in 1970. It drew attention to the struggle of blacks in rural areas and succeeded in reaching a multigenerational audience. Her second volume of poetry, Revolutionary Petunias and Other Poems (1973), won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 1973. The same year, she published her first collection of short fiction, In love and Trouble: Stories of Black Women. She became more political in her written work with Good Night, Willie Lee, I'll See You in the Morning (1979), which served as a tribute to black political leaders and writers. She followed with several more collections of poetry, short fiction, and essays throughout the eighties and nineties, garnering her a substantial amount of recognition.

The most public expression of heartfelt praise was directed to Walker's Pulitzer Prize winning novel, The Color Purple (1982). The book chronicles the story of Celie, a poor and uneducated young girl living in rural Georgia. Celie encounters many hardships throughout her life, including having to endure incestuous rape and an abusive arranged marriage. Celie learns to survive through relationship she forms with the women around her. She befriends a strong-willed woman, Shug. It is through her self-affirming experiences with women that Celie can finally stand up on her own in a world run by men. With Walker's help, film director Steven Spielberg brought the novel to life on the screen in 1985. In 2004, a musical adaptation of The Color Purple produced by Oprah Winfrey debuted in Atlanta, Georgia, and then on Broadway in New York in 2005.

Walker's 1983 collection of essays, In Search of Our Mothers' Gardens: Womanist Prose introduced "womanism" as a term referring to black southern feminism - something very near and dear to Walker's heart. Interestingly enough, while almost all of Walker's work is "womanist," it manages to reach people of all genders, ethnicities, and socioeconomic backgrounds. While often criticized as a"anti-male" or "male-bashing," Walker defends her work as pieces of literature that reflect what actually happens in the world. Her work transcends time and the confines of society and bridges the gaps between generations and races. She remains one of the most outspoken literary figures and activists today, continuing to write and lecturing around the world on topics pertaining to everything form the attacks of September 11th, to genital mutilation overseas, to the benefits of engaging in oral sex. Walker continues to push people's buttons, and in doing so, initiates thought-provoking discussions around the globe that perpetuate the cycle of living and learning.

The Path To Freedom

Harriet Jacobs was born in Edenton, North Carolina to Daniel and Delilah Jacobs in 1813. Her father was owned by Dr. Andrew Knox and her mother was owned by Dr. James Horniblow. In accordance to the laws and customs of the time, Jacobs was born a slave, which was carried through the mother. When Delilah died, Harriet learned to read, write and sew under the tutelage of Margaret Horniblow. When Mrs. Horniblow died, Harriet was willed to her niece, and since she was a little girl, her father, Dr. James Norcom, would be Harriet's new master. During her time under Norcom the young Jacobs was sexually and emotionally harassed and abused.




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