02/22/2024
Sistas gonna work it out! Can you imagine being part of a women’s writing group in 1977 that included Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, Ntozake Shange, June Jordan Lori Sharp, and Audrey Edwards?
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This image captures these sistas together in Walker’s apartment on Garfield Place for a black women’s writing group. Poet Patricia Spears Jones was also part of the group. The hanging photo on the wall is of Bessie Smith.
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Let’s look at a little context here. In 1977, Alice Walker had just published Meridian, and was a few years away from The Color Purple. Toni Morrison won the National Book Critics Circle award for Song of Solomon; she’d also already published The Bluest Eye and Sula. In 1977, June Jordan published Things That I Do in the Dark: Selected Poems, 1954–1977. Ntozake Shange was two years past having seen her poetic play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Su***de / When the Rainbow is Enuf nominated for Tony, Grammy, and Emmy awards. Her play A Photograph: Lovers-in-Motion was about to debut off-Broadway. Audrey Edwards was writing biographies for young people on the likes of Stevie Wonder and Muhammad Ali. Info by Isak
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