Caitlin’s Reviews > Black Women Writers at Work > Status Update

Margaret Walker: A lot of this interview is dedicated to Walker's work on Richard Wright's biography, which was certainly interesting but definitely unfamiliar to me.

Alice Walker: "Writing permits me to be more than I am. Writing permits me to experience life as any number of strange creations."

Ntozake Shange: "If there is an audience for whom I write, it's the little girls who are coming of age. I want them to know that they are not alone and that we adult women thought and continue to think about them... I will not be guilty of having left a generation of girls behind thinking that anyone can tend to their emotional health other than themselves."

Sonia Sanchez: "I do think that it's important to leave a legacy of my books for my children to read and understand; to leave a legacy of the history of black people who have moved toward revolution and freedom; to leave a legacy of not being afraid to tell the truth, which you must accept the consequences for, but you do not have to be afraid."

Toni Morrison: Yet another author I really need to read more of. Morrison just feels like she's visiting our earth, bringing new wisdom and perspective. Truly something writing for the love of art and truth.

"My writing expects, demands participatory reading, and that I think is what literature is supposed to do...My language has to have holes and spaces so the reader can come into it."

Audre Lorde: I really need to read more Lorde. The little I've read of her work has been really human and insightful.

"Even if you are afraid, do it anyway because we learn to work when we are tired, so we can learn to work when we are afraid. Silence never brought us anything. Survive and teach; that's what we've got to do and to do it with joy."

Gayl Jones: This interview was heavier on specific themes from Jones' work, but I am certainly interested in her novels.

"It feels so strange to have people dissect my stories. There's something about it I'm not sure about. I don't know what possible path my writing might have taken had there not been critics. They do make me think of my work in a more self-conscious way."

Kristin Hunter: "I marvel at the many ways we, as black people, bend but do not break in order to survive. This astonishes me, and what excites me I write about. Every one of us is a wonder. Every one of us has a story."

Nikki Giovanni: "If I never contradict myself then I'm either not thinking or I'm conciliating positions and, therefore not growing. There has to be a contradiction. There would be no point to having me go three-fourths of the way around the world if I couldn't create an inconsistency, if I hadn't learned anything."

Alexis De Veaux:

"As black people, in literature and in life, we have to pass our experience on. We don't have the luxury of forgetting it and starting all over again. It's too easy to have something new all the time. And it's too dangerous to let someone else have the responsibility for passing it on."