Lola Ridge (born Rose Emily Ridge (December 12, 1873 – May 19, 1941) was an Irish-American radical poet and editor.
“Anything that burns you” was the advice she gave English critic Alice Hunt Bartlett when she asked what poets should be writing in 1925. “I write about something that I feel intensely. How can you help writing about something you feel intensely?”
The New York Times declared her “one of America’s best poets” when she died, but her interest in radicalism, feminism, and experimental poetry wrote her out of literary history. Read More→
Simone de Beauvoir (1908 – 1986) was a French author, existential philosopher, political activist, feminist, and social theorist. The sampling of quotes from The Second Sex (1949) presented here will make you question how far women have come, and how far there is still to go.
As de Beauvoir’s most enduring work, The Second Sex is still read and studied as an essential manifesto on women’s oppression and liberation.
In addition to this nonfiction masterwork, she was also the author of memoirs, essay collections, and novels, all drawing on her sharp observations of human nature and reflecting her particular philosophical views. Read More→
Lydia Maria Francis Child (February 11, 1802 – October 20, 1880) was a prolific American author, social reformer, journalist, and abolitionist.
Born in Medford, Massachusetts, she was educated despite the disapproval of her father, a baker, who thought she ought not to read at all.
But Lydia’s appetite for learning was voracious, and the books she devoured were supplied primarily by her brother Convers Francis, who later became a Unitarian minister and professor at Harvard Divinity School. Read More→
Zora Neale Hurston (January 7, 1891 – January 28, 1960), was a novelist, memoirist, and ethnographer best known for Their Eyes Were Watching God, her 1937 novel. (Photo at right by Carl Van Vechten.)
Her love of story would lead her not only to create her own, but to collect tales from the oral traditions of the African American South and the Black cultures of the Caribbean.
With her determined intelligence and irrepressible personality, she quickly became a big name in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. She pursued a dual career as a writer (producing fiction, plays, and essays) and as an anthropologist.
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Harriet Beecher Stowe (June 14, 1811 – July 1, 1896), American author and abolitionist, is best known for the anti-slavery novel Uncle Tom’s Cabin.
She grew up in a large, socially progressive family of ministers, authors, reformers, and educators who were well known in their time.
Among Harriet’s siblings were the prominent minister Henry Ward Beecher, and educator Catharine Beecher. She showed an early talent for writing and in her early twenties had a steadily paying profession, contributing articles to numerous publications. Read More→
She Came to Stay by Simone de Beauvoir was originally published in France in 1943 as L’Invitee. The autobiographical, philosophical novel was based on de Beauvoir’s open relationship with Jean-Paul Sartre, and takes place just before and during World War II.
The novel’s main character, Françoise, is based on de Beauvoir herself, and Pierre is a thinly veiled Sartre. A younger woman, Xaviere, enters their lives as they form a ménage a trois. Xaviere is a mash-up of sisters Olga and Wanda Kosakiewicz. Read More→
Comedy, American Style by Jessie Redmon Fauset (1882 – 1961) was the last novel by this influential author, poet, and editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Published in 1933, the title is completely ironic; this story is, if anything, more of a tragedy.
In this story, Jessie Fauset explores themes of racial identity, self-hatred, and the concept of “passing” in the deeply biased American culture. The main character, Olivia Cary, is a domineering mother who wants her children to pass as white, which leads to to dire consequences for the family. Read More→
Quicksand (1928) was the first novel by by Nella Larsen, an author associated with the Harlem Renaissance. A story with autobiographical elements, it was generally well received, though not a big seller.
Helga Crane, the main character, like Nella Larsen, is the mixed-race daughter of a white Danish mother and a black father.
The plot takes her back and forth from Denmark, “Naxos” (a thinly veiled version of the Tuskegee Institute, where Larsen worked briefly), and Harlem. Wherever Helga goes, she fails to find a community in which she can be comfortable with who she is. Read More→
