This image captures Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Ntozake Shange, June Jordan, Lori Sharpe, and Audrey Edwards, among others, who met 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 photo on the wall is of Bessie Smith. The earth shook.
UPDATE: Let's unravel 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 Suicide / 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.
Image Credit: Toni Morrison's Facebook page.
What a fantastic image: so inspiring!
Posted by: Buried In Print | January 24, 2012 at 07:00 PM