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- Title
A Subaltern Black Woman Sings the Blues: A Blues Aesthetic Analysis Sherley Anne Williams’ Poetry.
- Authors
Armstrong, Jasmine Marshall
- Abstract
This paper looks at California poet Sherley Anne Williams, and the influence of the Blues Aesthetic upon her poetry within the context of the Black Arts Movement. Williams, a nominee for the National Book Award for The Peacock Poems (1975), wrote poetry reflecting the subaltern status of African Americans in California, especially the Central Valley, where she joined her parents, sister and neighbors picking cotton or working as a domestic servant for the wealthy agribusiness titans of the region. In this paper, I argue that Williams uses tropes and iconography from Black music of her childhood, including Billie Holliday and Ray Charles, to interrogate, aesthetics of whiteness as beauty, and alienation in romantic and familial relationships due to racial and class hegemony. I use theorist Emily J. Lordi’s work in Iconic Women and African American Literature (2013) and the philosophy of Angela Y Davis to connect Williams’ poetry and her children’s book, Working Cotton with Antonio Gramsci’s concept of the subaltern and their expression as rooted in cultures in the periphery of the metropole. Ultimately, my paper demonstrates that Williams’ work are acts of witnessing, giving a positive answer to Giyartri Spivak’s question, “Can the Subaltern Speak?†For African American women poets of the Black Arts Movement such as Williams, the answer is clearly yes.
- Subjects
AFRICAN American women; WILLIAM, Sherley Anne; BLACK Arts movement; NATIONAL Book Awards; BLACK music
- Publication
Journal of Pan African Studies, 2018, Vol 11, Issue 6, p54
- ISSN
0888-6601
- Publication type
Article