Margaret Walker Biography Essay Research Paper Donna

Margaret Walker Biography Essay, Research Paper

Donna Allego

Margaret Abigail Walker was born on 7 July 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama. Her

parents, the Reverend Sigismund C. Walker, a Methodist minister and an educator, and

Marion Dozier Walker, a music teacher, encouraged her to read poetry and philosophy from

an early age.

Walker completed her high school education at Gilbert

Academy in New Orleans, Louisiana, where her family had moved in 1925. She went on to

attend New Orleans University (now Dillard University) for two years. Then, after

acclaimed poet Langston Hughes recognized her talent and urged her to seek training in the

North, she transferred to Northwestern University in Chicago, Illinois, where she received

a B.A. in English in 1935, at the age of nineteen. In 1937, she published "For My

People" in Poetry magazine. Her first poem to appear in print, it became one

of her most famous and was even anthologized in 1941 in The Negro Caravan before

becoming the opening poem of her first volume of verse in 1942.

In 1936, she took on full-time work with the Federal

Writers’ Project in Chicago under Franklin D. Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration,

befriending and collaborating with such noted artists as Gwendolyn Brooks, Katherine

Dunham, and Frank Yerby. Perhaps the most memorable of these friendships with fellow

artists was that with noted author Richard Wright,

whose texts Walker would later help research and revise. In 1988, Walker would also write

a book recalling that friendship, entitled Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait

of the Man, a Critical Look at His Work. Involvement in the Writers’ Project offered

Walker a firsthand glimpse of the struggles of her inner-city brothers and sisters who

were products of the Great Migration, a movement that had resulted in hard times and

broken dreams for many southern black immigrants.

During this time, Walker authored an urban novel, "Goose Island," which was

never published.

After completing her tenure with the WPA in 1939,

Walker returned to school, entering the creative writing program at the University of

Iowa, where she earned a master of arts degree in 1940 and, later, a Ph.D. in 1965. In

1941, Walker began teaching at Livingstone College in Salisbury, North Carolina; in 1942

she left for one year to teach at West Virginia State College. In that year, she also

published her first volume of poems, For My People, with the title poem quickly

becoming her signature piece and helping elevate her toward success. For this volume,

which served as her master’s thesis at Iowa, she won the Yale Younger Poets Award.

In 1943, Walker married Firnist James Alexander, or

"Alex," as she loving called him, an interior designer and decorator. Following

the birth of their first three children (they raised a total of four during their years of

marriage), the couple moved to Jackson, Mississippi, in 1949. Walker began a prosperous

teaching career at Jackson State College in the same year, retiring from its English

department thirty years later in 1979. In 1968 she founded the Institute for the Study of

History, Life, and Culture of Black People (now the Margaret Walker Alexander National

Research Center); she directed the center until her retirement. During her tenure at

Jackson State, Walker also organized and chaired the Phillis Wheatley Poetry Festival.

Following retirement, she remained active as professor emerita until her death in the fall

of 1998.

Jubilee, a neo-slave narrative based on the

collected memories of her maternal grandmother, Elvira Ware Dozier, was published in 1966,

only a year after Walker completed the first version of it for her dissertation. Many

scholars view the novel as an African American response to America’s fascination with Gone

With the Wind (1936). Others recognize the work as an example of the historic

presence that the author commands as a prophet of sorts for her people. The novel has

enjoyed tremendous popularity, winning the Houghton Mifflin Literary Award (1968), having

been translated into seven languages, and having never gone out of print. It has also led

the author into controversy: in 1988, Walker found herself in conflict with the famed

author of Roots, Alex Haley, whom she accused of infringing on her copyright of Jubilee.

However, her lawsuit against him was dismissed. Walker provides further detail regarding

the production of the novel in her 1972 essay, "How I Wrote Jubilee."

Walker followed Jubilee with Prophets for

a New Day (1970), a poetic treatment of the historic civil rights struggle of blacks

in America. It also celebrates the tradition of African American folktales and expression.

October Journey (1973), more personal in tone,

still resonates with Walker’s commitment to uplift the black race’s struggle for freedom

through a

Внимание, отключите Adblock

Вы посетили наш сайт со включенным блокировщиком рекламы!
Ссылка для скачивания станет доступной сразу после отключения Adblock!

Скачать