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My female writer meme which I attempted with mixed results, has inspired me to try something new in this journal. We'll see if I can keep it up. Once or twice a week, I will attempt to post an essay on female writers and directors - celebrating and highlighting their work, with links to their work and to their history.
Since February is Black History Month in the US, I'm starting with Black Women Writers and Directors. I will most likely concentrate on the one's whose work I am familiar with.
The following three women writers have many things in common besides gender and race. The main one is each has found a way to show the world that we need to learn to see beyond race and gender, that neither define us absolutely. They are a part of who we are, but not a defining factor. And we need to learn to see past them. Women can be firemen and surgeons. They can be gods. Black or white or purple. And should not be placed in cages. But these women find a way to show not tell this. They do not speak from soap boxes or bully pulpits or blogs, but instead through the poetry of stories, visual and written. Pulling the reader or viewer inside their minds, so we can see through their eyes.
Shondra Rhimes
Shondra Rhimes is known primarily for the creation of Grey's Anatomy - a ground-breaking American medical drama that focused on the lives of female and male surgeons, but has a female centric point of view. It is also amongst the few dramas to feature an interracial cast and a lesbian relationship at its center.
Rhimes is amongst the few black female television show-runners with a hit show that has been in the Neilsen top ten for more than 7 years. And has been nominated for multiple Emmy's including several during the series initial run.
( Read more... )
2. Octavia Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. Amongst her works is possibly the best time travel sci-fi novel I've read Kindred or at the very least the most memorable. It is about a woman in the present pulled back into the distant past - due to her connection to a slave-owner.
( spoilers for Kindred )
I read Kindred back in 2003 and can't forget it. It stays with you long after you've finished. Each word indelibly imprinted on your consciousness. What's interesting about it - is it discusses an interracial relationship in the 1970s, and in slave times. As well as the wounds of slavery, and how we can never quite get past them. Dana's husband is thrown back with her, and works on the underground rail-road. You see slavery from three points of view. A book that I highly recommend everyone read.
Butler's sci-fi novels include:
The Patternist series - Wild Seed is the first book in this series of novels.
Butler's novels much like Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow, explored biological and anthropological issues in science fiction as opposed to technological. As well as religious themes. These books were begun in the 1970s and 1980s.
( Here's a list of Octavia's works )
And here's a snippet from an article by Octavia Butler - in O Magazine:
( Octavia Butler's AHA Moment )
3. Maya Angelo
Maya Angelo is a jack of all trades, a chanteuse, a writer, a director, and a poet. She's also an activist. I have regrettably not read much of Maya Angelo.
From Wiki:
Maya Angelou (play /ˈmaɪ.ə ˈændʒəloʊ/;[1][2] born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award.
I would add that she is in some respects best known for her poetry. See below.
( I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Poem )
Maya Angelo is also a director - she directed the film Down in the Delta which was the first film directed by a black woman director.
For more information on Maya and her works - go here:
http://mayaangelou.com/news/
Since February is Black History Month in the US, I'm starting with Black Women Writers and Directors. I will most likely concentrate on the one's whose work I am familiar with.
The following three women writers have many things in common besides gender and race. The main one is each has found a way to show the world that we need to learn to see beyond race and gender, that neither define us absolutely. They are a part of who we are, but not a defining factor. And we need to learn to see past them. Women can be firemen and surgeons. They can be gods. Black or white or purple. And should not be placed in cages. But these women find a way to show not tell this. They do not speak from soap boxes or bully pulpits or blogs, but instead through the poetry of stories, visual and written. Pulling the reader or viewer inside their minds, so we can see through their eyes.
Shondra Rhimes
Shondra Rhimes is known primarily for the creation of Grey's Anatomy - a ground-breaking American medical drama that focused on the lives of female and male surgeons, but has a female centric point of view. It is also amongst the few dramas to feature an interracial cast and a lesbian relationship at its center.
Rhimes is amongst the few black female television show-runners with a hit show that has been in the Neilsen top ten for more than 7 years. And has been nominated for multiple Emmy's including several during the series initial run.
( Read more... )
2. Octavia Butler
Octavia Estelle Butler (June 22, 1947 – February 24, 2006) was an American science fiction writer, one of the best-known among the few African-American women in the field. Amongst her works is possibly the best time travel sci-fi novel I've read Kindred or at the very least the most memorable. It is about a woman in the present pulled back into the distant past - due to her connection to a slave-owner.
( spoilers for Kindred )
I read Kindred back in 2003 and can't forget it. It stays with you long after you've finished. Each word indelibly imprinted on your consciousness. What's interesting about it - is it discusses an interracial relationship in the 1970s, and in slave times. As well as the wounds of slavery, and how we can never quite get past them. Dana's husband is thrown back with her, and works on the underground rail-road. You see slavery from three points of view. A book that I highly recommend everyone read.
Butler's sci-fi novels include:
The Patternist series - Wild Seed is the first book in this series of novels.
Wild Seed, the first book in the Patternist series, was published in 1980. In Wild Seed, Butler contrasts how two potentially immortal characters go about building families. The male character, Doro, engages in a breeding program to create people with stronger psychic powers both as food, and as potential companions. The female character, Anyanwu, creates villages. Yet Doro and Anyanwu, in spite of their differences grow to need each other, as the only immortal/extremely long-lived beings in the world. This book also explores the psychodynamics of power and enslavement.
Butler's novels much like Maria Doria Russell's The Sparrow, explored biological and anthropological issues in science fiction as opposed to technological. As well as religious themes. These books were begun in the 1970s and 1980s.
( Here's a list of Octavia's works )
And here's a snippet from an article by Octavia Butler - in O Magazine:
( Octavia Butler's AHA Moment )
3. Maya Angelo
Maya Angelo is a jack of all trades, a chanteuse, a writer, a director, and a poet. She's also an activist. I have regrettably not read much of Maya Angelo.
From Wiki:
Maya Angelou (play /ˈmaɪ.ə ˈændʒəloʊ/;[1][2] born Marguerite Ann Johnson; April 4, 1928) is an American author and poet who has been called "America's most visible black female autobiographer" by scholar Joanne M. Braxton. She is best known for her series of six autobiographical volumes, which focus on her childhood and early adult experiences. The first and most highly acclaimed, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969), tells of her first seventeen years. It brought her international recognition, and was nominated for a National Book Award.
I would add that she is in some respects best known for her poetry. See below.
( I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings Poem )
Maya Angelo is also a director - she directed the film Down in the Delta which was the first film directed by a black woman director.
Her screenplay,Georgia, Georgia (1972), was the first original script by a Black woman to be produced and she was the first African American woman to direct a major motion picture, Down in the Delta, in 1998.
For more information on Maya and her works - go here:
http://mayaangelou.com/news/