Margaret Walker

 

Jubilee will always be my transitional novel. This was my first grown up book.   Astonishingly captivating and in the tradition of the slave narrative, this offering granted by poet, author, professor and  writing mentor Margaret Walker.  As a child, Margaret's  mother was an educator and made Margaret read poetry. Margaret would become one of the most  widely read and quoted African American poetress. Her most famous poem  For My People  is a mastery. Her meters dance with melancholy, meaning, and historical musings.  To be a great poet means to write  many great poems.She penned many great poems.


In I Want to Write, the muse wrote: 
I want to write the songs of my people.
I want to hear them singing melodies in the dark.
I want to catch the last floating strains from their sob-torn
 throats.  One of her other poetic offerings, contains this portion of a stanza.


In We Have Been Believers, the muse wrote:
Neither the slave's whip nor lynchers' rope
nor bayonet could kill our black belief.

Her love for words, music, and African memories spawned out powerfully, gloriously and poignantly in her poems. Once again witness the power of poetry.


Pastiche