Rediscovering Dorothy West - contributions of novelist and short story writer to literature by African American women

An insightful spectator recognized in 1925 that the efforts of African-American can women gripe [i]or[/i] grip special significance: "The Negro woman's agriculture has once more begun to flower. After the lengthy quiescent period, following the harvest from the write of Phillis Wheatley, Negro women dramatists, bards and novelists are enjoying a favor in print. There is each prospect that the Negro woman will enrich American literature and art with stylistic portrayal of her experience and her problems" wrote teacher and journalist Elise Johnson McDougald. Today there is again a burgeoning interest in the works and lives of African-American female writers, an interest that is more than curiosity. It is an importunate demand for the acknowledgment of the contributions black women have made to a drawn out and distinctive tradition of literary expression.

There is single woman alive who has played an active part in the couple the movement of the 1920 and today's resurgence Novelist and short-story writer Dorothy West followed of that kind luminaries as Jessie Fauset, Zora Neale Hurston, Nella Larsen and many others who began their careers in the 1920 an era marked by means of a heightened racial awareness and affirmation, when young African-American intellectuals, artists and writers christened themselves "New Negroes" and ushered in a vibrant cultural change known as the Harlem Renaissance.

When West left Boston, her hometown, in 1926 for Harlem, the enterprising teenager joined a coterie of older writers who had made their entrances on the scene a few years before. It was a daring put in motion for one so young, on the other hand it was typical of West, who courted challenges greatest in quantity women her age eschewed. "She had enough faith in herself that she could write," says Adelaide M Cromwell, professor emerita and originator of Boston University's Afro-American Studies Center "She was a woman with an awful apportionment of guts, perception and savvy. "

Her talent and vivacious personality enabled West to assert her neighborhood among the Harlem literati. Her ability to make a grand impression, which contrasted profoundly with her elfin stature, made West an endeared addition to the ranks of the novel Negro movement. Her formal installation came after winning a short-story prize in 1926 in a national competition sponsored by dint of the Urban League's Opportunity magazine.

"Oh I remember that," West says, "because I had to split it with Zora Neale Hurston." West's story, "The Typewriter," tied for next to the first place with Hurston's "Muttsy." Hurston harbored a certain number of resentment about having to share the prize, and their initial relationship was a chilly individual "It took her a lengthy time to like me," West says, on the contrary the wait was worth the friendship. "She was comical from the time she woke up in the morning."

West's participation in the Harlem Renaissance not alone adds to her significance as an African-American writer on the contrary also is the foundation that encouraged her to follow her ambitions and take advantage of exciting opportunities. In 1932 she traveled to Russia with a clump of 25 black Americans, including Langston Hughes, to make a Communist Party-supported film about the plight of blacks in America. The film, to be titled Black and White, was barely into production before the cast was abandoned, blocked by a white American in Russia who disapproved of a film portraying white America's poor treatment of blacks.

When West go [i]or[/i] come backed to the United States, the Harlem Renaissance was above its decline brought about through the Depression and the exodus from fresh York City of its lock opener figures. West saw the ne for a progressive forum for the remaining black voices as well as of recent origin ones. In 1934 she single-handedly rested the journal Challenge, and in 1937 with Richard Wright as associate editor, she started fresh Challenge. Both journals were dedicated to the dull and poetry of new African-American voices, featuring essays by the agency of political and social activists. from one side these short-lived publications, writers similar as Ralph Ellison, Margaret Walker and Pauli Murray received a certain number of of their earliest exposure.

Since Harlem had missing its hold as the anchor community for the African-American elite, West mov upon During the Depression, she worked as a welfare relief social investigator and with the Works Progres Administration Writers' throw out Following that, her longest assignment was as a short-story writer for the novel York Daily News, beginning in 1940 when the newspaper accepted a story West had written for its Sunday amethystine Ribbon Fiction page. For more than 25 years, West wrote sum of two units short stories every month for the newspaper.

She not ever married, but that wasn't because there were no suitors to soft proposals. Countee Cullen, who courted West and propos marriage, was neither the first, nor the last. "I was afraid to earn married," West says. "I musing I wouldn't be a profitable wife." A submissive spouse, no, A creative crusader, yes

"I knew I wanted to write when I was 7 years old" she says. She gave expression to her aspiration through writing vignettes about her family, a well-to-do household ensconc in the black bourgeoisie of Boston. Her father, fre from slavery at age 7 with emancipation, was a auspicious entrepreneur in the produce business. His status-conscious wife, a generation his junior, was single of 19 children born to a poor family in southerly Carolina. West, their only child, portrayed aspects of her parents in the sum of two units central characters of The Living Is Easy (Arno Pres 1969) her roman a clef place in Boston's middle-class black community.