Women translators in history have been forgotten for too long before being recently acknowledged in Wikipedia thanks to its many contributors. Marie Lebert has compiled brief biographies on women translators of the past into pdfs in three languages:
Categories: Full Texts of Classic Works
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Georgia Douglas Johnson (1880 – 1966) was a prominent poet associated with the Harlem Renaissance movement. Following is the full text of Bronze: A Book of Verse (1922), her second collection of published poetry.
Bronze was preceded by The Heart of a Woman and Other Poems (1918). Next came An Autumn Love Cycle (1928), and many years later, Share My World (1962). Her poems were also published in numerous periodicals and anthologies, particularly in the 1920s.
In her poetry, Georgia addressed issues of race as well as universal themes of love, motherhood, and being a woman in a male-dominated world. Of all her works, Bronze most directly addressed issues of race and racism. Bronze: A Book of Verse is in the public domain. Read More→
Categories: Full Texts of Classic Works, Poetry
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Alice Dunbar-Nelson (1875 – 1935) was a poet, short story writer, essayist, and journalist often associated with the Harlem Renaissance. Violets and Other Tales (1895), her first collection, combined poetry and prose in the same volume. “Violets,” the story that opens the book, is presented here in full.
Published when she was just twenty years old and going by her original name of Alice Ruth Moore, Violets and Other Tales includes short stories interspersed with the poems. This early work hints at feminism and social justice, predicting of the types of themes that would become her hallmark.
Her mixed heritage of Black, Creole, European, and Native American gave her a broad perspective on race. She explored racial issues in tandem with the varied and complex issues faced by women of color.
Categories: Full Texts of Classic Works
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“A Pair of Silk Stockings,” a short story by Kate Chopin first published in an 1897 issue of Vogue magazine. Chopin was a wonderful Southern writer whose 1899 novella, The Awakening, was so controversial (imagine, a woman with dreams and desires!) that it virtually destroyed her literary reputation. Fortunately. her work was rediscovered in the late 1960s and has been a staple of America literature since.
Kate Chopin enjoyed contributing to Vogue because she believed that the magazine was uncharacteristically “fearless and truthful” in its portrayals of women’s lives of that era. Chopin’s writing style may have been gentle on the surface, but it fearlessly probed the unrealistic expectations and Victorian attitudes that held women down. Read More→
Categories: Full Texts of Classic Works
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Originally published in 1926, Zora Neale Hurston’s short story, “Sweat,” is nuanced and eloquently compact. Hurston maximizes each word, object, character, and plot point to create an impassioned and enlightening narrative.
Within this small space, Hurston addresses a number of themes, such as the trials of femininity, which she explores with compelling and efficient symbolism.
In her introduction to the 1997 anthology entirely devoted to the story (“Sweat” by Zora Neale Hurston), editor Cheryl A. Wall wrote: Read More→
Categories: Full Texts of Classic Works
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