A
Modest Tribute for Mari Evans
For
those of us who know we are not a United States Census category, nightly
reinventing ourselves to please everyone other than ourselves, Mari Evans (July
16, 1923 -- ) is an Afrikan, a woman,
and then a writer to read, a writer to be looked on, an Afrikan woman to be
loved for having said
Look
on me and be
renewed.
In
her statement on poetics for Angles of
Ascent (New York: W. W. Norton, 2013), Evans wrote:
If there are those
outside the Black experience who hear the music and can catch the beat, that is
serendipity; I have no objections. But
when I write, I write according to the title of poet Margaret Walker’s classic:
“for my people” (42).
When we read with discipline, the severe discipline of
Evans’s craft, we pay respect to her own classic: “I Am A Black Woman.”
One
proper celebration of Evans’s lifetime achievement on Tuesday, July 16, 2013,
is reading
I Am A Black Woman.
New York: William Morrow, 1970.
Nightstar 1973-1978.
Los Angeles: UCLA Center for Afro-American Studies, 1981.
A Dark &
Splendid Mass. New York: Harlem River Press, 1992.
This is merely a beginning. The continuing tribute must include reading
her books for the young, Where Is All the
Music (Heritage 1968), her works for theater --- River of My Song, Boochie, Portrait of A Man, Eyes: A New Musical
(1995) ---her anthology Black Women
Writers (1950-1980): A Critical Evaluation (New York: Doubleday Anchor,
1984) ---reading her works published in magazines, especially “Decolonization
As Goal/Political Writing As Device.” First
World 2.3 (1979): 34-39.
The
objective of tribute, celebration, and project is to read and remember Mari
Evans and be renewed.
Jerry W. Ward, Jr.
July 3, 2013
