She called him John Cleary. She was a sweet gal and she risked her life for me and the boy was mine. He was a cute little bastard.
for more information about Breena Clarke’s work: www.BreenaClarke.com
A Room Of Her Own Foundation has put out the call for submissions to its first ever Waves Anthology. I’m thrilled to be a board member of the organisation and happy to help make this announcement. AROHO, committed to ending the isolation of creative women, is looking for new & established voices, published & unpublished work for this soon to be landmark anthology. ALL WOMEN are invited to submit creative work of all kinds, including work from the 2015 AROHO Retreat Waves Discussion Series, and even portions of previously submitted Gift of Freedom applications. Full information is found here: http://aroomofherownfoundation.org. Be a part of the groundswell! Catch The Wave!
In this video Diane Gilliam and I discuss the project’s parameters and guidelines:
WAVES anthology video – I was really excited to interview Diane about this opportunity for the AROHO community. The Deadline for submissions is August 1st.
in my AROHO Legacy scarf.
Also The Hurston-Wright Foundation’s Summer Workshops at Howard University are coming up August 6-12, 2016. Deadline for application is May 14th. They are offering:
http://www.hurstonwright.org/programs/
And mark your calendar for the fourth annual Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers. September 9, 10th & 11th, 2016. This annual event held on the weekend after Labor Day will bring together twenty-one published women writers to read from their work and offer workshops in the beautiful town of Hobart, New York, called The Book Village of the Catskills and the reading capital of New York State. Join my sister and me for a weekend dedicated to readers, writers and all lovers of language.
HBV Festival of Women Writers’ Participating Writers 2016
Here’s my Goodreads List of the work of our Festival of Women Writers Sisterhood:
HBV Festival of Women Writers on Goodreads
Be certain to get your copy of Cheryl Clarke’s eagerly awaited new collection of poetry, “By My Precise Haircut”. It’s available:
By My Precise Haircut by Cheryl Clarke at Small Press Distribution
The Underground Railroad Public History Conference in Troy, N.Y
Troy, New York is known as the “Collar City” due to its history in shirt collar production. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Troy,_New_York , Troy was home to an innovator in men’s clothing, Hannah Lord Montague. In 1825 Hannah, a local resident cut off the collars of her husband’s shirts, bound the edges and attached strings to hold them in place. This allowed the collars and cuffs to be washed and starched separately and revolutionized the manufacturing and laundering of men’s shirts. Montague’s idea changed the fashion for American men’s shirts for a century. The industry grew and was significant in the development of women worker’s rights.
Hugging the Hudson River, next door to Albany, Troy, NY once again hosted the Underground Railroad Public History conference held at Russell Sage College. Last weekend’s (april15 – 17th) three-day program is organized by Paul and Mary Liz Stewart and 2016 marks their 15th annual conference. The couple’s stated aim is “. . . to continue to plumb the depths of this inspiring work for justice engaged in by those who participated in The Underground Railroad Movement.” http://undergroundrailroadhistory.org Once again, a lively mix of academics, local historians and scholars of the subject came together for a weekend of talks, books on the subject, tours to historical sites (http://bit.ly/1SmGBSu , a keynote speech by the distinguished professor of History and Africana studies at Colgate University, Graham Russell Gao Hodges. He’s the author of, “David Ruggles: A Black Abolitionist and the Underground Railroad in New York City.” http://unc.live/23LDDBQ.
Many thanks to Dr. Paula L. Poulin for pointing out the commemorative memorial for Sojourner Truth in The Town of Esopus, NY. We stopped off to see it on the leisurely ramble southbound on route 9W to reach home.
Books, Banter, Badinage, Brooklyn: talking about the Literature of the African Diaspora
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I’m pleased and honored to be participating in the 13th NATIONAL BLACK WRITERS CONFERENCE WRITING RACE, EMBRACING DIFFERENCE Thursday, March 31 – Sunday, April 3, 2016 on the campus of Medgar Evers College in Brooklyn. NY presented by The Center for Black Literature The mission of the Center for Black Literature is to expand, broaden, and enrich the public’s knowledge and aesthetic appreciation of the value of Black literature. This upcoming national conference will do just that. There are four full days of events featuring writers discussing their work, their lives and the issues that are relevant to contemporary life and the African peoples’ presence. Former Poet Laureate, Rita Dove is Honorary Chair of the conference and Edwidge Danticat, Woodie King Jr., Michael Eric Dyson & Charles Johnson are 2016 NBWC HONOREES I’ll be part of a panel with Coe Booth, D. Watkins and Michael Datcher discussing: Shaping Memories: The Odyssey to Adulthood, Sunday, April 3rd 3:00p – 4:15pm. We’ll be discussing our work and the themes and moral values that inform the often fraught journey from youth to adulthood for young people of African descent in the Americas. To register and to see the complete schedule, link here: http://bit.ly/1LS1jwb – link here for a complete list of writers participating in the 13th National Black Writers Conference. |
One image of the novelist or poet is as a solitary figure trussed up in angst and identity and typing feverishly through the night. Most of a novel is written in a writer’s own inspirational cave though, a place with comforts and demons and solitude. But solitude can turn into isolation and isolation is antithetical to the ultimate outcome of writing a novel: readers, audiences, followers. The antidote to isolation is community.
In the fall of 2012, My sister, Cheryl and I began to plan a Festival for Women Writers in a one-of-a-kind village in the western Catskills, Hobart, NY, The Reading Capital of New York State and an authentic Book Village. The Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers debuted in Fall 2013. One of the nicest aspects of our Festival’s creation is that we didn’t bring community to Hobart. It already had camaraderie and enthusiasm about books and the arts and six independent book stores. We’ve brought women from the tri-state (NY, NJ & CT) area and across the country with published work in poetry, fiction and non-fiction in all genres to read, offer workshops and sell their books on the weekend following Labor Day. Along the way through three successful annual Festivals and in planning our fourth, we’ve made connections with a dazzling group of women who write.
Link here for a complete list of the outstanding women who will be Participating Writers for Festival of Women Writers 2016
Breena and Cheryl Clarke, co-organizers of HBV Festival of Women Writers
I happy to say that I’ll be attending the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers 2016 for the first time this March. The Berkshire Festival is in its sixth year and like, Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers, offers a beautiful highland locale and enthusiastic engagement with the written word.
At the Berkshire Festival of Women Writers, we’re always looking to expand our mission of nourishing the voices and visions of women of all ages and from many walks of life. Why is this important? Because the world needs the creative energy and vision of women now more than ever, and creative women need community to be fully activated and confident in their own work.
Berkshire Festival of Women Writers 2016
On March 12, 2016, 1:30p – 3:30p – I will join Cheryl Clarke, Mary Johnson and Esther Cohen for a panel discussion, An Unquenchable Thirst For Writing.
Cheryl Clarke, http://www.cherylclarkepoet.com/about/the author of four books of poetry, the critical study, After Mecca: Women Poets and the Black Arts Movement (2005), and her collected works The Days of Good Looks: Prose and Poetry 1980-2005 (2006). After a distinguished career at Rutgers University, she co-founded The Hobart Book Village Festival of Women Writers and is author of the upcoming collection, By My Precise Haircut.
Mary Johnson www.maryjohnson.co will read from her memoir, An Unquenchable Thirst, named one of 2011’s best by Kirkus Review and winner of the New Hampshire Literary Award for nonfiction. One of the founders of A Room Of Her Own Foundation, Mary served for more than a decade as Creative Director of Retreats for AROHO.
Esther Cohen, http://esthercohen.com/ the author of Don’t Mind Me: And Other Jewish Lies with illustrations by Roz Chast; the novels No Charge for Looking and Book Doctor; and two volumes of poetry,God Is a Tree and prayerbook, began Unseen America, an ongoing project in which homecare workers, migrants, nannies, and others among the working class tell their life stories through the photographs they take in their daily lives. She will read from her new collection of poems, I’m Getting Older.
And . . . Breena Clarke www.BreenaClarke.com will read from her novel, Angels Make Their Hope Here, the story of a young girl’s harrowing journey to free herself and the complex, charismatic man who conducts her to Russell’s Knob, a haven for runaways in 19th century New Jersey.
We’re going to be discussing the Sisterhood of Writing and how we built and continue to build our writing communities through organizing Festivals and Retreats and creative opportunities for women writers. We four have had varied careers and write in a variety of genres and styles. There are a lot of gates into the city of writing and we’ve each come through differently.
Why do we need Festivals for Women Writers? Writers are writers, right? And the best of them, whatever gender, will be well-read and successful, right? Sadly, no. Women are underrepresented in Literary magazines, book publishing and prizes. Check out: VIDA COUNT Monthly update
Each year The VIDA Count compiles over 1000 data points from the top tier, or “Tier 1” journals, publications, and press outlets by which the literary community defines and rewards its most valued arts workers, the “feeders” for grants, teaching positions, residencies, fellowships, further publication, and ultimately, propagation of artists’ work within the literary community. about VIDA COUNT
Also at The Berkshire Festival of Women Writers on Saturday, March 12 @10am – 12pm will be the electrifying Esther Cohen and Good Stories: The Deep Red Heart Of Life a workshop for story lovers and story makers who want to make their own stories better.
Writing festivals and retreats offer enrichment opportunities that may have been, in the past, inaccessible for a lot of women who write and who aspire to be published writers. The workshop experience can be especially valuable if you didn’t come through an MFA program or you’ve spent twenty years behind a desk. These annual and bi-annual Festivals are organized geographically, but they’re supported and nurtured by social media and that gives them global possibilities.
“Maybe in some other cities or towns Halloween was a holiday for children only, but Georgetowners of every age costumed themselves and walked up and down the M street thoroughfare. A great many folks, big and little, smeared charcoal or talcum on their faces and stuck their heads through holes in old sheets. Lester Gorson stood on his regular shoe-shine corner with the battered silk top hat he wore every year. Across his mouth, he wore a red bandana.
“The rich people’s Halloween was a night of fancy parties and carriages down by horses with plumed headdresses. The Chesters up on R street were throwing their usual big Colonial costume ball and had hired Snow Simpson to wear a white powdered wig, a silk jacket, and knickers of robin’s-egg blue. He stood on the portico bowing the guests through the house’s grand columns and into the vestibule. Knots of costumed colored children paused on the south side of the street and peeped through the doors and windows to glimpse guests and the massive gold and crystal chandelier in the foyer. Jonnie Mae and the others in her group laughed at Snow from across the street on their way to the cemetery. Duck Dudley lobbed crab apples at Snow’s wig. The first crab apple hit the center of the oak door, but the second caught Snow upside his head and knocked the powdered wig sideways. The group ran off laughing at Snow trying to settle the thing back on his coal black head.
“It had been the tradition from as far back as any of the families could remember that on Halloween the costumed children trooped up to the Mount Zion cemetery to tempt fate by running and hollering like banshees among the oldest headstones.
“Press Parker stood ith his back against a tree that had been propping people up since before the Flood. He watched as he did every Halloween to see that none of the headstones got toppled in all the chasing and hoo–rawing. He kept an eye on the torches and the littles ones so that no one crawled into a crypt playing hide-and-seek and got suffocated like the little Henderson baby had back in ’09.
“Press was sure the bones didn’t mind some company one day a year, They hadn’t heard the sound of children’s feet slapping on top of their heads since last Halloween.”
from “River, Cross My Heart” by Breena Clarke
to read another excerpt of this Oprah book club selection and know about the other novels by Breena Clarke link here: http://www.breenaclarke.com/content/books.asp
This book is available in all formats
Breena Clarke’s books
The African American Civil War Memorial in Washington, D.C. for more information on the Memorial and Museum: http://www.afroamcivilwar.org
Oh! stand the storm, it won’t be long
We’ll anchor by and by
Stand the storm, it won’t be long
We’ll anchor by and by
———traditional spiritual
I chose to set my second novel, “Stand The Storm” at mid-nineteenth century in Washington, D.C. because there is an appetite for perspectives and narratives of the Civil War and I was curious about home life in my home town during the conflict. Once again and as always, the narrative of North vs. South, slavery vs. freedom and the lingering symbols of the conflict such as the Confederate Battle Flag and the rise of the KKK are in the news with the Church Massacre in Charleston, S.C. on July 17th.
And what of the so-called contrabands — those slaves following the Union soldiers into town? Every artery in and out of town was choked with them.
Destitute was how most of them arrived — trudging, slogging, and dragging. Descriptions in the papers of slaves fleeing at the advance of the Union army sounded like an account of dandies on parade. They were said to be preening themselves and promenading down the thoroughfares of Washington decked out in frothy skirts, scarlet frock coats and gray hats festooned with feathers.
But the true picture was something else. The women trudged with their arms tugging at stumbling children, and children taller than a hickory stump were carrying babes on their backs. A common sight was a man who had made himself into a mule by putting a strap on his forehead so that he could carry his old grandpa or grandmam on his back. Step upon step he would lug the old one, who was yet mere bones sparsely covered with skin. If they had worn a fine coat when they left, it had been stripped away long before reaching the banks of the Potomac or the Eastern Branch. Even if they came from nearby, they had likely crisscrossed these places again and again — hiding and running from hostile irregulars. Most that Annie saw arrive were barely clothed and long time away from their vittles.
excerpt of “Stand The Storm” by Breena Clarke
“The National Archives, in cooperation with FamilySearch International, a subsidiary of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints and the Smithsonian Institution, is releasing 1.5 million digitized images that contain the names of up to 4 million former slaves collected by agents of the Freedman’s Bureau at the end of the Civil War.” – Hamil R. Harris in Wash. Post
Freedmen’s Bureau Records of 4 million former slaves released today. read more: http://wapo.st/1BEF4oA
The Freedmen’s Bureau, headed by Union Army General, Oliver O. Howard https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oliver_O._Howard started operations in 1865. Throughout the first year, its representatives learned that their task would be very difficult, as conservative Southerners passed laws or Black Codes that restricted movement, the conditions of paid labor, and other civil rights of recently emancipated African Americans, nearly duplicating the conditions of slavery. (Wikipedia) Rallying under the banner of the Confederate Battle Flag, the KuKluxKlan formed and proliferated across the South to intimidate the Freedmen.
Learn more about African Americans in Civil War Washington, D.C. Read “Stand The Storm” link for more information, excerpts and links to purchase a copy at: http://bit.ly/BuyBreenaClarkeBooks
Breena Clarke reads from “Stand The Storm”: http://bit.ly/1OLoTeM
Since they opened the public swimming pool for white folks only on Volta Place, right across the street from her Aunt Ina’s house, the pleasures of Higgins Hole were diminished for Johnnie Mae. In that public pool the water was so clear! Clara said it must be ice water. Clara said they must get big blocks of ice from the ice man on Potomac Street and put them in there. She was certain of this because the white boys and girls they saw through the fence and bushes surrounding the pool were always shivering. from RIVER, CROSS MY HEART
In the 1990’s my mother tape-recorded her oral recollections of having grown up in Georgetown in the 1920’s, 30’s and forties. When she retold incidents related to the segregated swimming pool on Volta Place, her voice changed dramatically. Much of her story was like all the anecdotes she and my father told and retold on our summer rides through this mostly affluent part of town. Georgetown in the 1960’s was where Kennedy-era politicos built townhouses and bought up the historic mansions that had always been located there. Because of the Old Georgetown Act of 1950, most of the African American community had been forced out in the early 50’s. My father’s family owned one of the houses on “P” street that became the last block of African American residents in Georgetown.
James Sheridan Clarke, Jr., my father, and James Sheridan Clarke, Sr., his father in front of 2721 “P” St. N.W. Georgetown, Washington, D.C.
My parents’ recollections of Georgetown were vivid and complex. They told fairly frank stories about the segregation they lived with, but had as well many stories of community, camaraderie and achievement.
When my mother spoke on the tape about the pool on Volta Place her voice changed so distinctly that I had a visceral response. I think my head snapped to attention. I’m sure I listened to her again and again. It was not the particulars of the tale. I’d heard all of the stories many times. I knew she’d been a fierce, bold, athletic swimming girl. But I’d never before heard the great change in her voice. Her voice had not been light and airy – that wouldn’t ever have been my mother’s voice — but it was relaxed and carefree. I recognized that she was softening and brightening her narration for my benefit. She was taking this project seriously so she was trying to give me helpful, positive information. When she began to talk about her feelings of wanting to swim in the whites only pool that was across the street from her aunt’s house, but that barred any colored/Negro/Black /African American people I felt arrested, compelled, riveted. My mother was not always self-revelatory. She was sometimes a secret- keeper and a grudge-holder. The change was in the timbre of her voice – a change that was not shrill or more vehement, but changed. A bell rang – sort of. It signaled that she was expressing certain childhood feelings, but I was to know that she no longer felt this small, raw way. I thought she did very much still feel those angers and that she was justified and I knew then that I’d write the novel that became RIVER, CROSS MY HEART just for this reason. I could make a novel of it because this was a story I could lift and carry for a while.
“How come we can’t go in that pool and swim?” Johnny Mae had repeatedly asked Aunt Ina since the beginning of summer.
“You don’t need to be over there anyway,” Aunt Ina had answered time and again.
from RIVER, CROSS MY HEART
My mother became an outstanding swimmer. She had her first lessons at Francis Junior High School’s pool. She no doubt already had the rudiments of swimming because she told me they really did dip into the C&O Canal for swimming. A young medical student who would later become Dr. Charles R. Drew (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_R._Drew), the renowned African American physician, taught her formally at Francis pool. My mother called him Charlie Drew and always mentioned his handsomeness and his brother’s and spoke of his generosity in teaching all of Georgetown’s African American children to swim. A large part of my parents’ Georgetown narrative reflects a staunch optimism and wry humor with examples of uplift, misfortune, haplessness, foolishness, bravery, compassion and meanness added. They were all good stories.
The only childhood photo we have of Edna Higgins is this very young one. Her swimming exploits mostly took place after this was taken and before adulthood.
Edna Higgins in Georgetown circa 1920.
Dr. Charles R. Drew
By the time I accompanied my parents on automobile rides through the old Georgetown neighborhood, the carriage houses and servant’s quarters of the rich and famous had become the luxury townhouses of the nouveau. My parents liked to point out places where they’d lived and played, their favorite landmarks. Despite legal desegregation, Black children still weren’t swimming in the pool on Volta Place.
On the tape, despite all efforts to thwart it, my mother’s young girl self showed up to talk about her feelings. All of those years later she’d remembered and was articulate and analytical. She still recalled that deep sense of thwarted opportunity. I can no longer remember her words. I have the cassette tape and some written answers to specific queries I made. (She gave me the 411 on menstruation in her era in a frank, specific, helpful and surprising way.) I don’t think I used any of her actual words when I created the character Johnnie Mae Bynum in RIVER, CROSS MY HEART, but my mother gave me a model of access. She helped me to formulate my key – my trigger — to an emotional voice that takes on the timbre of true/deep.
Breena Clarke in Pershing Field Pool, Jersey City, N.J.
“River, Cross My Heart” is available in all formats. Link here to purchase: http://bit.ly/BuyBreenaClarkeBooks
My most recent novel, “Angels Make Their Hope Here,” is available in paperback with Reading Group Guides on July 14th. Link here: http://bit.ly/1S8f8Wb for my “Angels” blog. To purchase a copy, link here: http://bit.ly/BuyBreenaClarkeBooks
breenaclarkebooks 