Black Women Writers: As Purple is To Lavender

Standing in the checkout lane at Wild Oats supermarket a couple months ago I was sure I felt a pair of eyes on me. I turned to stare into a face that brought back a flood of memories. The poet and novelist Alice Walker peered out at me from the cover of a Shambhala Sun magazine. I paused to consider the wizened face of the woman on the magazine, a woman whose writings made an indelible impression on me when I was a young woman in my 20s and 30s. "If Alice Walker is older, then so am I," I thought to myself. I snatched the magazine up and laid it on the counter with my other purchases.

There was a time when I read Alice Walker’s writings like some people read the book of Psalms. Most of America know Walker for her commercially successful novel, The Color Purple, but those of us who have been following her for a long time know her as a talented poet and essayist as well. Revolutionary Petunias, her second book of poems, was a gift to me which I still cherish. But it was Walker’s moving essays, especially those in Ms. magazine in the 70s and 80s, that transformed me into an acolyte. They filled a void back then among feminists writings about gender and culture. She made readers see the common, everyday survival of black women as more than laudatory, but acts of triumph and mystery. Her 1974 essay "In Search of Our Mothers’ Garden" about the survival of black women’s creative genius is now a classic and required reading in women and gender studies classes today.

My colleagues and I in the academy have Walker to thank for proposing "womanist," a term deriving from southern black folk culture, as an alternative to "feminist" to distinguish headstrong, justice loving black women from other women advocating for women’s rights. "Womanist is to feminist as purple is to lavender" wrote Walker.

It would be wrong to give the impression, however, that Alice Walker was the first or only black woman writing with fire in her eyes back then. History has a way of focusing on the solitary individual, the solo event, the singular tragedy, and making it appear as though people and things arise out of nothingness. The truth is more complex: individuals are products of their contexts and events are shaped by the movements that give rise to them.

Alice Walker was among a tidal wave of creative, artistic black women writing in unprecedented numbers in the 70s and 80s: Toni Cade Bambara, June Jordan, Ntozake Shange, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Gayle Jones, Paule Marshall, Barbara Smith, Mary Helen Washington, etc. Together their writings inspired young women like me to imagine ourselves as writers too one day.

They were fiery products of the 60s freedom movements, although it would take the women’s movement of the 70s and 80s for their artistry and autonomy to come together.

My numerous moves have resulted in my losing many of the first editions books I bought back then. But the jacket covers of many remain filed on a hard drive in my mind: Sula, The Black Woman: An Anthology, In Love and In Trouble, Black-Eyed Susans, Corregidora, All the Women are White, All The Men are Black, But Some of Us Are Brave. After a long, soul-numbing day at work in the financial markets of Wall Street it was not unusual for me to stay up all night reading. I'd stumble into work the next morning blurry-eyed, but quietly rescued from the abyss by women writers who reminded me of the sacred character of black women’s survival.

It’s time for me to get back into the habit of reading fiction. I am tired of reality. Today I stop by the black book section of a local book store and scan the shelf for the book my new book club is reading this month. Multiples shelves of obnoxiously colorful, shiny covers, featuring sepia-colored woman with big butts and plenty of cleavage (and attitude) are before me. Men in wife beater shirts in various poses lurk in the background. Words are misspelled, and key words reappear in the title of this genre of books known as ghetto fiction: "candy," "poppin'," "nasty," "grimey," "hustla," "'hood," "gangsta" and "ghetto." Ghetto fiction is everywhere. You can't pass a street vendor, beauty salon, the African-American section of a chain bookstore, or even an independent black bookstore without tripping all over it. No question ghetto fiction has black people who never heard of Alice Walker or Zora Neal Hurston reading (blacks spent a near $300 million on books in 2006). Thongs on Fire is one of the titles.

On second thought, perhaps I''ll just renew my library card. In the meantime, post a comment here on the blog on a good novel you've read that I should pick up.