ipl-logo

Pearl Cleage: A Brief Biography

2595 Words11 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: Langston hughes and maya angelou

A poet, playwright, prose writer, performance artist, and editor of Catalyst magazine. Pearl Cleage was born in Detroit, Michigan 1948, and was educated at Howard University, Spelman College, and Atlanta University. Her father, Jaramogi Abebe Azaman (Albert Cleage), founded and developed Black Christian Nationalism. She also came under the direct influence of the political and intellectual ferment of the 1960s and 1970s (—Carol P. Marsh-Lockett in THE C O N C I S E OXFORD COMPANION TO African American Literature , p. 99).
Cleage’s parents believed it was equally important to maintain an atmosphere that nurtured an appreciation and knowledge of black culture and academics. Pearl and her older sister were expected to surpass academically and were introduced to controversial ideologies in an effort to expand their intellectualism. According to Cleage, she found herself the works of Langston Hughes, Simone de Beauvoir, and Richard Wright strewn around her house. In addition, . Cleage attributes much of her passion for writing and subject matters to her family. In a personal essay, Cleage stated:

There were books all over the place in my house when I was growing up. I came from a family of people who were …show more content…

Cleage’s dramas follow in the tradition of socially active and politically aware theatre and join the rankings together with other playwrights, such as Arthur Miller, Lorraine Hansberry, Eugene O’Neill, and Amiri Baraka. Further, Cleage is an accomplished novelist. Continuing her major themes of sexism and racism as they relate to black women, her novels include: What Looks Like Crazy On an Ordinary Day (1998), an Oprah Book Club Selection (September 1998); Babylon Sisters (2006), I Wish I Had a Red Dress (2009), Till You Hear from Me (2010), and Just Wanna Testify (2011). (Long,

Show More
Related
366 Words | 2 Pages

Civil rights issues stand at the core of Anne Moody’s memoir. However, because my last two journal entries centered on race and the movement, I have decided to shift my focus. In her adolescent years, Anne Moody must live with her mother, her mother’s partner Raymond, and her increasing number of siblings. As she reaches maturity, she grows to be a beautiful girl with a developed body. Her male peers and town members notice, as does her step father Raymond.

Read More
1449 Words | 6 Pages

This book was her purpose to continue the fight for equality and injustice that African Americans go

Read More
509 Words | 3 Pages

The First Fearful Lady of Little Rock A woman who fought for freedom; a woman who fought for rights, Daisy Lee Gatson Bates used her strength to argue against the negative words and threats spoken by many racists. During my research on this journalist, publisher and civil activist, Daisy Bates was an African American who wanted to end racial segregation, for it is a topic she strongly disagreed to. Therefore, Bates influenced change not only in her community, however in the entire world. Daisy Bates began the fight against racial segregation in Arkansas with the help of her husband, Lucious Christopher, also known as L.C. Bates. Together, they founded the Arkansas State Press.

Read More
517 Words | 3 Pages

What an interesting life in that she was educated, married a doctor, and traveled abroad. She was a great promoter of education and actually formed the first black parent/teacher association. Helen A. Whiting – I found Ms. Whiting the most compelling because of these excerpts from a letter written to Miss Judith Nicali, Center Church, Hartford, Ct.: "As a child, I loved to write verse at home as we were never encouraged to do creative writing at school. My mother always encouraged me to

Read More
990 Words | 4 Pages

2) This extract is found in “The White Album” written by Joan Didion, who is the creator of many significant different literature pieces, both novels and essays. “The White Album” was published in 1979, and is the first and longest essay in the book. In this essay Joan Didion essentially uses a women as a connecting thread to describe what was happening in America at that time. I believe that the woman may even be herself to a certain extent, trying to externalize all her thoughts. What is perceived from the essay is that Didion was submerged into the focus of some big events that were happening in that year, not only as a journalist but also as a bystander and a normal Californian.

Read More
728 Words | 3 Pages

The anti-lynching writings therefore enclosed a comprehensive view of the racialized sexual politics of the south; a justification of the black men as true men, a critique of white would-be protectors as just corrupt and exposure of white women as active participants to white supremacy in sexual politics together with re-centering of the black women’s experiences in the incidences of rape, sexualized racism and lynching. She documented unbiased suffering of attacks of lynching and rape on black women and girls. By so doing, she staged a claim of outraged black womanhood that was first articulated by the opponents of slavery though becoming unthinkable under the white supremacists ideology by time the nineteenth century came to an end. She also describes the black women rapes as a piece of black men

Read More
616 Words | 3 Pages

Gaines is showing how powerful women can be and that people should not predict their experiences based on their

Read More
1682 Words | 7 Pages

Octavia Butler is an Afrofuturist, science fiction author who writes many dystopian stories that allude to questions about gender, social structures, and an individual’s ability to control her body and sexuality. When people think of speculative and science fiction they tend to think of nerdy white men writing stories about space and light sabers, but Octavia Butler challenges this stereotype herself by being one of the few African American women in this genre. In Octavia Butler’s speculative fiction short story “Speech Sounds” there is a reversal of gender roles and a strong idea of feminism that is portrayed through the main character Rye. There is also the use of simile and metaphor to help point out flaws in the social structure of the story and the world of the reader.

Read More
1288 Words | 6 Pages

Her tragedy reflects not only the sexism in the African American families in early 20th century, but also the uselessness

Read More
1919 Words | 8 Pages

Nella Larsen’s Passing is a novella about the past experiences of African American women ‘passing’ as whites for equal opportunities. Larsen presents the day to day issues African American women face during their ‘passing’ journey through her characters of Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry. During the reading process, we progressively realize ‘passing’ in Harlem, New York during the 1920’s becomes difficult for both of these women physically and mentally as different kinds of challenges approach ahead. Although Larsen decides the novella to be told in a third person narrative, different thoughts and messages of Irene and Clare communicate broken ideas for the reader, causing the interpretation of the novella to vary from different perspectives.

Read More
1321 Words | 6 Pages

Her best stories focus on the decline of those traditions in the South and the tragic end of the subjects of her stories. Her work resembles the work of other

Read More
464 Words | 2 Pages

Susan S. Lanser’s “Feminist Criticism, ‘The Yellow Wallpaper,’ and the politics of color in America” examines the impacts “The Yellow Wallpaper” had on feminist writing styles and critiques. Lanser writes that the story helps to analyze the reading trough “the lens of a female consciousness” and apply the knowledge gained from a female perspective onto other literature (418). The transition that the narrator displays from being dependent on John to becoming independent reflects the feminist movement and challenges the “male dominance” that currently takes precedence in society (418). The “patriarchal prisonhouse” that is society controls the narrator and oppresses women not only in “The Yellow Wallpaper” but in real life as well (419). The

Read More
893 Words | 4 Pages

She didn’t mind that she did not connect with humans. She knows a joy that other Puritan children did not. She was mischievous and unpredictable because she was isolated and she thought the laws didn’t apply to her. Isolation made Pearl different from

Read More
2515 Words | 11 Pages

She was influenced by the ideologies of women’s liberation movements and she speaks as a Black woman in a world that still undervalues the voice of the Black woman. Her novels especially lend themselves to feminist readings because of the ways in which they challenge the cultural norms of gender, slavery, race, and class. In addition to that, Morrison novels discuss the experiences of the oppressed black minorities in isolated communities. The dominant white culture disables the development of healthy African-American women self image and also she pictures the harsh conditions of black women, without separating them from the oppressed situation of the whole minority. In fact, slavery is an ancient and heinous institution which had adverse effects on the sufferers at both the physical as well as psychological levels.

Read More
1029 Words | 5 Pages

Dee approaches culture by decontextualising it, while Maggie and Mama relate to it with a kind of ‘organic criticality’. The former stance is mere rhetoric and the later one is womanist. In one of her interviews, Alice Walker identifies three cycles of Black Woman she would explore in her woman’s writing: 1.

Read More

More about Pearl Cleage: A Brief Biography

Related Topics

Open Document