Go There To Know There

Richard Wright (1908-1960) "Generally speaking, Negro writing in the past has been confined to humble novels, poems, and plays, prim and decorous ambassadors who went a-begging to white America. They entered the Court of American Public Opinion dressed in the knee-pants of servility, curtsying to show that the Negro was not inferior, that he was human, and that he had a life comparable to that of other people. For the most part these artistic ambassadors were received as though they were French poodles who do clever tricks" ( Blueprint for Negro Writing: The Role of Negro Writing... 1403). When Richard Wright penned these words, he embarked on two distinct, yet interrelated projects: first, the writing of "the past" to which he refers here was clearly an indictment of the artists of the Harlem Renaissance and their widespread dependency on white patrons. Second, Wright's call for a new theory of African American writing was germinating: it was a theor...

Nella Larsen (1893-1964). Born to a Danish mother and a West Indian father, Nella Larsen didn't begin her professional life as a writer: instead, she attended the Nurse Training School at Tuskegee, and then headed north to work for the New York Health Department. In 1921, Larsen left the nursing profession to work at the New York Library. By this time, she had already become a fixture in the Harlem literary scene, appearing at events, and publishing short fiction pieces, essays, and magazine reviews (Gates, et al., 1079). Referred to as "Madame X" for the scarcity of details about her personal life, Larsen's fiction tells volumes about life as a woman navigating the boundaries of race in the modern world. However varied her professional life may have been, it was her parentage, one surmises, that had the greatest influence on her writing. While many writers shrink at the notion that their work might have some autobiographical nuance, it seems clear that Larsen...