The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard

The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard PDF Author: James Robert Saunders
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786408928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This book is a compilation of selected stories, essays, and reminiscences that Dorothy West wrote for the Vineyard Gazette from the 1960s to the early 1990s. In these entries, West retraces life on the island as she experienced it from 1908, when she was an infant, to 1993 when she wrote her final column. Born in 1907 in Boston, Dorothy West went on to develop into a prize-winning author by the time she was in her teens. The 1926 award she received in New York, and the lure of the city itself, inspired West to leave Boston and join what was then a fledgling literary movement that would evolve into the Harlem Renaissance. She circulated among what in essence was the black literary "royalty" of her times, of which she was a signal member. By the mid-1940s West had returned to Massachusetts, to Martha's Vineyard. She began to write a column for the local paper about the comings and goings of island residents and visitors. It was her column in the Gazette that drew the attention of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who, on one of her island visits, met the author and expressed her admiration. Onassis, at the time, just happened to be an editor at Doubleday. When Onassis learned of a decades-old manuscript that had been laid aside, she urged West to pick up the work again. West later dedicated this book "To the memory of my editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Though there was never such a mismatched pair in appearance, we were perfect partners." The authors selected from the Gazette columns that West wrote over the three decades, those on people, events, and nature seemed to have the greatest historic, artistic, or philosophical import.

The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard

The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard PDF Author: James Robert Saunders
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786408928
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169

Get Book Here

Book Description
This book is a compilation of selected stories, essays, and reminiscences that Dorothy West wrote for the Vineyard Gazette from the 1960s to the early 1990s. In these entries, West retraces life on the island as she experienced it from 1908, when she was an infant, to 1993 when she wrote her final column. Born in 1907 in Boston, Dorothy West went on to develop into a prize-winning author by the time she was in her teens. The 1926 award she received in New York, and the lure of the city itself, inspired West to leave Boston and join what was then a fledgling literary movement that would evolve into the Harlem Renaissance. She circulated among what in essence was the black literary "royalty" of her times, of which she was a signal member. By the mid-1940s West had returned to Massachusetts, to Martha's Vineyard. She began to write a column for the local paper about the comings and goings of island residents and visitors. It was her column in the Gazette that drew the attention of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who, on one of her island visits, met the author and expressed her admiration. Onassis, at the time, just happened to be an editor at Doubleday. When Onassis learned of a decades-old manuscript that had been laid aside, she urged West to pick up the work again. West later dedicated this book "To the memory of my editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Though there was never such a mismatched pair in appearance, we were perfect partners." The authors selected from the Gazette columns that West wrote over the three decades, those on people, events, and nature seemed to have the greatest historic, artistic, or philosophical import.

The Wedding

The Wedding PDF Author: Dorothy West
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 0307575705
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
In her final novel, “a beautiful and devastating examination of family, society and race” (The New York Times), Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's Black bourgeoisie on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1950s. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community. With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

Women of Martha's Vineyard

Women of Martha's Vineyard PDF Author: Thomas Dresser
Publisher: Arcadia Publishing
ISBN: 1614239304
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 196

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Book Description
Generations of women have traveled to Martha's Vineyard to find solace in its calming waves and varied shoreline. Many prominent and capable women set down roots, contributing to the fabric of the community on the island. Learn of the brilliant poet Nancy Luce, who lived in isolation with her chickens. Emily Post, whose name is synonymous with good manners, sought respite from her personal struggles on the Vineyard. Famed horticulturalist Polly Hill left a perennial legacy for islanders with her tranquil arboretum. In the twentieth century, novelist Dorothy West captured the beauty of Martha's Vineyard with her work. Historian Thomas Dresser provides a series of biographical sketches of these extraordinary women who were bound by their love of the island.

Dorothy West's Paradise

Dorothy West's Paradise PDF Author: Cherene Sherrard-Johnson
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780813551661
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 229

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Book Description
Dorothy West is best known as one of the youngest writers involved in the Harlem Renaissance. Her work is read as a product of the urban aesthetics of this artistic movement. But West was also intimately rooted in a very different milieuâ€"Oak Bluffs, an exclusive retreat for African Americans on Martha's Vineyard. In the years between publishing her two novels, 1948's The Living is Easy and the 1995 bestseller The Wedding, she worked as a columnist for the Vineyard Gazette. This book captures the scope of the author's long life and career, reading it alongside the unique cultural geography of Oak Bluffs and its history as an elite African American enclave, a place that West envisioned both as a separatist refuge and as a space for interracial contact.

The Richer, the Poorer

The Richer, the Poorer PDF Author: Dorothy West
Publisher: Anchor
ISBN: 030775491X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 273

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Book Description
On the heels of the bestseller success of her novel The Wedding, Dorothy West, the last surviving member of the Harlem Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that explore both the realism of everyday life, and the fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one woman's life in a mythic time. Traversing the universal themes and conflicts between poverty and prosperity, men and women, and young and old, and compiling writing that spans almost seventy years, The Richer, The Poorer not only affords an unparalleled window into the African-American middle class, but also delves into the richness of experience of "one of the finest writers produced in this country during the Roaring Twenties"(Book Page).

Where the Wild Grape Grows

Where the Wild Grape Grows PDF Author: Dorothy West
Publisher: Univ of Massachusetts Press
ISBN:
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 254

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Book Description
Despite her strong associations with Massachusetts - her upbringing in Roxbury, her lifelong connection with Martha's Vineyard, and two novels documenting the Great Migration and the rise and decline of Boston's African American community - Dorothy West (1907-1998) is perhaps best known as a member of the Harlem Renaissance. Between 1927 and 1947, West and her cousin, the poet Helen Johnson, lived in New York City, where West attended Columbia University, worked as a welfare investigator, wrote for the WPA, traveled to Russia, and established a literary magazine for young black writers. artistic, intellectual, and political circles. Their friends included Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Carl Van Vechten, Richard Wright, Arna Bontemps, Claude McKay, and many others. West moved easily between the bohemian milieu of her artistic soul mates and the respectable bourgeois soirees of prominent social and political figures. In this book, Professors Mitchell and Davis provide a carefully researched profile of West and her circle that serves as an introduction to a well edited, representative collection of her out of print, little known, or unpublished writings, supplemented by many family photographs. her mother, Rachel Benson West, and other strong-minded women, including her longtime companion, Marian Minus. The volume includes examples of West's probing social criticism in the form of WPA essays and stories, as well as her interviews with southern migrants. A centerpiece of the book is her unpublished novella, Where the Wild Grape Grows, which explores with grace and gentle irony the complex relationship of three retired women living on Martha's Vineyard. Several of West's exquisitely observed nature pieces, published over a span of twenty years in the Vineyard Gazette, are also reprinted.

The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard

The Dorothy West Martha's Vineyard PDF Author: James Robert Saunders
Publisher: McFarland
ISBN: 0786450754
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 169

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Book Description
This book is a compilation of selected stories, essays, and reminiscences that Dorothy West wrote for the Vineyard Gazette from the 1960s to the early 1990s. In these entries, West retraces life on the island as she experienced it from 1908, when she was an infant, to 1993 when she wrote her final column. Born in 1907 in Boston, Dorothy West went on to develop into a prize-winning author by the time she was in her teens. The 1926 award she received in New York, and the lure of the city itself, inspired West to leave Boston and join what was then a fledgling literary movement that would evolve into the Harlem Renaissance. She circulated among what in essence was the black literary "royalty" of her times, of which she was a signal member. By the mid-1940s West had returned to Massachusetts, to Martha's Vineyard. She began to write a column for the local paper about the comings and goings of island residents and visitors. It was her column in the Gazette that drew the attention of former First Lady Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis who, on one of her island visits, met the author and expressed her admiration. Onassis, at the time, just happened to be an editor at Doubleday. When Onassis learned of a decades-old manuscript that had been laid aside, she urged West to pick up the work again. West later dedicated this book "To the memory of my editor, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis. Though there was never such a mismatched pair in appearance, we were perfect partners." The authors selected from the Gazette columns that West wrote over the three decades, those on people, events, and nature seemed to have the greatest historic, artistic, or philosophical import.

Summer on the Bluffs

Summer on the Bluffs PDF Author: Sunny Hostin
Publisher: HarperCollins
ISBN: 0062994190
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 354

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Book Description
New York Times Bestseller! The View cohost and New York Times bestselling author Sunny Hostin dazzles with this brilliant novel about a life-changing summer along the beaches of Martha's Vineyard. Welcome to Oak Bluffs, the most exclusive Black beach community in the country. Known for its gingerbread Victorian-style houses and modern architectural marvels, this picturesque town hugging the sea is a mecca for the crème de la crème of Black society—where Michelle and Barack Obama vacation and Meghan Markle has shopped for a house for her mom. Black people have lived in this pretty slip of the Vineyard since the 1600s and began buying property in the 1800s, making this posh town the embodiment of “old money.” Thirty years ago, Amelia Vaux Tanner and her husband built a house high on the bluffs, a cottage they named Chateau Laveau. For decades, “Ama” played host to American presidents, Wall Street titans, and cultural icons. But her favorite guests have always been her three “goddaughters:” Esperanza “Perry” Soto, a beautiful, talented Afro-Latina lawyer with Ama’s strong, yet guarded personality; Olivia Jones, a gifted Wall Street analyst with Ama’s brilliant, logical mind; and Billie Hayden, a gifted marine biologist and rule-breaker with Ama’s courageous free spirit. Growing up, these three goddaughters from different backgrounds came together each summer at Chateau Laveau. As adults, the cottage is a place this trio of successful yet very different women go to escape, to slow down from their hectic lives, share private time with Ama, and enjoy the gorgeous weather, cool water, and stunning views Oak Bluffs offers. This summer on the Bluffs, however, will be different. An era is ending: Ama, now nearing seventy-one, is moving to the south of France to reunite with her college sweetheart. She has invited Perry, Olivia, and Billie to spend one last golden summer together with her the way they did when they were kids. And when fall comes, she is going to give the house to one of them. Each of the women wants the house desperately. Each is grappling with a secret she fears will hurt her and her chances. By the end of summer, old ties will fray, new bonds will be created, and these three found sisters will discover they aren’t the only ones with something to hide. Ama has a few secrets of her own. What she has to give them is far more than property. Between Memorial Day and Labor Day, she will tell these surrogate daughters she fiercely loves and protects everything they never knew they needed to know.

Finding Martha's Vineyard

Finding Martha's Vineyard PDF Author: Jill Nelson
Publisher: Doubleday Books
ISBN: 9780385505666
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 282

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Book Description
A portrait of the thriving African-American community on the island of Martha's Vineyard describes the various groups who settled in Oak Bluffs, including vacationing families, local domestics, and multi-generational professionals.

New People

New People PDF Author: Danzy Senna
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 159448709X
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
"As the twentieth century draws to a close, Maria is at the start of a life she never thought possible. She and Khalil, her college sweetheart, are planning their wedding. They are the perfect couple, 'King and Queen of the Racially Nebulous Prom.' Their skin is the same shade of beige. They live together in a black bohemian enclave in Brooklyn, where Khalil is riding the wave of the first dot-com boom and Maria is plugging away at her dissertation on the Jonestown massacre ... Everything Maria knows she should want lies before her--yet she can't stop daydreaming about another man, a poet she barely knows"--Back cover.