Edythe Mae Gordon (?1897–1980) was an African-American poet and short story writer during the era of the Harlem Renaissance.
Saturday Evening Quill Vol. 2 (April 1929). Courtesy Boston Book Blog.
Life[]
Youth and education[]
Gordon was born Edythe Mae Chapman in Washington, D.C., probably on June 4 and sometime in the period 1895–1900; the date is uncertain because the existing documents differ on her birth year.[1]
She was apparently raised by members of her mother's family, surnamed Bicks; nothing is known of her father.[2]
She was educated at M Street School, a public school, and graduated in 1916.[2]
In 1926, Gordon enrolled as an undergraduate at Boston University.[2] She graduated in 1934 with a B.S. degree in religious education and social services; a year later she earned her master's degree from the university's School of Social Services, a then-rare accomplishment for an African-American woman.[1]
Career[]
In her last year at M Street School, she married Eugene Gordon, then a student at Howard University and later a writer for the Boston Post. By 1919 they had moved to Boston; they separated in 1932 and divorced in 1942.[1][2]
In 1925, Gordon's husband Eugene organized an African-American literary group, the Saturday Evening Quill Club, out of which grew a literary magazine, the Saturday Evening Quill, of which he became the editor.[3] Published 3 times a year, Quill contains most of the surviving specimens of Gordon's writing.[1][4]
Her earliest piece for Quill was a 1928 short story, "Subversion."[1] Gordon would go on to publish 2 more short stories and a dozen poems in Quill.[1] She also published 2 poems in the 1938 anthology Negro Voices, edited by Beatrice Murphy.
There is little information about Gordon after her 1942 divorce.[1]
She died in 1980.[3]
Writing[]
Gordon's fiction focuses on the unhappy lives of urban African-American couples, challenging some of the era's social norms.[1][2]
Her poems are lyrical odes to love that take their metaphors from nature.[1]
A compilation of Gordon's work, Selected Works of Edythe Mae Gordon, was published in 1996.[5] That same year, "Subversion" and another story, "If Wishes Were Horses", were republished in the anthology Harlem's Glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950.[6]
Recognition[]
"Subversion" was listed among 1928's distinguished stories by the O. Henry Award prize committee, which at the time rarely noticed works by non-white authors.[1][4]
Publications[]
Collected editions[]
- Selected Works. New York: G.K. Hall, 1996.
See also[]
References[]
Notes[]
- ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 Nurick, Russell Jay. "Edythe Mae Gordon". In African American Authors 1745-1945: Bio-bibliographical Critical Sourcebook, Emmanuel Sampath Nelson, ed. Greenwood Publishing Group, 2000, pp. 184–87.
- ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 Honey, Maureen. "Edythe Mae Gordon (1896–?)". In Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Rutgers University Press, 2006, p. 118.
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 Mitchell, Verner, and Cynthia Davis. Literary Sisters: Dorothy West and Her Circle, A Biography of the Harlem Renaissance. Rutgers University Press, 2011, pp. 85–90.
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 Bracks, Lean'Tin L., Jessie Carney Smith, eds. "Gordon, Edythe Mae". In Black Women of the Harlem Renaissance Era. Rowman & Littlefield, 2014, p. 91
- ↑ "Guide to the Eugene Gordon Papers". New York Public Library, Schomburg Center for Research In Black Culture.
- ↑ Roses, Lorraine Elena, and Ruth Elizabeth Randolph, eds. Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950. Harvard University Press, 1996, pp. 104–112.
External links[]
- Books
- Edythe Mae Gordon at Amazon.com
- About
{{Wikipedia}
|