ByRenee Easley, Annette Hawkins, April

Madere, and Diane SemmesLoyola University New Orleans

May 3, 2007

Harriet Jacobs1813-1897

Eudora Welty1909-2001

Margaret Walker1915-1998

Shirley Ann Grau1930-

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/welty_eudora/

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Sjacobs.htm http://www.edwardsly.com/

walkerm.html

http://www.alabamaliterarymap.org/author.cfm?AuthorID=27

Photo source:http://www.harrietjacobspapers.org/

“My master had power and law on his side; I had a determined will. There is might in each.“ Harriet Jacobs

Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JACOBS/hjch5.htm

“It was not Harriet Jacob’s nature to give up without a fight.” http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4p2923.html

Harriet Jacobs was born a slave in 1813 in Edenton, North Carolina

She lived with her parents until her mother died when Jacobs was six. Jacobs lived with her mothers mistress until the mistress died and the ownership of Jacobs transferred to the mistress’ niece. Since the niece was three years old, Harriet’s actual master was the niece’s father, Dr. James Norcom.

When Jacobs turned 15, Dr. Norcom began a relentless fight for sexual relations

Jacobs refused and befriended a white male neighbor who was a lawyer in order to disrupt Norcom’s plans

She had sexual relations with this neighbor and eventually bore a daughter, then a son.

When Norcom’s pursuit continued, Jacob’s decided to escape. In 1835 she escaped to the crawlspace of her grandmothers attic where she would live for seven years. Her children were bought by their biological father, the lawyer, and lived with Jacob’s grandmother.

Jacobs did not see her children, even though she was in the crawlspace of the same house, due to possible capture by her Master

Dr. Norcom’s House. Photo Source: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/JACOBS/hj-flint.htm

In 1842, after 7 years in the crawlspace, Jacob’s made her escape to freedom. She sailed to Philadelphia and then travelled to New York by train.

Jacobs was reunited in New York with her daughter, who had been sent by her father. Eventually, she also met up with her son

In New York Jacobs became involved with the abolitionists associated with Frederick Douglass’ paper, the North Star, and was actively involved with the abolition movement before the launch of the civil war

Jacobs became legally free after a friend arranged her purchase

Popular abolitionist emblem designed in 1787http://www.nationalgeographic.com/features/99/railroad/j1.html

During the Civil War Jacobs worked as a nurse in Virginia

When the Emancipation Proclamation was issued in 1863 Jacobs wrote to Lydia Maria Child that: "I have lived to hear the Proclamation of Freedom for my suffering people. All my wrongs are forgiven. I am more than repaid for all I have endured."

Harriet Jacobs lived the latter part of her life in Washington, died on 7th March, 1897, and is buried in Mount Auburn Cemetery, Cambridge, Massachusetts.

http://www.spartacus.schoolnet.co.uk/Sjacobs.htm

Jacobs friends convinced her to write an account about her life as a slave.

Jacobs wrote a slave narrative, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl, Written by Herself.

Jacobs wrote her narrative under the pseudonym Linda Brent and gave her characters fictional names although they were real people in her life

After the book was finished it was edited by a friend, Lydia Maria Child, and published in 1861.

This narrative is a story about the sacrifices Jacobs made to protect her family and to help her two children, as well as herself, become legally free

Jacobs wrote with the intention that people would learn how horrible slavery was and would be inspired to work for the abolition of the institution.

Jacobs crossed the color line in order to appeal to mainly white women. Her story was directed to northern, middle and upper class women.

She wanted these women to realize that women were not free until all women were free

Sentimentalism was a part of the writing style of domestic women in the 19th century. This style enabled Jacobs to appeal to the feelings of her audience and its function was to get the audience involved emotionally

Jacobs possessed a story and the ability to tell it despite efforts to silence her

“Slavery is terrible for men; but it is far more terrible for women” Harriet Jacobs acknowledgement that black women bear a greater burden of gender and race under slavery

Jacobs defied the puritan style of writing of her time by writing about sexual degradation and harassment

Her narrative is a political cause Jacobs’ narrative moved beyond conventional

abolitionists writings and develops a case for female slaves

Jacobs reveals the unspeakable event of male sexual violence and enforces the reader to realize the abuse

Jacobs uses her own oppression to discuss a political issue

“Reader, it is not to awaken sympathy for myself that I am telling you truthfully what I suffered in slavery. I do it to kindle a flame of compassion in your hearts for my sisters who are still in bondage, suffering as I once suffered.” Harriet Jacobs as written in Incidents

Thanks to photographer  Mark Wilkins, who took this  picture of Eudora Welty  while working on the documentary Great Drives Source for both pictures: http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers/Welty.html

Born April 13, 1909 in Jackson, Mississippi The only daughter of Christian & Chestina

Welty. Father was an Insurance Executive Mother was a School Teacher. She felt

strongly about the need for reading. During a house fire, Chestina threw out

Dickens books before getting herself to safety.

Eudora lived a more sheltered life than other Southern Writers.

Died July 22, 2001 of pneumonia, age 92

Graduated from Central High School, Jackson, Mississippi

Attended Mississippi State College for Women, Columbus, Mississippi

Graduated from University of Wisconsin in 1927

Later attended Columbia University Graduate School of Business in New York studied advertising

1931 Radio Station WJDX Publicity Agent for Works Progress

Administration

1936 Death of a Traveling Salesman 1941 A Curtain of Green 1942 The Robber Bridegroom 1946 Delta Wedding 1949 The Golden Apples 1954 The Ponder Heart 1965 Must the Novelist Crusade? 1972 The Optimist’s Daughter 1984 One Writer’s Beginning

(Autobiography)

Guggenheim Award 1942 O’Henry Award 1942, 1943, & 1968 The Gold Medal for Fiction Writing William Dean Howells Medal 1955 National Book Award for Fiction 1971 The Pulitzer Prize 1973 Mississippi established May 2 as Eudora Welty

day in 1973 The Ponder Heart & The Robber Bridegroom

were made into Broadway Plays. Photography displayed in Rennes and New

York

Most stories took place in small towns or rural Mississippi.

Characters were the “common” people of the South.

Plots were about the interpersonal relationships between family members.

Stories written had a personal touch. She put herself “in another’s shoes”

when telling a story.

“Why I Live at the P.O.?” A story about sibling rivalry and manipulation. It is full of sassiness and spunk.

“Death of a Traveling Salesman” A story about a lonely salesman who gets lost and finds the true meaning of life.

“The Curtain of Green” The story of a widow’s grief after losing her husband suddenly.

During the civil rights movement Eudora received a midnight phone call asking her “What are you going to do about it?”

She responded with an essay to the Atlantic Monthly Journal in October 1965

“Why Must the Novelist Crusade?”

Eudora believed that all writers should be able to write about what they want.

She believed that your skin color or gender did not determine or limit what the writer or reader could imagine.

Stories were a work of the imagination where both the writer and the reader went. If a story is written for a cause then the novel would not have been the work of the imagination.

Used William Faulkner’s writings as examples

“When Faulkner's novels come to pictures of society that is no more, they will still be good and still be authentic.”

Welty believed that Literature was timeless and would always be of value to the reader.

Writing was a passion and to use that passion “for a cause was to cheat.”

She felt that you lost the feeling when a cause was given to the writing.

“Even we shall lie enfolded in perspective one day: what we hoped along with what we did, what we didn’t do, and not only what we were but what we missed being, what other’s yet to come might dare to be. For we are our own crusade. Before ever we write, we are.”

Eudora Welty, Must the Novelist Crusade? 1965

Photo of Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker by Rick Guy of the Clarion-Ledger

Eudora Welty and Margaret Walker were both famous writers of the same era who frequently came into contact with each other

Photo source:http://www.shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers/Walker.html

http://www.english.uiuc.edu/MAPS/poets/s_z/walker/bio.htm

http://www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/alexander_margaret_walker/

http://www.edwardsly.com/walkerm.html

Margaret Abigail Walker was encouraged by her educated parents to excel

Walker completed high school in New Orleans, Louisiana at the age of fourteen and then enrolled in Dillard University

She received her Bachelor of Arts Degree at Northwestern University in 1935, and in 1936 began working with the Federal Writer’s Project

Walker completed her master’s degree in creative writing at the University of Iowa in 1942 and her PhD in 1965

Margaret Abigail Walker was an Novelist, Essayist, and Orator

Her first collection of poetry, For My People, won the Yale Award for Young Poets in 1942

Walker is also known for her novel, Jubilee, a neo-slave narrative based on the life of her grandmother, published in 1966

She wrote Prophets for a New Day, a poetic treatment of the historic civil rights struggle of blacks in America

Walker wrote essays entitled on being female, black, and free

http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/alexander_margaret_abigail_walker.html

Walker’s writings are animated by her desire to champion African American heroism and her belief that despite racism, poverty, and oppression, African Americans will continue to work toward a better world

Walker portrays people in her work by making their lives testaments to those of their African ancestors

Walker worked with writers such as Frank Yerby, Gwendolyn Brooks, and Richard Wright

She worked with Richard Wright on several of his texts and in 1988 she published Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work.

She was a professor at Jackson State University Margaret Walker founded the Institute for the

Study of the History, Life, and Culture of Black People in 1968 and worked as Director of the program for 11 years. The program was later renamed in her honor.

Margaret Walker died at the home of her daughter in Chicago in 1998 of Breast Cancer

Margaret Walker sued Alex Haley, claiming his story, Roots, infringed on her book, Jubilee. She was unsuccessful and the case was dismissed

Margaret Walker commands as a prophet for her people

Margaret Walker is remembered as one of the foremost transcribers of African American heritage

Her interest was in a historical point of view that is central to the development of black people

"When I was about eight, I decided that the most wonderful thing, next to a human being, was a book.“

"Everything I have ever written or hoped to write is dedicated.. to our hope of peace and dignity and freedom in the world, not just as black people, or as Negroes, but as free human beings in a world community".

"White folks needs what black folks got just as much as black folks needs what white folks got, and we's all got to stay here mongst each other and get along, that's what".

Shirley Ann GrauShirley Ann Grau

Photo source: www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/ 02.26.98/cover.lit-grau-9808.html

http://www.alabamaliterarymap.org/author.cfm?AuthorID=27

Born on July 29, 1929 in New Orleans

Graduated from Tulane with Honors in the 1950’s

She married James K. Feibleman, a professor at Tulane, in 1955

She has for children, two sons and two daughters

Her first book was published in 1955. It was a collection of short stories, The Black Prince and Other Stories

Her first novel, The Hard Blue Sky, was published in 1958

In 1965, her novel The Keepers of the House won the Pulitzer Prize

Presently she lives between New Orleans and Martha’s Vineyard and still writes

Novels The Hard Blue Sky

(1964) The Keepers of the

House (1965) The House on

Coliseum Street (1961)

The Condor Passes (1971)

Evidence of Love (1977)

Roadwalkers (1994)

Short Stories Collections

The Black Prince and Other Stories (1955)

The Wind Shifting West (1973)

Nine Women (1985)

Selected Stories (2003)

The Keepers of The House was Grau’s Pulitzer winner in 1965. It was based on a family who lived in rural Alabama. The main character in the book, Abigail Pearson, has a wonderful life married to an up and coming attorney/gubernatorial candidate. Her life is soon cast into turmoil when one of her grandfather’s stepchildren brings to light the fact that his mother (the black housekeeper) and Abigail’s grandfather were married.

Abigail is then forced to defend her home against the angry white townspeople who had no problem with the knowledge that Abigail’s grandfather had a black mistress; a black wife however, is intolerable.

Grau showed a great deal of courage having written such a controversial novel in 1965 when interracial relationships were most controversial in the south.

Shirley Ann Grau’s novel, The Keepers of The House

www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/12/29/shirley.grau.ap/

On the label of being a “Southern woman writer:”

“I would like once in my life to have something I write taken as fiction, not as Southern sociology.”

She loathes the pigeonhole, and dislikes the common comparison of her work to other Southern woman writers.

Quote source: www.washingtonpost.com

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/03/25/AR2005032504147.html

“Logic is not the strong point of critics,” Grau has said when speaking of comments on her works.

“Grau has little interest in what’s said about her work. She sneers and rolls her eyes at the phrase often used to describe her-”Southern woman writer.” www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/12/29/shirley.grau.ap/

“The only unfortunate thing about Grau’s stories is precisely that they are short-each is a glimpse of landscapes both interior and exterior that ends too soon,” writes a brief in the New York Times review of Collected Stories.Quote source:

www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/12/29/shirley.grau.ap

“The problem with Shirley Ann Grau is that she has consistently refused to stand still and conform to the stereotypes critics and reviewers have created for her. The problem of course, is not hers but ours, for we have consistently failed to understand the complexity of her statements and the excellence of her forms,” (Rohrberger, 1978).

Jacobs, H. (1861). Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl: Written by Herself. Boston: n.p.

Emsley, S. (1998). Harriet Jacobs and the Language of Autobiography [Electronic version]. Canadian Review of American Studies, 28(2), 146-162. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from MLA Bibliography. Loyola University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA.: http://ezproxy.loyno.edu

Yellin, J.F. (1981). Written by Herself: Harriet Jacobs' Slave Narrative. American Literature: A Journal of Literary History, Criticism, and Bibliography, 53(3), 479-486. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from MLA Bibliography. Loyola University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA.: http://ezproxy.loyno.edu

Foster, F. S. (1993). Written by herself: literary production by African American women, 1746-1892. [Electronic version]. Bloomington: Indiana University Press. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from Loyola University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA: http://ezproxy.loyno.edu

Sanchez-Eppler, K. (1993). Touching Liberty: Abolition, Feminism, and the Politics of the Body. [Electronic version]. Berkeley: University of California Press. Retrieved March 1, 2007, from Loyola University New Orleans Library, New Orleans, LA: http://ezproxy.loyno.edu

Nichols, K.L. Slavery and Freedom Literature (Part A). Retrieved March 1, 2007, from http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/sistahs.html#jacobs:

Historical DocumentsRunaway notice for Harriet Jacobs 1835http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h1541.html

Historical DocumentLetter from Harriet Jacobs to Ednah Dow Cheney 1867http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4h2925.html

Modern Voices Margaret Washington on Harriet Jacobs

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/aia/part4/4i3089.html Harriet Jacobs selected writings and correspondence http://www.yale.edu/glc/harriet/docs.htm Harriet Jacobs Site--has links to photos/drawings illustrating

slave life and people/places in her autobiography. Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl--complete text.

http://faculty.pittstate.edu/~knichols/sistahs.html#jacobs

Johnston, C. A. (February 2005, February 1998). Eudora Welty. Retrieved February 3, 2007., from www.olemiss.edu/depts/english/ms-writers/dir/welty_eudora/

Public Broadcasting Service (n.d.). Eudora Welty Biography. Retrieved February 3, 2007, from www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/ponder/timeline_bio.html

The Eudora Welty Foundation (n.d.). . Retrieved March 3, 2007, from www.eudorawelty.org

Smith, J. (2004, Fall). Politics and the White Southern Woman Writer. Southern Literary Journal, 37(1), pp.167-172.

Welty, E. (1936). Death of a Traveling Salesman. In (Ed.), The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (pp. 119-130). New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Welty, E. (1941). A Curtain of Green. In (Ed.), The Collected Stories of Eudora Welty (pp. 107-112). New York and London: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich.

Welty, E. (1965, October). Must the Novelist Crusade?. Retrieved April 30, 2007, from www.pbs.org/wgbh/masterpiece/americancollection/ponder/tg_crusade.html

Zuber, B. L. (2001, November). Biography of Eudora Welty. Retrieved February 3, 2007., from http://shs.starkville.k12.ms.us/mswm/MSWritersAndMusicians/writers/Welty.html

Jubilee (Boston:Houghton Mifflin, 1966;Hodder & Stroughton, 1967)

For My People (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942).

http://galenet.galegroup.com.ezproxy.loyno.edu/servlet/LitRC?locID=11n_aluno&......

http://quotemeonit.com/walkerma,htm http://www.english.uiuc.edu/MAPS/

poets/s_z/walker/bio.htm

Auburn University, Auburn. Alabama’s Literacy Landscape. (2006, October). Shirley Ann

Grau. Retrieved February 2, 2007., from www.alabamaliterarymap.org/author.cfm?AuthorID=27

Gale, T.(2001). Contemporary Novelists (7th ed.). Farmington Hills, Mi.:St. James Press.

Gale, T.(1999). Contemporary Southern Writers. Farmington Hills, Mi.:St. James Press.

Meanor,P. (Ed.).(1999). Dictionary of Literacy Biography: American Short-Story Writers since

World War II, second series. (Vol. 218). Rohrberger,M. (1978). Conversation with Shirley Ann

Grau. Cimarron Review, 43, 35-45. Schlueter,P. (1981). Shirley Ann Grau. Boston:Twayne. www.cnn.com/2003/SHOWBIZ/books/12/29/

shirley.grau.ap/ www.metroactive.com/papers/metro/02.26.98/cover/lit-

grau-9808.html