Black History Month 2024: Three Women Writers’ Impact on Black Literary Arts

By Melissa Spellman
Staff Reporter
New Journal and Guide

African-American literature is an essential part of American Literature from the slave narratives to the creative spark of the Harlem Renaissance to the writings of the civil rights movements. Well known works of the civil rights movement are James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain, Ralph Emerson’s Invisible Man, and Lorraine Hansbury’s A Raisin In The Sun. However, there are many writers whose literary contributions are often overlooked. 

Writers Pauli Murray, Audre Lorde, and Danielle Evans represent past and present writers who have influenced literature through activism, highlighting women’s issues, and feminist writings.

Pauli Murray

Pauli Murray is one of the most interesting writers and activists in history that you may not know about. She was born in Baltimore, Maryland on November 20, 1910.

Following the death of her parents, she was raised by her aunt Pauline Fitzgerald Dame, and her grandparents, Robert George and Cornelia Smith Fitzgerald, in Durham, N.C.

Her upbringing shaped her to become a Firestarter. A young Murray sat in a classroom observing the lessons her aunt taught to the older students.

This contributed to her writing ability and inquisitive nature. In 1926 Murray graduated from Hillside High School and moved to New York City. She attended Hunter College working several jobs to support herself. She obtained an English degree in 1933.

Rejected by Harvard because women were not permitted, she wrote several letters to Harvard and to President Roosevelt highlighting the unfair treatment due to her gender and race. During this time, Murray developed a life-long friendship and correspondence with the first lady, Eleanor Roosevelt.

In 1941, Murray enrolled at the law school at Howard University with the intention of becoming a civil rights lawyer. Pauli Murray’s writing continued to influence and help progress the movement for justice. In 1943, Murray published two important essays on civil rights that would be the building blocks of the Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s. Murray would never receive her due credit for her input.

Murray was fearless and ahead of her time. Everything about Pauli Murray’s life is profoundly amazing. Whether it was her remarkable intelligence, her unwillingness to accept segregation, her quest to understand her own identity, or her fearlessness to push the marker, and try new things. Her poetry reflects the obstacles and conflicts in her life. The poems “Words” and “The Oppressor” written by Pauli Murray embody the journey she took in the face of rejection and the trail she blazed to fight for the rights of Black people, women, and humankind.

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde

Audre Lorde is well-known as a writer, poet, feminist, and civil rights activist. Lorde was born on February 18, 1934, in Harlem, New York. Lorde graduated from both Hunter College and Columbia University. She would go to become a librarian in the New York public schools during the 1960s and a professor. She is known for her work advocating against classism, sexism, and racism. She was a feminist and recognized for her profound writings on woman’s issues and racial injustices.

Lorde was a perceptive poet and speaker. One of her most famous poems is Poetry is Not A Luxury. She implied that poetry is not a luxury but rather an ingrained necessity that must be explored. Lorde said that poetry is how women survive and thrive. Poetry is the foundation of our hopes and dreams. It’s where we find the language to express these hopes and dreams into ideas and the ideas into real change in the world.

Lorde was not only a poet but also a philosopher. Some of her popular literary works are The First Cities, Zami: A New Spelling of My Name; and The Cancer Journals. The Cancer Journals was published in 1980.

It is her personal account of her fight to beat breast cancer and her experience having a mastectomy. The journals shed light on a shared experience among humankind. She would succumb to cancer in 1992 at the age of 58. Lordes impact on the literary world still influences activists, scholars, poets, and writers today.

Danielle Evans

Danielle Evans is a Black writer and author. She is a native of  Northern Virgnia.  She writes in the fiction genre and is best known for her short story collection Before You Suffocate Your Own Fool Self. She was featured as one of the five under 35 fiction writers, an honor given by the National Book Foundation. One of her most noted works debuted in 2020 called The Office of Historical Corrections which consists of seven short stories.

Evans graduated from Columbia University as well as the University of Iowa. She has received several honors and in 2008, 2010, and 2017 was featured in Houghton Mifflin Harcourt’s Best American Short Stories collections anthology. Her stories have also appeared in The Paris Review and A Public Space. Evan worked as an assistant professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, American University, and John Hopkins where she currently teaches.

Evans’ short stories offer a different narrative for women particularly young Black women. Her stories illustrate how Black women show up in the world and the multifaceted experiences we encounter. She extends the portrayal of Black women beyond the single story and lens from which we are often viewed. Evan has gained much notoriety however as an author and writer. She is one to keep an eye as she continues her literary pursuit.