Writers Speak; Lecture by Michael Thelwell on the African American Writer

A. Welcome to write or speak. Write or speak. It is a series of seven programs featuring prominent Massachusetts writers this program featuring Michael Phil author of The Harder They Come was recorded at the Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. And therefore there may be extraneous treatments. The moderator is writer Julius Lester. Writers have never agreed as to their social responsibility or if they have one. Some have seen themselves in the words of James Joyce who wrote that writers are the UN acknowledged

legislators of the world. All of us have agreed with Albert Cao move who wrote quote by definition the writer cannot put himself today in the service of those who make history. He is at the service of those who suffer it and quote this series off of the general public an opportunity to hear seven very different writers talk about writing in literature in the context of social responsibility. Each writer has been asked to build his or her presentation around a series of questions. Some of the questions are should the writer create for our public. That is be responsible to the public. Or is the writer's sole responsibility to be true to his or her art and world view. Who do you write for. Why do you write. Do the demands of writing give the writer a special status or privilege. Who is your public place your writing and a socio cultural context. What is the writer's role in society. The speaker for this program is a

native of Jamaica where he was educated through secondary school. He received his university and and an MFA from the University of Massachusetts in 1989. A veteran of the civil rights movement he was one of the founders of the DuBois department of Afro-American Studies at the University of Massachusetts and served as its chairman from its founding until 1975. He has published in the Massachusetts review freedom ways. His novel The Confessions of not is a contemporary classic of black literary criticism was published in 1979 to great critical acclaim in this country the West Indies and Africa. Having known my try almost 20 years now since our days in the civil rights movement I want to add a personal note.

If it had not been for a phone call from him in the spring of 1970 I would never have come to the University of Massachusetts. And during my first years here while I was still living in New York City I stayed at Mike's apartment every week. When I came up to teach I recall the many nights we sat in his kitchen eating curry goat and talking about writing and literature and many of the questions with which this series is concerned. I respected Mike then and respect him now for the integrity he has exemplified about his role and function as a writer. I know that he has for long periods refused to write to avoid the possibility that his work and himself might be exploited or used for ends opposite to those he intended. This is the mark of uncommon integrity. So it is with you no personal satisfaction that I present Michael fellow. Thank you very much Julian. I'd

like to say that I have not often been introduced as eloquently or as or have been so moved back to option as at last. Thank you. And I tentatively call the text as a sounding brass and a tinkling cymbal. MARTIN His father says and the responsibility of the black writer those of you who have a background in the Bible or the Baptist Church will recognize the words of a tad less coming from First Corinthians yet who I speak with the tongues of men and of angels and have not charity I am become as a son you brought us and I think you sin with nothing and also in the tradition of that church. I have to add a lot more from writers that I

respect very much in fact the first one was said by James Baldwin in a New York Times interview in 1970 and he is discussing black in the future. Mr. Boyd in America when I was younger the term black literature referred only to one country America talking about black literature today one is really talking about the word about Brazil about Nigeria. We had been dealing with CON-TROLL by really a vocabulary coming out of an arbitrary invention called Europe where the frame of reference has always and only been Europe itself that frame of reference has shifted. And then you look out of the area is needed. And it is precisely that shift in the frame of reference and the whole vocabulary that I shall be talking about this afternoon. The other writer whom I

quote is a man who taught me in high school a very respected Caribbean port and playwright there who was who said simply and quickly that court a writer dies inside when he betrays that appears by the rhythm of his race. I write to days and say when he betrays like a pig is bad the rhythm of his race. About this year that responsibility of an assault is not a term very current in the fashion of the argot of the age. It clearly is not a concept with which the modernist movement is comfortable in any context. See if perhaps where it finds expression in those times so many redundant formulations of which why you TISM that is a responsibility to one's private vision to one's art. To watch this

genius annoys you. Certainly this seems to be the terrain in which the term writer and responsibility meet in modern history and these rear occasions of association. We are almost certain to hear of the right aspirant responsibility to his private vision and his art quite as or both had in splendid isolation from food grown from his fevered genius like Athena from the fart of Zeus untouched by human society history politics our culture not in this usage is not unlike God in another somewhat older one at once mystical and transcendent. It is all the mining all consuming the object of ultimate concern yet displaying and enduring it paradoxically the democratic aspect that is being quite willing to assume any arbitrary and you centric form dictated by the peculiar needs and obsessions. Of his worshippers and

creators. But the subject of these remarks is precisely the responsibility a responsibility neither private nor subjective which all black ready to share with you is to recognize its own irresponsibility which seems to me so clear. So on and beat us so historic or so self-evident and so absolute that failure to recognize it would seem to require a willed blindness or egregious stupidity on the part of the right to his black. Further such a failure of perception and consciousness calls into question not only the writer's intelligence and seriousness but in fundamental an elemental way is if not the value of the talent or literary undertaking then at least of anything without such a writer himself or herself may commit to him. The question is going to skew the way I would hope can and if that person

representative a definition of an oppressed people struggling to liberate themselves how can they be such a writer for the obsessively subjective private reasons that many modernist gives you more motivation aesthetic concerns and into your preoccupation that are at the top. And given these preoccupations and purposes should anyone read the results. I just regard them seriously surely. Oh increasing the narcissistic world of bones with the ways and means of exercising personal trauma short of writing them down and boring the public a little sincerity is a dangerous thing. Said Oscar Wilde. More bad poetry having been created of the sincere feeling that from any of the source. And I am a firm believer that if one suffers from guilt or insecurity one should on that exact when itis for the laying to rest the ghosts and

demons one sees a priest. The sexual inadequacy is of all sorts and encouraging Harat your therapists professionals and experts exist. If the problem is a minority of one. One can depending on its seriousness and nature get a divorce. Purchase a whip or get separate bedrooms for naked self-expression. I'm given to understand that a low scream in the night is far more immediate and satisfying than scribbling endlessly. And if the problem is one of repressed aggressions one can always get drunk and wreck the bar and that time on an American tradition or has joined the armed services thereby improving with a single act with the nation's defenses and its literature. You may well be wondering exactly what all this has to do with the question of that we're not it's novelists. Unfortunately as I hope to show a great deal too much and far too many

cases for the health of literature. At best third at this point just some basic questions of definition and cultural history. What is meant in my usage by modernism. The movement in European history and culture which my friends and I find African Journal of QI can call if you are a modernist obscurantism this movement in European culture is the result of developments among elements of the European which is the between the wars the two world wars and it is important to take some time to understand precisely what it was and what is not in a sergeant's because both are at some distance from how it is generally presented today. It pitifully emphatically was not a spontaneous response of mainstream European artist to a new historical reality as the clear

unless all of Western culture was more spiritually depleted morally bankrupt and creatively exhausted that can conceivably have been a kid it was and is an expression of whose knowledge and her style and fashion it was the capricious and arbitrary creation of a small identifiable and recondite element of the lot having a God whose neurotic egotism distressing and a healthy person who lives and who live. What conservatism did express while there were at times most usually in painting and theater floors of progressive and humanist expression modernism was more characteristically the excuse and justification for a general retreat from the way the range of engagement the social and moral questions which had characterized the best of 19th century literary expression in Europe and the novel modernism generally rejected realism and the broad and humane social vision and concerns that have characterized the great Russian French and English novelists of the previous century in favor of

fullest experimentation for his own sick a celebration of asceticism the cult of the individual consciousness and sensibility and internalization of experience and concern modernism was not an assistance either progressive or regenerating development it was a retreat into emptiness. When the novel abandons realism that is to say the obligation to recreate it crystallize sharp and illuminate human experience in ways that are recognizable and realistic or at least giving the illusion of the realistic against the setting of accurate social and political detail when it in effect abandon its history and cultural reality. What is left is there were three avenues first at turning inward to private fantasy and the exploration of the

sores and lesions of the nothingness psyche or to the experimentation with form. It is the CEA complexity of the language and structure for its own sake and status to concentricity as a substitute for content and three related to that a literary Innes agrees this sticky kind of that Uranus involving the cannibalization of the past the picking over of the corpses of earlier works. Instead of dealing with the world art becomes the subject of. The emergence and rise of modernism in Europe represented a rather abrupt turn away from what had been the prime responsibility of the novelist. That of communicating as widely as possible generally shared an accessible truth and perceptions which implicitly must mean socially and culturally derive insights and knowledge collective insights shared knowledge shared experience

and a celebration of that individual consciousness. Communications became secondary to self-expression no matter how arcane private and neurotic in its inspiration. Similarly the emphasis on literary allusion cannibalism elaborate structural invention and private reference as ends in themselves is obviously not geared primarily to communication. It was said of James Joyce and I believe admiringly by the critic who said it and Joyce is by no means the worst offender among the minus. That was it used to be considered that novelists were men of way learning and broad interest in human events. What Joyce demonstrated was that all the novelists needed to know was himself. Unfortunately the story does not end there. On the well-deserved attack from a public which bettas been put upon the movement generated a gang of critical fellow travelers the priests and proselytize of the new dispensation. These

rascals developed as priests will and elaborate critical gospel in defense an explanation of the fear. Although these explanations made no more sense than that they were intended to explain significant elements of the doctrine and dogma invented by the clarity lurk to this day and ignore criticism callers of the Academy just waiting to pounce upon and infect the susceptible minds of the these critical justifications are however rather more insidious than the works themselves. And for this reason the critics sought to render Why should really have been considered aberrations of false consciousness and even TISM as necessary and inevitable expressions of the modern condition and quote the state of the culture. The style and content of modernism they argued was absolutely appropriate to the times and conditions of modern man. The convent is of realism they said could no longer capture and

express the alienated condition of man in modern society. They were too coherent and made to assess at least that had to have been nor could they asserted the traditional modes of realism and a longer expressed adequately the fragmented self conflict psyche of modern man living as he does in a state of high anxiety emotion isolation and spiritual dissolution. It is a peculiar arrogance of the West in Bush's ear and their intelligence to project their own neurotic dysfunction onto the universe. The use of the booze was the becoming and their assertion the human condition. So that and the argument of these critics it was human existence itself that was blatant suddenly into it and void of value and meaning. This is Septic showed intreated unusual insecurity. It was not any newer than the Emperor sprinkled a few but it worked wonderfully well

just as well in fact at intimidating News-Wall audiences who demonstrated only that they would enjoy any boredom accept any insult to their intelligence rather than be found out to step with intellectual fashion or you thought deficient just and sensitive to the working class however was having none of it. They knew what they lacked and modernist expressions was clear in that they stopped reading the stuff because and this may come as a surprise to a contemporary audience. There is considerable evidence that a European working class the late 19th century once participated to the surprising degree and the intellectual life of their times and had actually read and been instructed by serious novice. The London poor for example is said to have devoted recognize their lives and social circumstances in the serialized novels of Charles Dickens. That of course as far as the serious now discussed is no longer true in the US.

Over time literary modernism one shocking and controversial gradually became the orthodoxy of the day it will be of little concern to me that modernist dogma live over the West like a toxic load impoverishing the literature and reducing the phrase critical thoughts to a hollow mockery. Except that like other of their toxic waste it seeps out of Europe and America and poisons the West springs of the black world. A most insidious form of cultural Qunu isn't by virtue of its effect on our literature. That's where Java's effect only literature is in danger of bypassing maturity and learning directly from infancy to decadence. No need just attempt a description of literary modernism and his contemporaries incarnation. And a contemporary modernist novel The emphasis is a fragment ization rather than good here. Elements of experience never coalesce into meaning it is a function of shattered mirrors and

reflected for fractal images. A mockery of purpose with intelligence and communication in favor of glib and easy to fix. This is essentially an assault on the notion that human experience has meaning and particularly political or moral meaning for the projection of political and moral vision or statement it is quite useless. The mood of modernist fiction gloomy fashionably cynical sneering at all serious or preoccupations with our security of illusion and gratuitous structural complexity for no discernible artistic reason. Its literary preoccupation with images of sickness and perversion with physical deformity and grotesquely as emblems of marl efficiency. It lacks the passion to be even erotic and succeeds only in being pornographic upon graffiti of the Spirit. Sex where it occurs is either mechanical or grim and joyless

or violent prefer to and exploiting the rendering of characters in minus characterization. Originality is much too full to write this. They seem to mean that a character that acts in ways previously consecrated made human use is insufficiently original yet to be known is there another reason for their actions. Given a choice they will choose the sensation of reverse the mar the disgusting that agreed with these choices will be so arbitrary any centric in their origin as to have neither meaning or effect. But there will be original to take some examples from recent like American fiction. I women don't see her sleeping son with kerosene and roast him. Another woman bites off one of his genitals and example of inventiveness with an obligatory conventions because this perverse inventiveness has now become a convention it is now obligatory that any young

black woman in certain kinds of fiction be sexually abused during adolescence men hold them in relative inventiveness as shown by the choice of which relative on what circumstances the act occurs and also in the ingenuity by which the act is rendered painful as painful humiliating and traumatic as is humanly imaginable. Now let us turn to the processes by which modernism is diffused into the cultures of the African we're black America and the Caribbean. This diffusion takes place as a result of myth and institutions. Young black writers frequently find themselves in Western is it uses of higher education where departments of literature have long and hard lives of modernism and African or Caribbean University. Is the West in a situation here at the hands of the clarity you will learn the catechism on that is he or she has had to develop a highly developed sense of literature and of their national cultural

imperatives. They will emerge like a previous generation of colonized intellectuals zealous converts to the inevitability of Western literary fashion. The second institution is it will publish an establishment unless that young black writers from a country that has made a decisive brick with the practices and traditions of his colonial past and which has established a national publishing house or indigenous industry there was found himself having to seek publication in the West as many of us are forced. This is unhealthy because a Western politician establishment is effectively in the hands of the sectors of money. The editors generally have no concept of the black world and see no reason why their own inclinations and preoccupations should not be perfectly adequate for expressing the experience of these countries and their people. We are not inhibited by judgment modesty or humility. Probably because in their literary judgment interest on your work are at least trying to do so. Moreover they have and

really perhaps should not be expected to have any political or economic interest in black novelists who wish to address their own people. To them the function of the black novelist is that of a kind of foreign correspondent for the West. Their novel is nothing more than literary dispatches sent back to Italy if usual origins and reaffirm their preconceptions of the world and a black writer ranting about black people society and cultures but whose work is addressed not primarily to the people who are its subjects but to the west illiterati is nothing more or less that an exploiter of this or such a writers accepted the duty of perpetuating the colonial mission in literature begun by the Kipling and comrades of the village carried on by the Knight was there for. This raises another very important and troublesome question how is it that so many writers of

that were men and women who in their private private and public discourse seem wondrously sophisticated and clear and even militant in their nationalism whose economic analyses are impeccable seem to be totally colonise when he set out to write fiction. It is a puzzle and one can only conclude that a literary recolonization of black writers is possible only to the extent that we do not subject and continue to subject Western literary mists and assumptions to the same surgeon scrutiny. We get to their political motives interests actions and rhetoric. Yet in fact the relationship between the two areas is close symbiotic even and certainly their ancestry is the same. For example what are the fundamental cultural assumptions that lurk behind all these other critical prattle about of course the artist in capital letters and the universe which are among the most sacred of the crows in the herd of

Western literary patties. When we are told as I was by an undergraduate by a charming Irish lady who taught humanities in a black college that only truth you had to see margins which was International a community of educated men and women. What assumptions are implicit in that apparently not as we can learn. I don't the good lady professor had any notion precisely of how Euro centric culture is shortness then we don't do a lot of literature to merely a creature of Western invention and definition that form a nation really was. When black writers accept the mission to be consciously universal Alytus universal artists in quotes capitals and if I had them neons as so many of them do we would all remember the phrase I don't want to be merely a black writer I want to be a writer. What are they agreeing to what is the difference between a black writer and the writer is a European writer not a European writer. He's a white writer not a way to write to the emir the

writers and then black writers carry the opprobrium of the adjective black is nonsense. What that people are agreeing to when they say that doesn't term university really describe anything in reality. Who today for example discusses Escalus and Sophocles as parole given limited simply because they created only Greek characters although not really had an estate cultural and religious references and it rests on the Greek origin. All who dismisses Faulkner because his characters are all too narrowly regional and from the provinces of America similar to what exactly. Especially modestly more than his father has met bank artist does the term describe anything useful it is then and is a description to engender self-respect in black and honorably as well. We categorize artists and cultural nationalists or political writers truly compatible to the modernist mind they clearly are.

To my thinking however any black novelist who is not consciously and purposefully a cultural nationalists is an aberration and a waste of time if the muddiness insist on a dichotomy then it seems to me the chance of black writers is clear because even if modernist perceptions of history of the Western culture and the rule of the novel or the lack of a ruler is here and where accurate so far as the West is concerned and I suspect they really know and have succeeded only in rendering of it irrelevant to the serious force of cultural and social life in the West they certainly do not describe the situation of the black world to accept them is to suggest that the West and the black were are at the same historical point in cultural development which we are not we are evolving. For me struggling to create a vital cultural and literary tradition which will recapture and reclaim all past and culture. Why is similar traditions in the West are clearly degenerating have lost their function and

their purpose and their direction. At least so it seems to this observer. The cultural and historical situation of the black world demands that tally different aesthetic artistic and literary imperatives and purposes at this time. I'm 0 0 0 people the number has not exhausted its usefulness has not run its course in the 19th century when you were PM nationalism was emerging. The great novelists of Europe in the signal rule in defining national character and a shared sense of cultural and national identity and all the lifetime of the black really has the sense of living on the process of season onto itself the essential elements of her identity from the distortions obscurities of even an interference in cultural We feel awful yet exhilarating task of recording exploring clarifying understanding and articulating of making accessible and therefore ported to all people. The force and presence of the history the struggles victories

defeats of our lives as we stand face to face with the necessity to continue the work begun in earnest only in our generation though it has antecedents which go much further. Of adding to that body of works which forge and articulate enjoying metaphors embodying the spirit and meaning the whole passage and presence in this world. We in the black world still have before us the challenge to share emerging national consciousness onto the deeply held an engine of values and marred perceptions of all cultures and to express this in a literary fashion from the myth of metaphor and language. The linguistic resources which have evolved to because addictive experience of Henri's this enterprise this undertaking this challenge is for me and I would imagine to any thinking being the most transcendent inspiring human process at work in the world

today. This more Sion however tentative when uncertain at first with every day growing and clarity and purpose to apprehend the past define the cultural future and to engage and control the immediate and fiery passions of revolutionary change and the chaos of transition is surely something which no black writer can set himself apart from certain cultures and intelligent right. In this endeavor one can and other Karkare browse words tell no lies must know difficult to cream no user victories and hide nothing from the masses. I would add to that one can also be a very few evil indulgent yet if I might respectfully suggest what the running man is having good responsible and honest black Now this might be it would be this they are not the creatures in captivity every passing whim and trying to fashion of the west

another with their firmly rooted and the bedrock of all peoples being it does not distort the experience of the people by imposing on it the discredited supercilious and your point of view of the colonial novels of Carrie Kipling and cars and tradition in which the black world and its people are mere backdrops upon which any nonsense can be imposed. Rather they proceed naturally and organically out of the sensibilities cultural traditions and moral imperatives and linguistic styles and resources of the people who are a subject. And they are addressed primarily to those people to give them images and assessments and crystallization of their experience which can somehow be useful to them. Such numbers do not take a mocking and scornful glee and party. The real suffering of a society nor do they blink at excesses or brutality in the leadership which is resolutely and courageously critical in principal ways.

Honest now Grant is a bit high prices a Christmas offering for this having all to jail or into exile. Work like knights was is a mockery of this commitment and sacrifice. And honest of the black world cannot proceed out of a glittering fashionable coffeehouse cynicism. I don't mean the sphere in which everything is beyond human effort. It is rather predicated on the assumption that there is a future for which the struggle that conditions were grim are not beyond the reach of the people's will. Intelligence and decency and the writing and reading of such novels are not only testament to that fear but is an integral and effective part of that struggle. Such novels seek to contribute to people's evolving perception of their historical and cultural identity and a shared sense of national purpose to

the extent that they are successful they will create their origins. This is a challenge and denied by history of every Western any black writer who forgoes this wealth of contempt of possibility in favor of posturing to the west and Bush was particularly in a particularly decadent and nonproductive mood in which that which was the fans of self no use condom. Not my egotism and vanity but by a fundamental historical stupidity. Finally an honest novel of black culture seeks to contribute to the evolving form to the content and purpose of a vital modern traditional back to the future. Literature which is no in the process of creation. It cannot and does not seek to latch on to the tail end of a marvel that far the discredited colonial tradition which serves only to exploit anew to meet our cultures for frivolous if

not sinister purposes. If such novels are tracks as has been suggested by one well-known European critic then I salute and take my position with such bacterias as Chinoy chibi in each year muddy and who give us the younger that splendid woman who CNN Chichen coffee hour and their embattled colleagues on the continent and this is hardly a growing company including average weight of some more young Indian Salman Rushdie under sarky Roger Me is in this read of Jamaican Justin himself in the English tradition. And the Afro-American lineage of the extended family is very important but too numerous to mention here it is out of the firmament and trivia of these evolving words that come to be the most exciting and purposeful By idea of not anything that he has called the recognition of responsibility not their responsibility

or not their responsibility. In Unity genius not their responsibility to a private vision. Our responsibility to our history is told question has told people to generations not yet unborn. Thank you Michael thank you very much. I want to start off by. Asking you you were thorough in your speech to a certain black writers whom you consider to be very inventive because they write about. The abuse of women and I wonder if that is inventiveness. Oh well there is that is really a reflection of a social reality which has not been written about that much to you know the recent upsurge of black women writers.

I mean the abuse of women. Does take place that is a reality of the black experience. OK what's wrong with black women writing about those that you know that right and have the dignity that you asked that question and that's the way that you did what you asked me what I said this or that. Right this big vengefulness because they're right you know what this I said and it is what I just heard then I'm happy to be able to make this correction. What I was talking about was what appeared to become a confidential in the writing of black women writers that is this is a literary convention and obligatory scene that takes place at the inventiveness comes in what new wrinkle can I put on this obligatory see just like it was an obligatory scene and like drama to have a preach preach osiers at church years where people were shocked at what happened has become a convention and we did not visit this convent sion.

One could very excusably reach the conclusion that the inescapable part of the growing up of every black woman in the society since is represented seems to be never never written is this abuse. And I suspect that that is not the case. So there's a question of balance and emphasis here. OK it was that I wonder if you have never abused any of my women relatives at home and I don't think you have no I have not but that certainly want to only have to pick up the daily newspaper to find out you know how widespread it is and that I'm certain that both of us have lived in black communities where we knew people who did that and where it was common knowledge in the community. It was a convention at one time in the black novel about the not enough the newspaper or the Judas newspapers print aberrations. If a man bites a dog that is new for dog bites man it is the reason why these things are in newspapers and propolis so is because they have breakdowns of traditional morality.

You're missing my point Michael My point is that it happens. Oh yeah that that it's a reality for a lot of black women. OK it was a convention in the black novel at one time for there to be a lynching scene. And that it seems to me that what you call convention it seems to me is that at a certain period when people are willing to admit publicly that certain things happen then it does become that that that almost all writer at that link or the other way that as a black writer now I do not feel the need to write art of putting in scenes of lynchings. The one of my earlier short stories dealt with dealt with a lynching but that has been dealt with sufficiently in our literary tradition that I don't have to do that. It seems to me that these black women writers now who write the common thing which you describe as being you know they're being very inventive in becoming conventional that they are making it necessary for black women of another generation will not have to deal

with an honest man and then and I think there there was an irony. Intended in the wet for me to do my locks and I was talking about what I think is a total him mindless modernist fixation with invention. OK no originality. OK and I was merely pointing out that these modern history regionals have developed conventions of their own and so that there are certain predictable things about these original characters and this is one of the predictable things when you have obligatory con eventually as they inevitably appear employs the advice all other will and let me tell you welcome. I mean I have had some other purpose this year all to Phyllis is OK a hell of a good deal to get teary seeing Raghad So what we had enough is really a vote and I am suspicious of that because as you know very well black writers in this country are only worth have frequently been the victims of their patrons by whichever political movement it

is that has in fact become the sponsors and patrons of that writer's work. We know about Richard Wright's experience with the left in this country and there is a feminist movement in the country. We know for example in the slave narratives if you read an Afro-American slave narrative I wanted a few a few Cuban slave narratives which exist if you've been slave narratives are earthy. They're a 60 yard natural and we see black people and we had I recognize I'm an Afro-American slave narratives and I think this is absolutely a function of their political sponsors and their consciousness the languages high boned Biblical you feel there's obviously an editing process at work and what they talk about is talked about and video of essentially certain you know very moderate religious groups that on the talk of production of those and what we've seen what they seem to dig. Then there's the whole question of the exotic primitive image that was a portion of that right in by the

Harlem Renaissance. I want to see today's imposition again I was certain said the consciousness is coming from outside the community by the feminist movement I want to see that very clearly and that is what I was taught. OK that then that that leads me into another question which has to do with in you know a very very eloquent and very moving description of the responsibilities of the One writer. I wonder to what extent is would you envision and talk and articulate possible far the American black writer who is such a minority. I mean when when when when you compare the Cuban slave narrative and the black American Slave narrative what occurred to me was that yeah but but at one point in Cuba certainly blacks there were more blacks than whites

in Cuba. But that in this country we have always been a minority like it or not dependent on for what you call pick from that is the problem which is implicit in the word Member when I spoke about the question is you can publication which you know I mean what happened to the slave narrative is less a function of the numbers as a function of a kind of Puritan consciousness a well-meaning Puritan consciousness edited and amended and our influence and do with the black experience of the present that wasn't present in Cuba for Gadhafi. So you get more natural. And you're absolutely right and you're right I suspect out of a long and bitter experience that's true the black writer writing in this country which is where I write and publish too since there's no potion industry many of Jamaica is at the mercy of the whim of the publishing industry and accords of political and intellectual opinion that have to be pervasive in in the Western

intelligence. One gentleman is strongly against it. One can simply not become there to let their object. And if one can't struggle successfully to read the kinds of books that one think is necessary and useful that this thing and the evolution of black people then find something else to do. Teach school you know do something as one doesn't have to be a writer. If one's writing is going to be distorted at the source I really don't I mean it's not worth it. If what you write purposefully and with intent then one should focus on this. But an interesting response. I'm not certain how many young aspiring writers can hear that. Well that is of course what is said to be due the S5 to read because there is a certain mission that I want to accomplish other this pad to read because they want the baggage which they imagine comes of being a writer. And they're wrong about that being a writer is hard work and a little money if your artist if they think there's a lot of glamour and a lot to celebrity and a lot of

wealth and fame attached to it then we don't really need it I can't tell you because we see you what the American literary establishment is rewarding today. Sex and Violence diet books how to manage your money. Yeah well the distinction that those things are that you're making I think is a good one in terms of there's a difference between wanting to write and wanting to be a writer and that you put it into those that want to be and wanting to write which I think is where correctly it belongs. He's not even want into the comics are kind of subjective. And how come you're so close to anything subjective. I'm not supposed to think you're going to look at this when I write because I have to and I'll talk personally and I write because I have in the course of education there are certain skills I had a certain political experience you know those skills and that experience is not generally the experience of most people in my country. We don't have that many writers and American in the black community in the world and in this country don't have that many

writers and if our history full experience of all reality is important and should be preserved in literature as everybody else's in the western world has been. Now we have a responsibility to do it. That's what I'm talking about. You refer to the place the literature of play you mention the civilisations of Dickens's novels in 19th century England. I was wondering how what your reflections are on say the place of such white writers. James Michener for example who is very very widely read and certainly cannot be lumped with the modernist OIG mission and makes my argument. OK explain it is fashionable for white from either his critics who it is to dismiss them as being a lump and a writer I don't know and plodded writing

original as though we had intelligence to know that the only story we've got. Is the human story and then he goes oh he might hire is 50 or 60 researchers but he finds out what happened in a way you photo to have in the American West and he writes it and they sell widely I mean that precisely makes my point when you have writers of you know fascinating literary flash and skill like verve and inventiveness and Geary who write love poems to themselves and then never do you see I mean as a waste of talent and an expenditure of energy for false purposes. And when black writers get into doing that you know peculiar historical experience and the point at which we stand now in the evolution of a realist when black writers do that then it is I've seen it is clearly obscene to me. What's your response to as Dan Rather put it on the news. The first black woman would be winning the Pulitzer

Prize awards Walker of The Color Purple. I have very mixed responses to that on the one hand as a black man and you're right. I salute the sisters accomplishment. And certainly not of The Color Purple is the equal of any novel which has won that award. But they can remember. But here is where the question of cultural politics comes in. We had discussed the question of patronage before reading because the question of black writers be applied to certain intellectual or political movements and I think to a certain extent she's a very intelligent and I think committed writer but to a certain extent that applies in the granting of the award at a certain point one almost has

to be suspicious. Not of the fact that a black woman get it written the most meritorious nod in America in a given year. But if one has any sophistication of thought about the processes of literary politics it's going to make you know the old ones. What has to be suspicious and then go and look at the work. One cannot simply as you do the job to best of these awards when they are being given out by the people who know give them that having met some peers to describe it but see the thing is I believe that Lagrange is trying in a conscientious way. To express the cultural experience and reality of the black world will not find

themselves with a body of patrons in the West. You know at the Dakar conference of black literature in the early 60s when a lot of African countries would be free to the Conference of Black Colleges a group of the most prestigious French publicist showed up. And within a year of doing a great fear of whoa this is what we've got for you there and knowns that they were about to Indo as a collective effort. A prize which should be given out by annually. I didn't think it would be a good novel every year but value today most important and valuable work of African literature. This will be printed in a hundred thousand copies and for us to carry a substantial cash award as well as a great eulogy are pristine and they're doing this as a form of what you must do as a gesture to have and to produce African literature to give the gestation and the birth of the

independent literature. The African writers and intellectuals got to tell him thanks but no thanks. Even though this might mean consider limits your award for one of more numbers every two years you were gentlemen from the motherland from France are unable to see that what is implicit in your work is to conduct it and in your effort is to continue the domination of definition of what is valuable and important in African literature and however well-meaning You may be the existence of such an award would itself be the start of a presence came of I did and that is the situation in which we find ourselves. One last question. Which has something to do with. Wondering if what you espouse

and want for the place of literature in the lives of black people. If that place is not really occupied by music and my dance and if literature can ever have the place in by people's lives it can there be a black novelist who has the impact on life people love Ray Charles a wreath of Stevie Wonder. There has been I think Bruce had a remarkable impact but that's television now as a novel the novel is sold out and have said you know there are people in New York to tell me there's a tank round the house I think has six printing presses and if all are printed nothing because there's a room at 10 at young black men from I would go downtown and buy the book and come back and boot legged over the heart of it when people wanted to read it again it may not be a great work of technical

fluency but they spoke to something very important and necessary in the next day. And let me say this. Certainly music and science is the more visible perviously aspect of local issue which has survived definitively precisely because it has resisted more so that other things the Western influences and Western definition but the literary impulse is a universal one. And I'm not here talking yesterday about a warrior tradition. I'm talking about what happens to a young black audience so young black person when the encounter for the first time own between hardcovers rules an entire description is an expression of what their life has been you know way that they recognize and are not demeaned by and it is an incredible experience. I remember the first Jamaican novel that I read without knowing what it was meant as a whole fourteen years

old and disco it was top of all my country. I then saw my country in different times it is achieving the unity of that which I saw my people in different days and young people in Jamaica told me that the heart of the call had an effect and many many times you have said that as arrest a man who came to my house one day and he was mad hear me. And I just got in to Jamaica I didn't know this restaurant and he had in his hands a copy of the heart of the show which is very bad because one other thing that happens in the Wizard they don't produce books to last a long time and he was a notable Tiro and Michelle and Cohen over a great deal and he was upset. It turns out my brother had given him a copy of the book some weeks before and that wasn't a good mood that minute I said look you know we get to see your brother. You see how much you care for it and hope enough as it is you have a hell of a nerve coming here you get a book free and you could hear the cost me that a book here and

he looked at me you know actually you know me and you know and this is my son and I loved his this and you know he's a legacy to my son is this one that you and I me to deafen gave a present ignition you notice that I've read of and have a copy to give and that's worse to me in a number of Western literary awards. MARGARET Well thank you very much. Thank you sir. Will you be listening to writers speak featuring Michael fell well author of The Harder They Come. This is the third in a series of seven radio programs each of which will present a prominent Massachusetts writer. Writers speak is presented by the Institute for Advanced Study in the humanities at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst. This program is made possible by a grant from the

Massachusetts foundation for humanities and public policy which is a program of the National Endowment for the Humanities. Executive producers Susan Brown and Julius Lester producer Patricia Meyerson engineers Scott backgammon and art Steele thank you for listening. Thank you. Yeah they are good.