Born in the rural mountain community of Chloe Creek in Pike County, Kentucky, Effie Waller Smith (1879–1960) was the daughter of Sibbie Ratliff and Frank Waller, both of whom were formerly enslaved.
Effie’s parents ensured that their children would be well educated, and to that end, she attended Kentucky Normal School for Colored Persons, and from 1900 to 1902 where she trained as a teacher. Afterwards, she taught for some years.
Effie’s verse appeared in local papers, and she published her first collection, Songs of the Months, in 1904. That same year she entered a marriage that didn’t last long, and she divorced her husband. Read More→
The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas by Gertrude Stein (1933) is actually Stein’s autobiography, written as if in her longtime companion’s voice.
Considered one of the most accessible of Stein’s experimental, often ponderous works, it was a commercial and critical success. It is indeed narrated as if Alice is doing the writing, and this comes through in a fresh and vibrant manner.
Some of Gertrude’s colleagues didn’t much care for the book. Some thought it too commercial, as indeed, the author admitted that she cranked it out in six weeks as a way to make money. Ernest Hemingway, to whom Gertrude was a mentor, called it “a damned pitiful book,” and her brother, Leo Stein, who disliked Alice, called it “a farrago of lies.” Read More→
“What in the world has happened to Beth Ellen?” Harriet wonders, just a few pages from the end of Louise Fitzhugh’s classic 1964 novel, Harriet the Spy.
Harriet is still eleven years old and she sometimes still calls her friend ‘Mouse,’ but Beth Ellen comes into her own as a character in the 1965 novel, The Long Secret.
The Toronto Public Library has eighty-two copies of Harriet the Spy (1964) but only six copies of what was billed as the “Further Adventures of Harriet the Spy” — The Long Secret by Louise Fitzhugh, which was published the following year, and only two copies of Sport (1979). Read More→
Marcie McCauley reflects on revisiting Harriet the Spy, the 1964 classic by Louise Fitzhugh, and how the story continues to resonate and inspire her as a working writer.
See, first you take off your coat and hang it on the back of a library chair, use it to mark a comfortable seat as your place to return to with a stack of books. Then you fetch the ones you remember most fondly. You can’t have too many at one time or the librarians are annoyed. I usually have ten.* Read More→
Gloria Evangelina Anzaldúa (September 26, 1942 – May 15, 2004) was a queer Chicana poet, feminist theorist, and writer. Going by the name Gloria E. Anzaldúa as an author, her writing and poetry discuss the anger that stems from social and cultural marginalization.
She herself experienced this kind of marginalization growing up in the Mexican-Texas border as the daughter of a Spanish American and Native American. (Photo above right courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.)
Anzaldúa was born in Jesús María Ranch in the Rio Grande Valley of South Texas as the oldest of four siblings. Throughout her childhood, her parents, Urbano Anzaldúa and Amalia Anzaldúa García, moved their family to various ranches working as migrant farmers.
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Lorraine Hansberry (1930 – 1965) was an American playwright and author. Presented here is a sampling of quotes from A Raisin in the Sun, Hansberry’s most famous work.
Her best-known work, A Raisin in the Sun (1959), was the first play by an African-American woman to be staged on Broadway. And at the age of twenty-nine, Hansberry became the youngest American and the first Black playwright to win the New York Drama Critics’ Circle Award for Best Play.
The play details the life of the Youngers, an African-American family living on the South Side of Chicago in the 1950s. It follows their struggles to overcome prejudice while staying strong as a family unit. Read More→
My Cousin Rachel is a novel by British author Daphne du Maurier (1907 – 1989), first published in the U.K. in 1951 and in the U.S. in 1952. Echoing du Maurier’s 1938 masterwork Rebecca, My Cousin Rachel is a romantic thriller. Read on for quotes from My Cousin Rachel, which will give you the flavor of this iconic novel.
It’s set primarily on a large estate in Cornwall, England, where du Maurier drew real-life inspiration. She saw a portrait of a woman named Rachel Carew at an estate, and the creative spark was lit.
Multiple television and film adaptations of this novel have been produced. My Cousin Rachel was adapted into a 1983 BBC miniseries, and as a 2011 radio play, also by the BBC. Most recently, a film adaptation was released in 2017 starring the aptly named Rachel Weisz in the title role. Read More→
A House with Four Rooms (1989) is the second part of a two-part autobiography by Rumer Godden (1907 – 1998). A noted and prolific novelist and memoirist born in Eastbourne, Sussex (England), her early years and youth were spent in India at the height of British colonial rule.
Though her life was not without its share of struggles, it was often as dramatic and colorful as the stories she so skillfully created.
Interestingly, she based the title — A House With Four Rooms —on an Indian proverb, which says: “Everyone is a house with four rooms, a physical, a mental, an emotional and a spiritual. Most of us tend to live in one room most of the time but, unless we go into every room, every day, even if only to keep it aired, we are not a complete person.” Read More→
