"For My People" as the Fulfillment of Margaret Walker Alexander's Literary Manifesto

[by C. Liegh McInnis]

Before I can discuss how “For My People” speaks to people today, I must begin by discussing the manner in which Dr. Alexander began her writing career by providing her readers with a literary manifesto, which shows that Dr. Alexander understood poetry to be an engagement of critical thinking through which societal ills can be resolved through creative approaches.  With “I Want to Write,” Margaret Walker Alexander provides her literary manifesto that she wants to produce well-crafted poetry that shows African people how beautiful they are, which will encourage or inspire them to continue the struggle against white supremacy and toward the fulfillment of their humanity and citizenship.

Margaret Walker Centennial Celebration

Image via Jackson State University's Margaret Walker Center.

 

 

 

2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Margaret Walker's birth. To celebrate the life of this remarkable author, Jackson State University's Margaret Walker Center is sponsoring This is My Century: 100 Years of Margaret Walker, 1915-2015, a year of programming devoted to Walker's work.

 

HBW invites its readers to submit blog posts and/or longer essays about topics related to Dr. Walker and her work.  We'll begin featuring these posts as early as next week, when we share Walker scholar C. Liegh McInnis's insightful reading of "For My People," recently delivered at the Oxford Conference for the Book.

For information about how to submit pieces for consideration on the HBW Blog, please contact mgraham@ku.edu.

Genius and DAEMONIC GENIUS: Crafting a Biography of Richard Wright

[by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.]

Crafting a biography of Richard Wright places special demands on a biographer.  Wright was a genius, a man who embodied profound intelligence and creative vision, but Mississippi in the early twentieth century wasn’t the place for nurturing his kind of genius. 

Gertrude Stein seems to have appreciated the irony that blooms when a native daughter and a native son share the status of exile.  There was something surpassing mere hyperbole when, after reading Black Boy, Stein wrote to Wright:  “Dear Richard, It is obvious that you and I are the only two geniuses of this era.”  Stein’s words constitute a sophisticated joke because genius manifests itself in many forms that cannot be reduced to comedy (Stein’s maximum playfulness) or tragedy (Wright’s maximum seriousness).  Margaret Walker, the native daughter who did not choose exile, anatomized the facets of genius  in how she wrote about the dreams she and Wright dared to come true.