On Black Magnolias: A Literary Journal
To my knowledge, we have not had a critical survey of
African American literary magazines since 1979, the year Abby Arthur Johnson
and Ronald Maberry Johnson published the seminal Propaganda and Aesthetics: The Literary Politics of Afro-American
Magazines in the Twentieth Century. Aesthetics, propaganda, and the rise,
fall, and rebirth of magazines and human consciousness are vexed topics. A few of us do want to know how magazines
have functioned since the 1980s, and we might ask, for example, how Black Magnolias has influenced thinking
since the turn of the century. Discovering an answer requires use of an array
of research procedures.
One might argue Black
Magnolias: A Literary Journal is an exemplar of Black South differentness. Is
that differentness located in the style and content of what the editor chose to
publish; in the expectations of the journal’s readers; in both? Evidence
regarding such commerce in values is largely digital --- emails to and from the
editor, a review on Newpages.com, comments on various blogsites. The relative
absence of print documents demands skills in using printable documents, skills
yet emerging within the nascent fields of digital humanities. The current state
of African American literary sociology is less than helpful in trying to
confirm one’s intuitions.
Founded in 2001 by
Monica Taylor-McInnis and C. Liegh McInnis, Black
Magnolias has been a forum for writers who bring diverse cultural
assumptions and rhetorical skills to the act and art of writing. Under the
editorial guidance of C. Liegh McInnis, the journal has acquired regional,
national and international recognition. While these facts may be more apparent
than facts regarding “differentness,” interpretation is still limited to
intelligent guessing. Comparison of Black
Magnolias with similar journals is essential for obtaining what can count
as knowledge. Much time is required to do the focused research and construct
better explanations than are currently available in general discussions of
literary politics.
It is a matter of raw common sense that writers published
in Black Magnolias 1.1 (Winter
2001-2002) through 8.2 (Summer 2014) are indebted to C. Liegh McInnis for how
he has placed them in the Zeitgeist
of the 21st century. He has sacrificed much of his own career as a
poet, fiction writer, and literary/cultural critic in order to serve a higher human
good in the philosophical sense of “good.” He has quarreled endlessly with
himself about the ethics of publishing, as he sought to balance his heavy
teaching duties at Jackson State University with the equally heavy obligations
of exercising integrity as an editor. Such uneasy waltzing is usually not
accounted for in literary histories. It should
be acknowledged, however, in African American literary history if only
to witness how faithfully as a writer McInnis has honored imperatives set forth
by Margaret Walker in her essays regarding African American humanistic responsibilities.
The publication of Black
Magnolias 8.2 is the turning point which provides an opportunity for
acknowledgement. Both the journal and McInnis are entering an unspecified
period of meaningful hibernation. I hasten to note that McInnis’s reasons for
retreat into reflective solitude are more genuine and noble than those of the
nameless narrator in Ellison’s Invisible
Man. We might read or reread the 30 issues of Black Magnolias from 2001 to 2014 as a gesture of securing memory
of what McInnis has contributed to the totality of African American literary
enterprises, securing memory of his gifts to humanity. He has earned to right
to renew himself in solitude.
Jerry W. Ward,
Jr. July 27, 2014
