LiteraryTraveler.net

We’ve celebrated African American and African writers, so now it’s time to look to the Caribbean.  Usually, people think of palm trees, flawless beaches, aqua waters and beach-side resorts.  The Caribbean islands certainly have all of that, but they also hold a great literary tradition.

I was introduced to Caribbean writers during my semester abroad at the University of the West Indies or UWI (pronounced “you-ee”) in Cave Hill, Barbados in 1999.  I took a class with a flaming, red-haired, white Jamaican professor.  I thought it funny, a little white woman with a huge Jamaican accent resounding throughout the lecture hall.  It was she who introduced me to one of my favorite books of all time: Annie John by Jamaica Kincaid, an author from Antigua.

Several years later in Boston, while taking a grad class at Harvard, another professor introduced me to V.S. Naipaul, a courageous writer from Trinidad.  I had been to Trinidad several times, staying with a Trini family, so I knew firsthand the racial mixture Naipaul speaks of.  Trinis have ethnic roots from Africa, India and native Carib tribes, making them a culture of physically stunning people. Naipaul, an East Indian Trini himself, traveled to India to discover his roots and courageously wrote about how disgusted he was with the country.

Derek Walcott, a poet from St. Lucia who recently won the T.S. Eliot Prize for Poetry, is also a controversial figure.  His reputation is marred by accusations of sexual harassment from female students.

So whichever author you chose to read, or if you choose to read all of them, remember the Caribbean is a magical and literary place.

Please enjoy:

Jamaica Kincaid & Annie John: A Childhood Cut Short

Mr. Biswas’ Houses: Finding V.S. Naipaul in Trinidad

The Helen of the West Indies: Derek Walcott’s St. Lucia

Of course, this is Black History Month at LT, and we’ve been honoring African American writers.  But we’d like to change it up a bit and honor a literary tradition and writer that come from the exquisite continent of Africa.  Since we live in a global world, we’ve all seen documentaries on Africa–the heartache mixed with hope.  The vivid costumes, face paint and body piercings of tribal life.  The trendy fashion industry, the extravagant safaris, the golden pyramids …

We’d like you to explore two countries with us in particular: Ghana and South Africa.  Writer Hannah May travels to Ghana to attend the wedding of a close friend.  Once there, she discovers she has fallen in love with the people and the culture, and especially the folklore and oral literary tradition, of Ghana.  May says:

When I left Africa, I was speechless. Several tears spoke for me. I had only spent just shy of a month on the continent, but it was an extraordinarily defining experience that both affirmed and reformed me.

Join May on her journey in The Oral Literary Tradition of Ghana: Folklore & Proverbs.

As for South Africa, J.M. Coetzee, a white Afrikaner, writes about the turmoil and racial divide in his native Cape Town.  It is a country marred by the scars of prejudice and hatred.  Writer Nicholas J. Klenske discusses how Coetzee dissects the violent rift between the black South African and the white Afrikaner in his literature.  Klenske says:

Perhaps like no other post-apartheid novel, Disgrace introduces the reader to a new Cape Town and South Africa – one that finds itself engulfed in a different type of violence and conflict. Instead of the perfection many hoped to see after the fall of apartheid, in Disgrace all races, individuals and even Cape Town itself find themselves feeling disgraced.

A brave South African, Coetzee searches the darkness to find the light.  He examines every part of apartheid–before, during and after.  And he recognizes that his country is still healing.  To read more, take a look at J.M. Coetzee’s Warring Cape Town.

There’s a part of black history that no one likes to talk about; however, without this history we would not have insightful literary black voices, narratives and stories passed down from generation to generation.  We’re talking about that dark time in American history known as slavery.

Blighting our past is an era when blacks were sold into slavery, some dying by the whip or torture of their slave master, some living in hell their entire lives and some escaping to freedom, only to find more prejudice and racial divide in the North.  In honor of Black History Month, we acknowledge those who rose out of fear and darkness to write about this most turbulent time.  There was one writer in particular who gave the first black character in literature a soul.  And the writer was not black.  He was Mark Twain.

A few years ago, I had the privilege of interviewing Terrell Dempsey, a writer who did what no one else had–he delved into the history of black slavery in Twain’s hometown of Hannibal, Missouri.  This was unprecedented and a monumental task.  Dempsey’s findings were incredulous, including that Twain’s family kept slaves, but Twain himself had a transformation and resented slavery and all it stood for.

Every time I read Dempsey’s interview and article, I’m fascinated by the shocking facts and extent of black slavery in Twain’s Hannibal.  So please, join us in American history by reading A Revealing Interview with Terrell Dempsey and Finding Mark Twain’s Hannibal.  As a bonus, join our publisher, Francis McGovern, on the Mississippi River on the historic Delta Queen steamboat, which included a stop in Hannibal.

He’s the guy wearing the fedora.  He’s the guy who looks black, but actually comes from an extensive history of Jewish Eastern Europeans.  He’s also the guy who explores American black culture in his mystery series with star detective Easy Rawlins.

Of course, we’re talking about none other than Walter Mosley.  In continuing with Black History Month, we’re honoring Mr. Mosley by celebrating his multicultural roots.  Not many writers, let alone people, can talk about what it’s like to grow up both black and Jewish, but Mosley can.  He embraces both cultures in his writing, including when Easy Rawlins spies on a Polish-Jewish communist in A Red Death.

Interestingly enough, Mosley grew up in notorious Watts, California–a city known for its violent and explosive racial tensions.  Somehow the writer sidestepped all the negativity and turbulence and let his imagination run free as a child.  Fortunately for 12 year-old Mosley and his parents, they moved to an affluent Los Angeles suburb in 1964 … only a year before the horror of the Watts riots.

Today, he is a man of great importance, not only in the writing world, but he is also known for his literary editing skills as well.  For a man who started writing late in life–at 34 years of age–he’s become a favorite of President Bill Clinton and Denzel Washington has played Easy Rawlins in the movie adaptation of Devil in a Blue Dress.

Therefore, we celebrate Walter Mosley and all his accomplishments, proving that being both black and Jewish is a beautiful thing.

Please enjoy The “Easy” Yet Complex Writing of Walter Mosley, A Black Jewish Author.

Harlem is a place that is so closely imbued in the hearts of Americans everywhere.  Even tourists from around the world come to see the streets of Harlem, a once Mecca to the black artist, including the black writer.  What arose from the Harlem Renaissance was a beautiful, literary tradition of African American stories, storytelling and history.  Langston Hughes, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, Nella Larsen, Carl Van Vechten, Countee Cullen, Louis Armstrong, Zora Neale Hurston … these are the names of the Harlem Renaissance.

Can you imagine going into a club in Harlem in the 1920s-30s and seeing Louis Armstrong blow on his trumpet or Langston Hughes reading his poem “Harlem” a.k.a. “A Dream Deferred”?  This era was magical, never to be repeated as of today, sadly enough.  But the magic still resounds in the streets of Harlem.  The people there haven’t forgotten where they come from.  Even though there are now more white people living in Harlem than black.  Even though Harlem has pretty much underwent gentrification.

The memory of the Harlem Renaissance exists.  You can find it on amateur night at the Apollo Theater, in the spirit of the Harlem Globetrotters (originating in 1926) and the smooth jazz and blues songs of Black Swan Records.  I hope to find it myself in a couple weeks as I head to Harlem to eat at Sylvia’s, a historic restaurant owned and run by Sylvia Woods, the “Queen of Soul Food,” since 1962.  Everyone who is someone has eaten there, including President Bill Clinton, Nelson Mandela, Susan Lucci, Magic Johnson and many more.

So explore Harlem with us with these two articles that give you the grand tour of a place imbued with literary spirit and black pride.

A New Kind of Renaissance: Touring Harlem

The Studio Museum in Harlem Presents Africa Comics

As a black woman who was coming of age in the early part of the 20th century, it was hard for Nella Larsen to understand where she fit.  Her mother was of Danish descent, a white woman, and her biological father was of West Indian descent.  If you think about Larsen’s unusual background, you realize how difficult it must have been for Larsen to be of mixed race in the early 20th century.

To compound her identity crisis even more, Larsen’s mother could not deal with raising an obviously black daughter.  Sadly, she separated herself from Nella for most of Nella’s life.  Somehow through the pain and tragedy, and even a very personal identity crisis, Nella Larsen flourished into one of the great Harlem Renaissance writers with her book Passing.

In Passing, Larsen shapes the psyche and identity of the black female.  She was one of the first to do so, thus giving readers today a historical insight into the black female of the early 20th century and Harlem Renaissance.

To read more about Nella Larsen’s fascinating life and identity issues, take a look at Discovering Parallels to Nella Larsen.

Who embodies the Harlem Renaissance more than any other writer?  Langston Hughes, of course.  This black poet created not only inspirational poetry, but poetry that is cool. Langston’s poem “Harlem” (more popularly known as “A Dream Deferred”) has been made into a Broadway stage play and a feature film.  Both adaptions have starred major black entertainers such as Phylicia Rashad, Sean “P. Diddy” Combs, Sanaa Lathan and Audra McDonald, thus carrying on the Harlem Renaissance tradition.

The poem “Harlem” continues to inspire a whole new generation of Americans with its jazzy rhythm and lyrical beats.  Perhaps this is arguably one of the most famous lines in American poetry to date:

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
like a raisin in the sun?

The Harlem Renaissance continues to live on at Literary Traveler with our three articles featuring the great poet, Langston Hughes.  We have Hughes in Harlem, Hughes in Washington D.C. and even Hughes in Turkmenistan … with a surprise ending?!

Celebrate Black History with LT.  Happy Reading to all …

A New Kind of Renaissance: Touring Harlem

The Harlem Renaissance, Washington DC And The Rise of Langston Hughes

From Turkmenistan to America: How I Found Langston Hughes

Black History Month continues with Faith Ringgold, renown artist and author of the children’s classic Tar Beach.  Ringgold grew up in the Depression era in Harlem in the 1930s. As a young girl, she saw the injustices of money and race firsthand during the latter years of the Harlem Renaissance.

Ringgold not only created beautiful art from her experiences, but she decided to take a chance and write Tar Beach.  This book centers on little Cassie Lightfoot, a black girl protagonist.  She uses the rooftop of her Harlem apartment building (her “tar beach”) as a launch pad to fly all over Harlem, especially to segregated areas, which Cassie, as a black girl, would not have been allowed.

Tar Beach gives permission for black children, and all children for that matter, to dream and dream big.  That’s the beauty of Cassie’s story: she’s a dreamer and she can accomplish things others could never even fathom.  So take a trip down memory lane with us and think back to the time when you were a dreamer with our article entitled Faith Ringgold’s Tar Beach, A Literary Review.

And please note, this is just the start of our Harlem articles.  Next week will be entirely dedicated to the Harlem Renaissance on LT.net!  So stay tuned …