The Extraordinary Life of Dorothy West exhibit opens this weekend at the museum and spans Ms. West’s life in Boston, Harlem, Moscow and on the Vineyard.
At Christmas there is giving, and in the happiest instances, giving with joy is part of it. This act of love is not a natural instinct.
My undaunted mother took me to see the moving picture version of Uncle Tom’s Cabin. In my safe world I knew nothing of slavery, not even the word.
A Christmas story by the late Dorothy West, an Oak Bluffs writer and last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance.
Cherene Sherrard-Johnson’s biography of Oak Bluffs writer Dorothy West might never have been launched but for a startling revelation that upended the researcher’s corner of the literary world.
Ms. Sherrard-Johnson, an English professor at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, described to an Island audience Thursday how Dorothy West’s Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color emerged from the ashes of her work on a 19th century female writer who was considered part of the black literary canon.
Editors’ note: The following essay written by longtime Oak Bluffs columnist Dorothy West first appeared in the Vineyard Gazette on August 9, 1985.
By DOROTHY WEST
Longtime friends and followers of the late Dorothy West gathered on Saturday afternoon in the shade on a hot August day to pay tribute to the writer, who was the last surviving member of the Harlem renaissance, and to share memories.
This is a tale with a moral. I will try not to tax your attention too long. But I have to go way back to begin because it begins with my childhood. It is about houses and children, and which came first.
We had a cottage in the Highlands of unimpressive size and appearance. My mother loved it for its easy care. It couldn’t even stand in the shade of our city house, and there certainly were no special rules for children. No one had ever looked aghast at a child on its premises.
We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down our front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, “Come on, children, let’s go out and drive the white folks crazy.”