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Celebrating African American History through literature

© Dorothy Harris

February, as everyone well knows, is African American history month. It is the month during which much attention is given to the celebration of African American contributors and contributions to our country. We sing the praises of our ancestors, and of our contemporaries who have made our experiences in this country a little more bearable, a bit more progressive, a bit less oppressive. We hear stories of those heroes, known and unknown who have paved the way for us to even have an African American history month. We have speakers, singers, dancers, movies and plays. We are totally immersed in the celebration...

This week's article celebrates writers whose works contribute to African American communities and to these women I pour libation...

Libation.... In the name of those writers, past and present, who have shown the world that black women writers are diverse, political, powerful, insightful and who provide a window of opportunity, of vision, of voice, of empowerment. As I am unable to list every writer, I will call the names of only a few...

Lucy Terry, Phillis Wheatley, Harriet Wilson, Jesse Fauset, Nella Larsen, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, Nikki Giovanni, Zora Neale Hurston, Barbara Christian, Gwendolyn Brooks, Minnie Harris,Toni Morrison, Margaret Walker, Gloria Naylor, Mari Evans, Carolyn Rogers, Angela Davis, Maya Angelou, Lucille Clifton, Alexis DeVeaux, Toni Cade Bambara, Nikki Baker, June Jordan, Kathleen Morris... Ashe..

These are some of the writers who works speak to, speak for, speak about the lives of our mothers, our fathers, our sisters, our brothers, who speak to us, and to the world for us. Their works celebrate African American, African, Black history all year round, in more ways than one, and in more forms than songs, dance, and visible celebration. More than just a week or even a month are given to discussions and writings about being black in America. They labor year after year after year, and are part of a continuum, part of a tradition of African American women's voice that stretches from Lucy Terry's "Bar Fights" in 1746 to those writings still knocking at the publisher's doors today.

These are writers who understand Audre Lorde when she writes that "Poetry is not a Luxury," whose eyes well up in tears when reading Sonia Sanchez's "Middle Passage," which connects our foremothers making the trip from Africa to America to our current experiences as Black women in America. They are writers whose work make connections between Jacob's Linda Brent and Morrison's Sula. These writers know that for women of African descent, our work as writers compels us to do more than tell a good story. They know that our story is necessary to be told. It often means telling a story of imprisonment without liberation, of struggle without resolution, of pain without relief. Certainly many works by many writers offer solutions to liberation, to resolution, to relief, however, it is not unique for the work to end without such solutions. It often means fighting for social change, for solutions, for answers right in the text. It means telling the readers how to perceive African American women, it means retelling an old story, connecting it to a new one. It means echoing writers of a hundred or even two hundred years ago to drive home a contemporary issue. It means remembering the words of those writers like N.F. Mosell who writes in 1897 that African American women have to tell our stories our own selves in order to be accurately depicted in this society. It means, sometimes saying the same thing in 2001.

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