March 21, 2024 • 43 mins
A lot of us would never want our diaries to see the light of day. But that hasn't stopped people from archiving and publishing their own and others' diary entries.
It's not just about exposing people's secrets, though. Through these diaries, we get to learn more about historical eras and about the day-to-day experiences of our ancestors. We get a sneak peek into the private, interior worlds of everyday people, unmarred by the specter of surveillance.
To be honest, it does feel a little voyeuristic ... but we’re lucky to have the diaries we do. So in this episode, Katie and Yves grab their tiny keys and crack open the locks on a few Black women's diaries — and we get a glimpse of their lives during Reconstruction, during the Harlem Renaissance, and today.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:01):
On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media, December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. Sometimes I
(00:36):
know I go places in the diary that take my
breath away, as if there were someone else living inside me,
with her own determined will to see and speak clearly.
Because I don't write to protect myself or to say
things I don't dare say to others. I don't cater
to any pampered image of myself as a too sensitive
soul for whom the world is too much. In the
(00:57):
Diary her only friend, neither too fragile nor too sensitive.
I have many true friends, and the portrayals I have
known I have asked for. I don't write to hide
from the world. Today's episode Diary dialogues I'm Katie and
I'm Eves. Kathleen Collins was a writer, filmmaker, and activist.
(01:21):
She's known for works like the nineteen eighty two film
Losing Ground, as well as the plays In the Midnight
Hour and The Brothers. Sadly, Kathleen died from breast cancer
in nineteen eighty eight at the tender age of forty six,
before most of her work could be published, so Kathleen's daughter,
Nina Collins, took to the task of diligently gathering her
(01:41):
mom's work and releasing it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In twenty sixteen, Echo Press posthumously published a collection of
Kathleen's stories called Whatever Happened to Interracial Love, and in
twenty nineteen, Notes from a Black Woman's Diary was published.
It features a selection of her fiction, letters and diary entries,
including the diary entry that you heard at the beginning
of this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Now, it was a diary entry, but it was also
a kind of commentary. She's actually reflecting on some of
her older diary entries, pausing to think about why she
wrote and what the diary meant to her. In my opinion,
this is a brave act. The other day, I was
just thinking about going back to look at some of
my old journals, and I was already starting the sweat. Girl.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, I've thrown away and ripped up all my
old journals and I regret it. Yeah, like especially the
ones I've had when I was really young. But they're
just so embarrassing, and I'm like, I want to make
sure no one ever sees these, including myself.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, that's how I feel about looking at my own
and not even once I were that old. How old
were the ones that you were?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was that you ripped up the last ones I
think I ripped up. I was truly like in like
middle school or something, which now I'm like, oh, it
would be like funny to like go back and look
at them. I have someones from like twenty sixteen, twenty
seventeen era. I haven't ripped those up, but baby, I will,
I will.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I haven't learned you just said.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
She did it. No, because like the closer I am
to that age, I'm like, nah, that's embarrassing, Like you know,
I can't have it nobody looking at me late that. Yeah,
and I have some diary entries from you know, this
year that I will likely you rip up later on.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I know I got something from last year.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Girl.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's a lot of them in there that I don't
want to see, and I just couldn't imagine publishing them
of my own volition. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And then even the fact that she's like commenting on
herself that makes me like, I don't know if I would.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
No, I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't
think I would. I mean, when I go back when
I was wanting to go back and look at my
old journal entries, it was for practical reasons. I was like, oh,
I know, I put some story ideas in there somewhere.
I had some notes that I took about yoga or
something like that. But I knew I was gonna come
across other stuff while I was in there. I was like,
I'm not trying to sift through all that to find
(03:52):
what I need.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, even not even like diaries, but the pictures you
take and then your phone like makes a little video
of like the status fucking day.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Of coming up.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
You know what it is? Yeah, yes, same energy, same energy,
but almost a little worse because AI is doing that
to you, and you're doing it to yourself when you're
going back to the journals, putting yourself through that mess.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
But I'm on the same page as you. So there
aren't many diary entries in Notes from a Black Woman's Diary,
but you get the best of both worlds. You get
some of the original entries, and you get this meta
narrative where the author gets to analyze her past self
with more context and insight. Kathleen's entries give us a
peek at contemporary published diaries, but they're a tiny sliver
(04:44):
of a long history of black women writing their innermost
thoughts and feelings on paper that includes their history of
slave narratives, letters, and autobiographies. And through all of these
published and unpublished diaries, we get to learn more about
historical eras and culture, about the biographies of our ancestors,
(05:05):
and about the day to day experiences of communities. Plus
we get a sneak peek into the private, interior worlds
of everyday people, unmarred by the specter of surveillance. And
to be honest, it feels a little voyeuristic, but we're
lucky to have the diaries that we do. So let's
grab our tiny keys and crack open the padlocks on
(05:25):
a few diaries. First up, Francis and Rowlin Whipper. Francis
was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in eighteen forty five,
and she was the oldest of five girls. Her father
dealt in lumber. Not much is known about her mother,
but the family had a fair amount of social and
(05:47):
political status in black circles in the city, and they
were considered free people of color. Frances was well educated
and she and her sisters were proponents of women's rights
and suffrage. Was a teacher, and she was a writer,
and she was so good at her jobs that abolitionist
and politician Martin Delaney commissioned her to write his official biography.
(06:10):
That made her the author of the first biography of
a freeborn Black American man.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
As an avid writer, Francis also kept a diary in
eighteen sixty eight that still exists today. It's one of
the oldest by a black woman from the South, and
it's housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
History and Culture. But I just called that the Blacksonian Trial.
In her diary, she writes about what she's reading, Dante, Shakespeare,
(06:36):
Thomas Carlisle. She talks about writing her book, finishing it,
and about its publishers and the pay for it. There's
a little name dropping here and there on lectures and
readings that she attended, like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In this diary entry, she talks about famous abolitionists and
journalist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the anti slavery newspaper
(06:58):
The Liberator. Wednesday, February twelfth, eighteen sixty eight, mister William
Lloyd Garrison spent the morning with me.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I thank him a grand, noble soul, a singularly perfect
development of God's highest humanity, a great intellect consecrated to
one idea. I felt a reverence while in the presence
of this great man who came to the rescue of
a gaped and helpless people. God marked him out from
the number to his truths. But is he a humanitarian?
(07:30):
How can his practiced pen and ready heart remain uninterested
while the same wrong exists under another form. God knoweth
his purposes and the instruments best adapted. She mentions the
anti slavery meetings that she goes to, and we learn
a little bit about how anti black violence is showing
up in current events that affect her. Sunday, August second, Columbia,
(07:52):
South Carolina, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
me at the depot with his buggy and took me
to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend mister Adams
was in to see me. Very soon after my arrival.
Charlotte came to see me in the morning but Kate
did not went to church in the morning with Harry
(08:13):
Maxwell and mister Adams, the governor, and all the members
were there. Quite an excitement created on account of the
disappearance of Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku
klups Klan at night, and we get some insight into
some of our socio political opinions. Saturday, February twenty second,
Washington's birthday. But if things continue as they are, there
(08:35):
will be but little country left to celebrate it. For myself,
I am no enthusiast over patriotic celebrations, as I am
counted out of the way politic. I wrote very satisfactory today.
Matthews brought me the Commonwealth and other papers. There was
a grand description of Reverend to Bartell, Charles Elliot Norton
(08:55):
and O. Bronson Alcott appear of the finest spiritual essence.
I heard him at the Anti Slavery meeting. Also GB Fothenham.
But she gets into some Monday moments too. She talks
about her travels and snowstorms and all the folks she
knew who were getting married while she was alone, and
she talked about her later relationship with lawyer and legislator
(09:17):
William James Whipper. Thursday August twentieth woke early wondering whether
to throw up the sponge or accept a loveless life
or not, felt as though w could not love anyone.
A letter came from him today which restored me, A
real love letter. What does throw up the sponge mean?
I mean, I get the gist, but I was like,
(09:37):
I've never heard that idiom before.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Maybe like, oh, I'm just an old maid cleaning my house.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I'm throwing up the spode.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Actually that makes sense, that's probably it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I mean, there were a lot of domestic workers at
the time. That was a lot of black women's jobs.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was also thinking it meant something about like birth control.
I feel like it wasn't there some type of sponge?
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah? Or is I don't know. Yeah, I think that
was a method of birth control back then. Yeah. Still,
those are two guesses. Yeah. I was thinking when I
was going through all of her stuff, like, I feel
like I wanted to be her friend when I was
reading her diaries. I mean that might just be my delusion,
(10:26):
but yeah, but I just loved how much she cared
about writing and about learning and just about all the
works she was reading, like actually critiquing it and having
thoughts on it. There were moments where she was like,
I was talking to I can't remember the person's name,
but ostensibly a friend or an associate. I was talking
to him and he said this about this piece, and
(10:48):
I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't handle it. He
was wrong. I liked her remarks and her reflections on
how she felt about the work. I liked how she
was like, that person needs to do some more work,
like their writing needs to be tightened up, or their
lecture needs to be tightened up. I really appreciated that
element of her work, and she wrote so much about it.
(11:09):
And I know this was just one year of writing,
of detailed writing about her life, but you could tell
she spent a lot of time in the books in
the weeds, and she really enjoyed the knowledge, gathering, consciousness,
raising elements of everything.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So she wrote that biography of that man. Did she
write more public facing work that would kind of get
into her cultural critic bag or was it all in
her diary.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I think it was mostly in her diary. H Yeah,
I might be wrong about that, but she didn't do
a ton of public writing that I know of.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
And I think that's a testament of the time that
she was writing into, because now I can't really imagine
someone like her just writing that stuff in their diary.
And maybe that's just like the bubble I'm in, but
it seems like nowadays, if you are really in the
books and you got a little pin you can push,
(12:08):
you're pitching the Atlantic, you're pitching the New York Times,
you're pitching the Cut, you know, yeah, and you're not
going to just like keep that to yourself. And it's
interesting too, because I imagine she didn't think about having an
audience for this diary, but now we like write for
an audience. I feel like even in our diaries, we
write for like thinking like, oh somebody might read this,
(12:30):
like not even just like oh yo, man, going through
your stuff, but like, oh later when I'm the famous
and people want to read my diaries, like let me,
let me put a little funk on this, you know,
instead of just like writing normal like you would. Right,
Do you feel that way, because I feel like i'd
be like, I feel that way. We write a little better.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I feel that way for myself. So for me, when
I write in my journals today, it's more about I
don't want if anybody finds it, I don't want them
to read this. Sometimes I be leaving out names because
of that. But then I have to check myself and
be like, girl, be honest, you are writing this for you,
so just get it out here, like you don't have
many places you can do that. I don't really think
about that in my journals from a larger perspective of
(13:09):
like what society would read later. However, I do know
that I have this self surveillance of thinking about what
if this goes into the archives one day? So it's
not necessarily conscious for me, but I can't see it
being unconscious because the reality of it is that I
have a podcast, I write things, you know, So I
have things that will exist already in the public sphere
(13:32):
in some way potentially on the internet for eternity until
the Internet blows up. So I do probably un blove
next week, next week, thank god, because some of that
stuff needs to go away. Yeah, so I do. I
don't find myself self censoring like for that reason per se,
But I have an awareness that like, I mean, do
(13:57):
I want archives, you know? Do I want my estate
to put some of things in the archives. Do I
want to be worthy of that? Yes, I think that's
the thing I would like to be worthy of that,
Like my work will actually be meaningful to people in
the future. But do I want my journals and diaries
to go there? No, absolutely not. But that is what
(14:17):
happened with Francis, and her eighteen sixty eight diary gives
us a pretty detailed view of life in Boston and
South Carolina in the reconstruction era, so it goes beyond
just her personal reflections about her life. When we get
back from the break, we'll jump forward about half a
century to the lively generative period that was the Harlem Renaissance.
(14:49):
Up next, Alice Dunbar Nelson. Like Francis, Alice advocated for
political and social causes. She was in wom men's clubs,
organized for suffrage and focused her journalistic efforts on topics
like World War One, racial equality, and education. And she
wrote essays, short stories, and poems. So she shared a
(15:13):
lot of her thoughts in public. But her diary was
published in nineteen eighty five, and it was the second
book length diary of a black woman to be published.
The first was activist writer and educator Charlotte Forton's in
nineteen fifty three. Alice's diary provides an unfiltered look into
her raw emotions as she endured personal ups and downs.
(15:34):
As doctor Akasha Gloria Hall says in the book Give
Us Each Day, the Diary of Alice Dunbar Nelson. During
the periods when she kept the diary, Dunbar Nelson's life
was in flux or crisis. Alice started writing her diary
entries in nineteen twenty one, and her last entry is on,
as she put it, the last night of a disastrous
year of nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
But a big chunk of her entries are missing from
nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Five mm hm, because we don't have evidence of them.
We don't know if Alice wrote during this period, but
it is likely that she did, so we'll just have
to be okay with that gap. But beyond that, we
have a lot of her thoughts and sometimes she even
typed entries on separate sheets and stuck them on the
pages in her diary. Sometimes she put flyers, cards and
(16:21):
invitations in the diary. Here's the first entry. In a preface,
she wrote just after she began keeping her diary. Had
I had sense enough to keep a diary all these
years that I have been traveling around, particularly that memorable
summer of nineteen eighteen when I did my bit traveling
through the South for the Council of Defense, well there
(16:41):
would be less confusion in my mind about lots of things.
Now I begin this day to keep the record that
should have been kept long since that flux that doctor
Hale mentioned, the confusion that Alice mentioned that's present across
the entries. She talked about her writing, her social advocacy,
and her teaching, but she also wrote about how she
(17:03):
struggled financially and how she was quote forty six years
old in nowhere Yet. Nine years after that comment, she
wrote the following Saturday, September sixth, nineteen thirty, lay in
bed and finished per roots is the master of the
day of judgment and have been wanting to commit suicide
all day. Life is such a god awful mess and
(17:26):
I'm such a total and complete failure. God.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
We have more suicidal ideation, losing jobs, business and publishing struggles,
health complications.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Spiritual development, romantic flings, learning to drive deaths in the family,
celebrations of spring. She takes us on a whole rollercoaster.
We get to learn about her writing submissions and subsequent rejections,
which we're getting her down. Monday, November two, nineteen thirty one,
sent Harlem John Henry to The Crisis Today. She had
(18:01):
sent the poem to the Bookmen, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and
other places. According to Alice, the rejection from the Bookmen
came back quote disgustingly prompt and yeah, I can relate,
but anyway, Harlem John Hemn Reviews. The Armada was eventually
published in the NAACP's official magazine, The Crisis in January
(18:22):
of nineteen thirty two. At the time, writing was a
boys club that was hard for black women to break into,
and it was hard for Alice to balance keeping up
with her work and her activism. Her work did grow
more popular over time, but her funds did not reflect that.
She started her journal entry on August nineteenth, nineteen twenty nine.
(18:42):
This way, I am so flat broke that it is funny.
An epidemic of poverty seems to have struck us all.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It wasn't all doom and gloom, though there were bright spots,
moments where she drank and danced and hot from party
to party.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Thursday, December eighth, Well, here sitting in the little bear
dressing room of Robinson's famed Colosseum, while outside, a jazz
band consisting of five slim black youths are discoursing about
the snappiest rendition of don't We Have Fun? One Shimmy's automatically.
Even in my big coat, huddled with the proper missus Miller,
(19:19):
mine Hostess, and the no less proper Missus Robinson, I
let go hoarse, voice and all, and shake a shoulder
and croake a line or two to help on the
jazz noise. As her diary shows, Alice had quite a
complicated life. It's disheartening to see how Alice went through
that same rejection and struggle that so many other black
(19:41):
women writers did at the time. It's also hard to
see the mental challenges that she faced in her own words.
But at the same time we see that Alice lived
a full life and worked hard and played hard, and
just like so many artists today, she questions the strength
of her work and her self worth my diary it's
going to be a valuable thing one of these days.
(20:02):
She said on September twenty first, nineteen twenty eight. And
I'd say she was right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So she was pretty cognizant that people would be reading
this afterwards. Yes, I think she was. I think she
knew that there was a possibility of that, and hers
was entertaining to me. So I wonder if she was
kind of doing that for the future gaze she.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Could have been she might've known her life was kind
of a reality show in a lot of ways. I mean,
there were a romantic there were love interests on the side.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
There was party, yeah, the party, all the rejections, the drinking.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
People love a little.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
A good little underdog David and Goliath moment. She's getting
all these rejections. But I mean she's known as a
big deal of the Harlem renaissance now. But if she
hadn't been writing all those things like who would know
that you're I say, got rejected seven times and from
which places? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
She was like, let it be know. Yeah, they played
in my face. And that's my favorite part about reading journals.
I mean you really get that insight into what they
were truly thinking.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, and what mattered because there's a million things that
happened to you that even if you do keep a journal,
you're not writing about like you could step on somebody
foot at the intersection. You probably not going to write
about that in your journal, but they're gon'll be like
this bitch stepped on my lubitus.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And you also get an insight into, like I guess
if you want to do some cycle analyzing, into what
they choose to include and what they don't choose to include.
So there might be things that we now in hindsight,
you know about them, and we know those things happen,
and they may have represented it a different way in
their diaries or they might not have included it at all.
(21:49):
But there's also those moments where you read through stuff
like this and I say, and I think, why did
they say it like that? Why does she say did
my bit? What does that mean? What's behind that? You know,
there's a lot of subtext behind certain things and things
where you can see the brackets there, you can see
the parentheses, and something else happened. We might not get
to know about it through the diaries, especially because there
(22:09):
are probably some she wrote that are completely missing for
many years.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, and things that also can't be like really cooperated,
like Okay, you went on these travels. There weren't like
as many pictures back then, videos like maybe no one
knew you were traveling like this, or maybe you had
like a few official stops, but you was going off
to little joy it on the side, you know. So
(22:35):
it's interesting to hear that, But it's like, I guess
it's kind of the same way now for people who
are not famous. I don't think someone like of her
caliber could do that now could do what like say,
like I'm trying to think of like a well known
writer now, Tana hose Coats people know where that at,
Like he don't want people know where he at, and
(22:55):
people trying to picture. We saw Tanahsey here. You know,
he bought a house in Brooklyn. You know, I was
just trying to be normal buying house. They plastered that
in like a publication. He's like, I can't live in
this house anymore, Like I ain't want the streets to
know where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Oh, And it goes deep. It's not even just seeing
you in public. They see this plant in the background
in this corner and this stop light on this street,
and they're like, let me zoom in. I can find
out where that is Google maps. Let me go check.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I bet his diary it's good, but I know maybe
he would keep it for people to see, maybe he
have some directions or I don't know, but I just
don't think that in the time period we're living in,
writers can have like that anonymity. We just have to
go by the word of their diary, like there's other
ways to check and fact check what they said and
(23:43):
get some corroboration that wasn't available back then. And that
happens so often for historians and scholars who are going
back and looking through people's work. And when I'm going
back and looking at people's biography, sometimes that'll be the
only work. Sometimes it's an autobiography. Sometimes it's biography that
was an official biography that where they specifically talk to
the person and wrote the biography for them. And you
(24:05):
have to go on their word for us today because
we don't have any other sources to be able to
fact check. So you end up with inaccurate information. And
some of that information is like more key, some of
its small things. But like for instance, like with birth dates,
people lied about their birthdates all the time. They be
lying by decades by decades, location child.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
They just be making stuff up and knowing they don't know,
which I love. That's one of my favorite parts about
reading biographies. But one thing I did like was that
first diary entry that I read, when she talked about
how she wished she would have written journals before. I
really love that because she's commenting on the significance of
diary writing just for herself. Because so we were talking
about how she probably knew that there would be some
(24:51):
observation of her diary entries at some point, or imagine
there might be, or assumed there would be, but it
clearly was doing something for her mental state, and she
acknowledged that, and she said, you know, I wouldn't have
had the confusion now if I think that was the truth.
I think this is a moment of an unreliable narrator.
I think she was still confused because life is life,
(25:12):
and life was life and for her, because we haven't
even gotten into Paul Laurence Dunbar who he had tuberculosis
I think it was, and he was prescribed alcohol for
it and got hooked on alcohol. So I mean not
laughing because it's a funny, funny thing, but it's just
like it's really dramatic, Like her life is really dramatic
in a lot of that is shown in this diary.
(25:32):
And she'll end some of the years like it'll be
the way the book is organized as chronologically, and doctor
Hole will give this kind of overview of what's to come.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
In the year, which is saucy. Just read those and
you're like, oh my god. But you get to the
end and she'll be like, this year was terrible. Yeah,
And I'm like, girl, you're still confused. And that's okay
or is just her perception of things, because I know,
like I'll be complaining about stuff and people be like girl,
and they'll like be like boom boom boom, like laying
(26:06):
out all this stuff about my life that they see
from a different perspective. But I'm just complaining about like
this one thing that's getting on my nerves. And it's like, well,
just how I feel like you can see all this
stuff like oh you pop in blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well I don't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It was that terrible year.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I am one there with you. I feel you on that.
I think it's because the negatives often outweigh how the
positives feel.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, there you feel them more. You feel them one
hundred percent more. It's so easy for me to go
back and lay out all the really bad things that
happen rather than the ups and I have to in
my own life. I check myself on that a lot
of the time and definitely make sure that I acknowledge
those things and offer myself gratitude. I got to come
back to earth sometimes. But she did go through a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She had deaths in the family and dealt with the
marital issues, stepping out, her, stepping out, him, stepping out,
step step.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Stepside to side, front to back, double dishes.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Girl, they was doing line dances at a cookout. So yeah,
I think that was her perception of how things went.
And there were ups and downs in her life, and
we got to read about it, and we got to
read about it, and I am grateful for it. I
think there are many stories that could come out of
her life, like dramatize or fictionalized stories that could come
out of her life. Yeah, that is clear from her diary.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Oh it could be like you know how Moesha had
the diary, okah diary. It could be her doing a
little voiceover and then it like goes into the little
vignette of what she wrote about.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Okay, next production coming up from.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Eves and Katie, somebody give me a studio. So after
the break, our last diarist brings us home. Last, but
definitely not least, Alice Walker. Yeah, another Alice, So we'll
(28:02):
call her by her last name. She's a little different
than our last two diarists because she's still living and
because her journals were published recently.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yep, Valerie Boyd edited Gathering Blossoms under Fire, The Journals
of Alice Walker nineteen sixty five to two thousand. It
was published in twenty twenty two, so we get a
kind of real time look at how Walker changed as
a person and as an artist over time. There's a
good chance y'all know her, especially with the release of
the twenty twenty three version of The Color Purple film.
(28:31):
But Alice Walker is a writer and activist, best known
for writing the novel The Color Purple. The book made
her the first black woman to win the Police Surprize
for Fiction, but she also wrote the novel The Temple
of My Familiar, the nonfiction book In Search of Our
Mother's Gardens, and many poetry collections, along with dozens of
other works. Suffice it to say she has classics in
(28:53):
the literary canon. So it makes sense that now, as
she enters her eighties, we get to take a peek
behind the curtain and see how she thinks about the
big capital eye issues and the small joys of life.
She wrote about her discovery of Zora Neil Hurston, her Grave,
and other black women authors whose quote lives ended in
(29:13):
poverty and obscurity. As she put it August twenty first,
nineteen seventy three, I did not return to this notebook
to write about the Caribbean cruise in July, but to
write my impressions of Eatonville and my hurt and horror
at the neglect of Zora's memory as evidenced by her Grave.
I still can't write about it, but I must. She
(29:35):
wrote a lot about love, relationships, and romance. July sixteenth,
nineteen ninety nine. The Mother Piece says the sun will
shine again soon, that there is a chance to be
lovers in a way that heals old wounds. That I
can handle complexity except when I'm tired. I want a
simpler life, fewer things, more quality, time with people I love.
(29:59):
She also wrote about how her work made her feel.
June sixteenth, nineteen seventy three. I'm glad, I wrote in
Search of our Mother's Gardens to read at the Ratcliffe
Symposium on Black Women. But why did I have to
burst into tears in the forum later? The truth is
that in a way, I am not embarrassed by tears
if they are speaking to feeling in life, as opposed
(30:19):
to abstractions which the forum presenters were indulging in June
was wonderful. She hugged me. And after Barbara and tear said,
you're trying to carry your mother and the weight is
too heavy. June said, but why shouldn't you carry your mother?
She carried you, didn't she? That is perfection? In a
short response, it is just that I learn as I
(30:43):
write about her, all our mothers, just how fantastic they
were and are. Sometimes I want to write about smashing
a white face, but it always comes to this. I
would rather write about our mothers, write up until time
to smash. Then I just smash, and then if I
live to tell the tale, I probably wouldn't even bother
to tell it. I go back to describing our mother's face,
(31:06):
And that same day questions came up related to her
social and political ideologies. I am upset deeply about the
subservient condition of African women. I wonder how other women
feel about this. In an undated nineteen eighty entry, Walker
said the following, what do we want, my god, what
do black women writers want? We want freedom? Freedom to
(31:29):
be ourselves, to write the unwriteable, to say the unsayable,
to think the unthinkable, to dare to engage the world
in a conversation it has not had before. So Katie,
I was thinking when I was reading Alice Walker's journal
entries that she knew somebody was going to read those.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yes, she's been famous for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
She has been famous for a long time, and these
entries go back to you to the earlier years of
her famous. She's been famous for a long time still.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But the way she was right in the full sentences
m dashes, she knew yeah. And it's funny her diary
entries like she'll spill some like t on people that
are still alive, and most people don't do that. Like girl,
you do not care. Like it's funny when you like
are encountering like old black people, I think especially they
(32:22):
do not care they're like whatever, Like what you're gonna do.
They'll just say anything, yes and write it down. Do
you think that's wrong or are you cool with that? I
mean personally you didn't talk about me because but I
mean I think it's just like honest, Like, I know,
people be like mad at you when you like talk
(32:43):
about them about some shit they did, like you did it. Like,
as long as I'm not lying on you, you did it,
So don't be mad, be mad at yourself. All I
can do is pray for you.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, they're gonna be mad still though, Keep praying.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
But yeah, I do find that like funny about Alice
Walker's diary entries. But I do like that hers were
released while she was still alive. I think there's something
about like the agency of it that I appreciate. She
did work with Valerie Boyd, who unfortunately passed away before
the collection was published, but she was the editor for
it and worked really hard on that. And Emory holds
(33:20):
the Alice Walker papers, so you can go to Emory
Library and see her diary entries. Not all of them
are like as as neat like some of them. It's
just like legal paths and she's drawing stuff, like she
had a really beautiful house, like drawing the estate and
planning parties, and so it's like really cool to see
(33:42):
her social life, all the people she's been in relationships
with so many people, like romantic but also just like platonic,
Like she's friends with a lot of people and seeing
them come in and out of her sphere is really
cool too.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, I like that about I like that. You know,
there was name dropping across all these diary entries, all
even and sometimes there were closer personal relationships, like with
the when we were talking about Francis, those were lectures
she was going to see if people. But once we
get into Alice Dunbar and Nelson and we get into
Alice Walker, they're like, this is who I was colt
sing with, you know, yeah, I mean Langston Hughes. You know.
(34:17):
In the journal entries, Alice Walker had an entry of
I think it was a poem she wrote to Langston
Hughes and he was a mentor of hers, and she
obviously had a lot of feelings after he died. And
I just felt like spaces were so lively, like I
could see the back and forth, like the communication and
the camaraderie that was happening between people whose names I know,
(34:40):
you know, people who was writing that I admire, or
just artistry in general that I admire, and they're like, yes,
this person came to my party. We were at this bookstore,
and I'm just like, wow, that seems so warm. It
just felt so warm and yellow in so many moments
in the diary entries and from a way where we
saw the be happy about that, because I feel like
(35:02):
now when we look at artists that we admire from
the outside, it looks like it can be like a
keeping up, like there's images you're trying to keep up with,
or like levels you're trying to reach. It can be
a lot of social maneuvering around it, and we don't
often get to see when we don't know people people
we admire who are in public spheres, like how they
(35:23):
feel about their writing, how they feel like, wow, I
did this, I'm proud of myself, or I love my people,
I'm glad my people showed up for me.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
An interview that you know is going to be published
on this day, or an acceptance speech where like, of
course you have to say those things, but like, what
are you saying, like to yourself, like before you go
to bed at night.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, exactly. And it can also seem like people are
so self assured about their fame and success and that
they're just like this, it is what it is. I'm
in these circles now, I'm on this different level now,
and it just is. It just be And it's nice
to see some of the struggles, like in Alice Dunbar
Nelson's case, she had a lot of struggles with getting
(36:05):
her work published that she actually talked about, and also
seeing the humanity behind the notoriety. Yeah, that was nice.
So Alice Walker did do an interview with The New
York Times not that long ago, and she said, quote,
I want the journals to be used so that people
can see this working through of disappointment, anger, sorrow, regret.
(36:28):
So in that sense, it's a medicine book. And I
liked that quote. I liked thinking of these diaries as healing.
I think that was like a good way to go
back and think about all of the diary entries we
have from black women. And we did talk a lot
about people who have actual storytelling capacities, but it wasn't
that way for you know, everyone, and not to the
(36:49):
same extent as to the Alicees was for Francis, but
they were medicine for themselves, which they actually said, this
made me feel better, As Alice Dunbar Nelson said, there
are medicines for people who are reading and getting to
see more of that interiority of people that we might
look up to or who had challenges, like some of
the enslaved people's narratives, and that we get to see
(37:12):
that range of emotions and that it's not all things
aren't always so cut and dry, they're not always so
wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow like they
are when they're presented to us, and even personal narratives
like biographies, and I appreciate that, and that we can
see that happen over time with the three people we
had today, like this is from the eighteen hundred to
(37:34):
the nineteen hundreds to this very moment with Alice Walker
still living today.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
One thing I would like to see is diary entries
from kind of just regular black women, because like these women,
they had a certain amount of leisure time. You know,
like the first lady, she's living in a time where
slavery is existing, but she's a free black woman. But
it's like, what was it like to be a black
woman with five kids in the South d'ur in the sixties.
(38:04):
You know, I don't think those people really had the
luxury of sitting down and writing all that down.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
They did not. I think doctor Hole actually talks about
that in her scholarship. You're starting from a specific place
when you have the luxury of these journals, and you
can see that influx in these people's diaries too, because
some of it is that it's just not extant, but
some of it is that they just weren't writing at
those times, and those times we have evidence of. But
I think sometimes we too can also assume like they
(38:32):
just didn't have as much space in their lives to
write these journals. I agree with you, and I also
think on the flip side, it's nice to see black
women have ease to be able to do that. Yeah,
But I think, you know, these women we talked about today,
it's like their heritages were really mixed too, and there
were free people of color, and they had like high
(38:52):
status in society, had money, So yeah, it was a
lot of social class privilege that was happening for these
people for sure, and education.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
How Alice Walker said it could be medicine, Like, I
don't know, I don't think I want to get our
Alice's level, you know, and most people aren't going to
be an Alice Walker, but a lot of people are
going to be just more normal. So it's like, what
were normal black women who did not have access to
all these like really cool scenes and people and travel,
(39:25):
Like where's our medicine? Not saying that we can't get
anything from these women who are living different lives than us,
but I just want to see more.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
More yeah, more variety, more range. I mean, we still
ask them for those things today at a media representation, and
it would be nice to have those that kind of
perspective on this smaller level that is more touchable, that's
more accessible to us. They exist, but they're farther and
fewer between. And I also would imagine that like archiving
(39:53):
becomes another issue in this for people like that. So
these people have families who had spaces to keep them,
but we start talking about housing and being itinerant or
you know, not always having financial, economic and housing security.
You know that probably also went along with the people
who were like have five kids and they didn't have
this writing stature or any sort of artistic our professional stature,
(40:17):
and travel. These women did a lot of traveling. You know,
they didn't have all that and they didn't have people
who could keep up with it and make sure that
it remained in existence over time. So I think, you know,
those are harder, but yeah, we do need more of those,
and not just from a personal perspective, I think also
from a like sociological anthropological perspective for us to get
(40:39):
a better handle and sense of how life was in
the past. And this just scratches the surface of all
the diaries that writers and non writers alike have kept.
There are the diaries of activists and teacher Charlotte for
ingrim Key, journalist Ida B. Wells, poet Gwendolyn Bennett, and
(41:01):
writer Jaanita Harrison, and they're all storytellers with some name
recognition exactly. There are people like Emily Francis Davis, who
was a free black woman in Philly during the Civil War.
She wrote a diary that can help us time travel
and see what day to day life was like for
her and get engauge on responses to the Civil War.
Mary Virginia Montgomery and Laura Hamilton Murray and plenty of
(41:23):
other black women named and unnamed have penned diaries.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Now it is time for roll credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
we encountered during the week. Ease, who are what would
you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I'll give credit to Ida b Wells, who we briefly
mentioned it today's episode, but she also wrote diary entries
where we got to learn more about her journey, her journalism,
the events that happened to her, all the work that
she was doing back in the day, and you can
read those and those are super insightful about her work
as well.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
I would like to give credit to celebrating posthumous birthdays.
Yesterday would have been my grandpa's eighty seventh birthday, and
so I made a dish that he was known for making,
and me and my family ate it and it was
just a way to celebrate that was not sad. So
I've been doing that for the last couple of years
(42:27):
since he passed and it's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
On whatever.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Happy birthday, Grandpa, Thank you, and with that, we will
see y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Bye y'all bye. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves,
jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by
Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Theme Show.
You can also send us an email at Hello at
(42:57):
on Theme Dot Show. Had to one Theme Dot Show
to check out the show notes for episodes. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
On theme is a production of iHeartRadio and fair Weather
Friends Media, December twenty seventh, nineteen seventy five. Sometimes I
(00:36):
know I go places in the diary that take my
breath away, as if there were someone else living inside me,
with her own determined will to see and speak clearly.
Because I don't write to protect myself or to say
things I don't dare say to others. I don't cater
to any pampered image of myself as a too sensitive
soul for whom the world is too much. In the
(00:57):
Diary her only friend, neither too fragile nor too sensitive.
I have many true friends, and the portrayals I have
known I have asked for. I don't write to hide
from the world. Today's episode Diary dialogues I'm Katie and
I'm Eves. Kathleen Collins was a writer, filmmaker, and activist.
(01:21):
She's known for works like the nineteen eighty two film
Losing Ground, as well as the plays In the Midnight
Hour and The Brothers. Sadly, Kathleen died from breast cancer
in nineteen eighty eight at the tender age of forty six,
before most of her work could be published, so Kathleen's daughter,
Nina Collins, took to the task of diligently gathering her
(01:41):
mom's work and releasing it.
Speaker 2 (01:43):
In twenty sixteen, Echo Press posthumously published a collection of
Kathleen's stories called Whatever Happened to Interracial Love, and in
twenty nineteen, Notes from a Black Woman's Diary was published.
It features a selection of her fiction, letters and diary entries,
including the diary entry that you heard at the beginning
of this episode.
Speaker 1 (02:03):
Now, it was a diary entry, but it was also
a kind of commentary. She's actually reflecting on some of
her older diary entries, pausing to think about why she
wrote and what the diary meant to her. In my opinion,
this is a brave act. The other day, I was
just thinking about going back to look at some of
my old journals, and I was already starting the sweat. Girl.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
You know, I've thrown away and ripped up all my
old journals and I regret it. Yeah, like especially the
ones I've had when I was really young. But they're
just so embarrassing, and I'm like, I want to make
sure no one ever sees these, including myself.
Speaker 1 (02:39):
Yeah, that's how I feel about looking at my own
and not even once I were that old. How old
were the ones that you were?
Speaker 2 (02:44):
It was that you ripped up the last ones I
think I ripped up. I was truly like in like
middle school or something, which now I'm like, oh, it
would be like funny to like go back and look
at them. I have someones from like twenty sixteen, twenty
seventeen era. I haven't ripped those up, but baby, I will,
I will.
Speaker 1 (03:02):
I haven't learned you just said.
Speaker 2 (03:03):
She did it. No, because like the closer I am
to that age, I'm like, nah, that's embarrassing, Like you know,
I can't have it nobody looking at me late that. Yeah,
and I have some diary entries from you know, this
year that I will likely you rip up later on.
Speaker 1 (03:15):
Yeah, I know I got something from last year.
Speaker 2 (03:18):
Girl.
Speaker 1 (03:19):
It's a lot of them in there that I don't
want to see, and I just couldn't imagine publishing them
of my own volition. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (03:25):
And then even the fact that she's like commenting on
herself that makes me like, I don't know if I would.
Speaker 1 (03:30):
No, I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't
think I would. I mean, when I go back when
I was wanting to go back and look at my
old journal entries, it was for practical reasons. I was like, oh,
I know, I put some story ideas in there somewhere.
I had some notes that I took about yoga or
something like that. But I knew I was gonna come
across other stuff while I was in there. I was like,
I'm not trying to sift through all that to find
(03:52):
what I need.
Speaker 2 (03:53):
Yeah, even not even like diaries, but the pictures you
take and then your phone like makes a little video
of like the status fucking day.
Speaker 1 (04:01):
Of coming up.
Speaker 2 (04:07):
You know what it is? Yeah, yes, same energy, same energy,
but almost a little worse because AI is doing that
to you, and you're doing it to yourself when you're
going back to the journals, putting yourself through that mess.
Speaker 1 (04:22):
But I'm on the same page as you. So there
aren't many diary entries in Notes from a Black Woman's Diary,
but you get the best of both worlds. You get
some of the original entries, and you get this meta
narrative where the author gets to analyze her past self
with more context and insight. Kathleen's entries give us a
peek at contemporary published diaries, but they're a tiny sliver
(04:44):
of a long history of black women writing their innermost
thoughts and feelings on paper that includes their history of
slave narratives, letters, and autobiographies. And through all of these
published and unpublished diaries, we get to learn more about
historical eras and culture, about the biographies of our ancestors,
(05:05):
and about the day to day experiences of communities. Plus
we get a sneak peek into the private, interior worlds
of everyday people, unmarred by the specter of surveillance. And
to be honest, it feels a little voyeuristic, but we're
lucky to have the diaries that we do. So let's
grab our tiny keys and crack open the padlocks on
(05:25):
a few diaries. First up, Francis and Rowlin Whipper. Francis
was born in Charleston, South Carolina, in eighteen forty five,
and she was the oldest of five girls. Her father
dealt in lumber. Not much is known about her mother,
but the family had a fair amount of social and
(05:47):
political status in black circles in the city, and they
were considered free people of color. Frances was well educated
and she and her sisters were proponents of women's rights
and suffrage. Was a teacher, and she was a writer,
and she was so good at her jobs that abolitionist
and politician Martin Delaney commissioned her to write his official biography.
(06:10):
That made her the author of the first biography of
a freeborn Black American man.
Speaker 2 (06:15):
As an avid writer, Francis also kept a diary in
eighteen sixty eight that still exists today. It's one of
the oldest by a black woman from the South, and
it's housed in the Smithsonian National Museum of African American
History and Culture. But I just called that the Blacksonian Trial.
In her diary, she writes about what she's reading, Dante, Shakespeare,
(06:36):
Thomas Carlisle. She talks about writing her book, finishing it,
and about its publishers and the pay for it. There's
a little name dropping here and there on lectures and
readings that she attended, like Charles Dickens and Ralph Waldo Emerson.
In this diary entry, she talks about famous abolitionists and
journalist William Lloyd Garrison, who founded the anti slavery newspaper
(06:58):
The Liberator. Wednesday, February twelfth, eighteen sixty eight, mister William
Lloyd Garrison spent the morning with me.
Speaker 1 (07:07):
I thank him a grand, noble soul, a singularly perfect
development of God's highest humanity, a great intellect consecrated to
one idea. I felt a reverence while in the presence
of this great man who came to the rescue of
a gaped and helpless people. God marked him out from
the number to his truths. But is he a humanitarian?
(07:30):
How can his practiced pen and ready heart remain uninterested
while the same wrong exists under another form. God knoweth
his purposes and the instruments best adapted. She mentions the
anti slavery meetings that she goes to, and we learn
a little bit about how anti black violence is showing
up in current events that affect her. Sunday, August second, Columbia,
(07:52):
South Carolina, reached Columbia about six o'clock. Mister Hipper met
me at the depot with his buggy and took me
to my boarding place, where an elegant and spacious room
awaited me. Breakfast was tempting. My dear friend mister Adams
was in to see me. Very soon after my arrival.
Charlotte came to see me in the morning but Kate
did not went to church in the morning with Harry
(08:13):
Maxwell and mister Adams, the governor, and all the members
were there. Quite an excitement created on account of the
disappearance of Joe Howard after the visit of the Ku
klups Klan at night, and we get some insight into
some of our socio political opinions. Saturday, February twenty second,
Washington's birthday. But if things continue as they are, there
(08:35):
will be but little country left to celebrate it. For myself,
I am no enthusiast over patriotic celebrations, as I am
counted out of the way politic. I wrote very satisfactory today.
Matthews brought me the Commonwealth and other papers. There was
a grand description of Reverend to Bartell, Charles Elliot Norton
(08:55):
and O. Bronson Alcott appear of the finest spiritual essence.
I heard him at the Anti Slavery meeting. Also GB Fothenham.
But she gets into some Monday moments too. She talks
about her travels and snowstorms and all the folks she
knew who were getting married while she was alone, and
she talked about her later relationship with lawyer and legislator
(09:17):
William James Whipper. Thursday August twentieth woke early wondering whether
to throw up the sponge or accept a loveless life
or not, felt as though w could not love anyone.
A letter came from him today which restored me, A
real love letter. What does throw up the sponge mean?
I mean, I get the gist, but I was like,
(09:37):
I've never heard that idiom before.
Speaker 2 (09:40):
Maybe like, oh, I'm just an old maid cleaning my house.
Speaker 1 (09:44):
I'm throwing up the spode.
Speaker 2 (09:48):
Actually that makes sense, that's probably it.
Speaker 1 (09:53):
I mean, there were a lot of domestic workers at
the time. That was a lot of black women's jobs.
Speaker 2 (09:57):
I was also thinking it meant something about like birth control.
I feel like it wasn't there some type of sponge?
Speaker 1 (10:04):
Yeah? Or is I don't know. Yeah, I think that
was a method of birth control back then. Yeah. Still,
those are two guesses. Yeah. I was thinking when I
was going through all of her stuff, like, I feel
like I wanted to be her friend when I was
reading her diaries. I mean that might just be my delusion,
(10:26):
but yeah, but I just loved how much she cared
about writing and about learning and just about all the
works she was reading, like actually critiquing it and having
thoughts on it. There were moments where she was like,
I was talking to I can't remember the person's name,
but ostensibly a friend or an associate. I was talking
to him and he said this about this piece, and
(10:48):
I couldn't deal with that. I couldn't handle it. He
was wrong. I liked her remarks and her reflections on
how she felt about the work. I liked how she
was like, that person needs to do some more work,
like their writing needs to be tightened up, or their
lecture needs to be tightened up. I really appreciated that
element of her work, and she wrote so much about it.
(11:09):
And I know this was just one year of writing,
of detailed writing about her life, but you could tell
she spent a lot of time in the books in
the weeds, and she really enjoyed the knowledge, gathering, consciousness,
raising elements of everything.
Speaker 2 (11:27):
So she wrote that biography of that man. Did she
write more public facing work that would kind of get
into her cultural critic bag or was it all in
her diary.
Speaker 1 (11:39):
I think it was mostly in her diary. H Yeah,
I might be wrong about that, but she didn't do
a ton of public writing that I know of.
Speaker 2 (11:47):
And I think that's a testament of the time that
she was writing into, because now I can't really imagine
someone like her just writing that stuff in their diary.
And maybe that's just like the bubble I'm in, but
it seems like nowadays, if you are really in the
books and you got a little pin you can push,
(12:08):
you're pitching the Atlantic, you're pitching the New York Times,
you're pitching the Cut, you know, yeah, and you're not
going to just like keep that to yourself. And it's
interesting too, because I imagine she didn't think about having an
audience for this diary, but now we like write for
an audience. I feel like even in our diaries, we
write for like thinking like, oh somebody might read this,
(12:30):
like not even just like oh yo, man, going through
your stuff, but like, oh later when I'm the famous
and people want to read my diaries, like let me,
let me put a little funk on this, you know,
instead of just like writing normal like you would. Right,
Do you feel that way, because I feel like i'd
be like, I feel that way. We write a little better.
Speaker 1 (12:47):
I feel that way for myself. So for me, when
I write in my journals today, it's more about I
don't want if anybody finds it, I don't want them
to read this. Sometimes I be leaving out names because
of that. But then I have to check myself and
be like, girl, be honest, you are writing this for you,
so just get it out here, like you don't have
many places you can do that. I don't really think
about that in my journals from a larger perspective of
(13:09):
like what society would read later. However, I do know
that I have this self surveillance of thinking about what
if this goes into the archives one day? So it's
not necessarily conscious for me, but I can't see it
being unconscious because the reality of it is that I
have a podcast, I write things, you know, So I
have things that will exist already in the public sphere
(13:32):
in some way potentially on the internet for eternity until
the Internet blows up. So I do probably un blove
next week, next week, thank god, because some of that
stuff needs to go away. Yeah, so I do. I
don't find myself self censoring like for that reason per se,
But I have an awareness that like, I mean, do
(13:57):
I want archives, you know? Do I want my estate
to put some of things in the archives. Do I
want to be worthy of that? Yes, I think that's
the thing I would like to be worthy of that,
Like my work will actually be meaningful to people in
the future. But do I want my journals and diaries
to go there? No, absolutely not. But that is what
(14:17):
happened with Francis, and her eighteen sixty eight diary gives
us a pretty detailed view of life in Boston and
South Carolina in the reconstruction era, so it goes beyond
just her personal reflections about her life. When we get
back from the break, we'll jump forward about half a
century to the lively generative period that was the Harlem Renaissance.
(14:49):
Up next, Alice Dunbar Nelson. Like Francis, Alice advocated for
political and social causes. She was in wom men's clubs,
organized for suffrage and focused her journalistic efforts on topics
like World War One, racial equality, and education. And she
wrote essays, short stories, and poems. So she shared a
(15:13):
lot of her thoughts in public. But her diary was
published in nineteen eighty five, and it was the second
book length diary of a black woman to be published.
The first was activist writer and educator Charlotte Forton's in
nineteen fifty three. Alice's diary provides an unfiltered look into
her raw emotions as she endured personal ups and downs.
(15:34):
As doctor Akasha Gloria Hall says in the book Give
Us Each Day, the Diary of Alice Dunbar Nelson. During
the periods when she kept the diary, Dunbar Nelson's life
was in flux or crisis. Alice started writing her diary
entries in nineteen twenty one, and her last entry is on,
as she put it, the last night of a disastrous
year of nineteen thirty one.
Speaker 2 (15:56):
But a big chunk of her entries are missing from
nineteen twenty two to nineteen twenty.
Speaker 1 (16:00):
Five mm hm, because we don't have evidence of them.
We don't know if Alice wrote during this period, but
it is likely that she did, so we'll just have
to be okay with that gap. But beyond that, we
have a lot of her thoughts and sometimes she even
typed entries on separate sheets and stuck them on the
pages in her diary. Sometimes she put flyers, cards and
(16:21):
invitations in the diary. Here's the first entry. In a preface,
she wrote just after she began keeping her diary. Had
I had sense enough to keep a diary all these
years that I have been traveling around, particularly that memorable
summer of nineteen eighteen when I did my bit traveling
through the South for the Council of Defense, well there
(16:41):
would be less confusion in my mind about lots of things.
Now I begin this day to keep the record that
should have been kept long since that flux that doctor
Hale mentioned, the confusion that Alice mentioned that's present across
the entries. She talked about her writing, her social advocacy,
and her teaching, but she also wrote about how she
(17:03):
struggled financially and how she was quote forty six years
old in nowhere Yet. Nine years after that comment, she
wrote the following Saturday, September sixth, nineteen thirty, lay in
bed and finished per roots is the master of the
day of judgment and have been wanting to commit suicide
all day. Life is such a god awful mess and
(17:26):
I'm such a total and complete failure. God.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
We have more suicidal ideation, losing jobs, business and publishing struggles,
health complications.
Speaker 1 (17:38):
Spiritual development, romantic flings, learning to drive deaths in the family,
celebrations of spring. She takes us on a whole rollercoaster.
We get to learn about her writing submissions and subsequent rejections,
which we're getting her down. Monday, November two, nineteen thirty one,
sent Harlem John Henry to The Crisis Today. She had
(18:01):
sent the poem to the Bookmen, Atlantic Monthly, Harper's and
other places. According to Alice, the rejection from the Bookmen
came back quote disgustingly prompt and yeah, I can relate,
but anyway, Harlem John Hemn Reviews. The Armada was eventually
published in the NAACP's official magazine, The Crisis in January
(18:22):
of nineteen thirty two. At the time, writing was a
boys club that was hard for black women to break into,
and it was hard for Alice to balance keeping up
with her work and her activism. Her work did grow
more popular over time, but her funds did not reflect that.
She started her journal entry on August nineteenth, nineteen twenty nine.
(18:42):
This way, I am so flat broke that it is funny.
An epidemic of poverty seems to have struck us all.
Speaker 2 (18:51):
It wasn't all doom and gloom, though there were bright spots,
moments where she drank and danced and hot from party
to party.
Speaker 1 (18:58):
Thursday, December eighth, Well, here sitting in the little bear
dressing room of Robinson's famed Colosseum, while outside, a jazz
band consisting of five slim black youths are discoursing about
the snappiest rendition of don't We Have Fun? One Shimmy's automatically.
Even in my big coat, huddled with the proper missus Miller,
(19:19):
mine Hostess, and the no less proper Missus Robinson, I
let go hoarse, voice and all, and shake a shoulder
and croake a line or two to help on the
jazz noise. As her diary shows, Alice had quite a
complicated life. It's disheartening to see how Alice went through
that same rejection and struggle that so many other black
(19:41):
women writers did at the time. It's also hard to
see the mental challenges that she faced in her own words.
But at the same time we see that Alice lived
a full life and worked hard and played hard, and
just like so many artists today, she questions the strength
of her work and her self worth my diary it's
going to be a valuable thing one of these days.
(20:02):
She said on September twenty first, nineteen twenty eight. And
I'd say she was right.
Speaker 2 (20:07):
So she was pretty cognizant that people would be reading
this afterwards. Yes, I think she was. I think she
knew that there was a possibility of that, and hers
was entertaining to me. So I wonder if she was
kind of doing that for the future gaze she.
Speaker 1 (20:25):
Could have been she might've known her life was kind
of a reality show in a lot of ways. I mean,
there were a romantic there were love interests on the side.
Speaker 2 (20:31):
There was party, yeah, the party, all the rejections, the drinking.
Speaker 1 (20:36):
People love a little.
Speaker 2 (20:38):
A good little underdog David and Goliath moment. She's getting
all these rejections. But I mean she's known as a
big deal of the Harlem renaissance now. But if she
hadn't been writing all those things like who would know
that you're I say, got rejected seven times and from
which places? Right?
Speaker 1 (20:58):
She was like, let it be know. Yeah, they played
in my face. And that's my favorite part about reading journals.
I mean you really get that insight into what they
were truly thinking.
Speaker 2 (21:09):
Yeah, and what mattered because there's a million things that
happened to you that even if you do keep a journal,
you're not writing about like you could step on somebody
foot at the intersection. You probably not going to write
about that in your journal, but they're gon'll be like
this bitch stepped on my lubitus.
Speaker 1 (21:27):
And you also get an insight into, like I guess
if you want to do some cycle analyzing, into what
they choose to include and what they don't choose to include.
So there might be things that we now in hindsight,
you know about them, and we know those things happen,
and they may have represented it a different way in
their diaries or they might not have included it at all.
(21:49):
But there's also those moments where you read through stuff
like this and I say, and I think, why did
they say it like that? Why does she say did
my bit? What does that mean? What's behind that? You know,
there's a lot of subtext behind certain things and things
where you can see the brackets there, you can see
the parentheses, and something else happened. We might not get
to know about it through the diaries, especially because there
(22:09):
are probably some she wrote that are completely missing for
many years.
Speaker 2 (22:13):
Yeah, and things that also can't be like really cooperated,
like Okay, you went on these travels. There weren't like
as many pictures back then, videos like maybe no one
knew you were traveling like this, or maybe you had
like a few official stops, but you was going off
to little joy it on the side, you know. So
(22:35):
it's interesting to hear that, But it's like, I guess
it's kind of the same way now for people who
are not famous. I don't think someone like of her
caliber could do that now could do what like say,
like I'm trying to think of like a well known
writer now, Tana hose Coats people know where that at,
Like he don't want people know where he at, and
(22:55):
people trying to picture. We saw Tanahsey here. You know,
he bought a house in Brooklyn. You know, I was
just trying to be normal buying house. They plastered that
in like a publication. He's like, I can't live in
this house anymore, Like I ain't want the streets to
know where I'm at.
Speaker 1 (23:08):
Oh, And it goes deep. It's not even just seeing
you in public. They see this plant in the background
in this corner and this stop light on this street,
and they're like, let me zoom in. I can find
out where that is Google maps. Let me go check.
Speaker 2 (23:20):
I bet his diary it's good, but I know maybe
he would keep it for people to see, maybe he
have some directions or I don't know, but I just
don't think that in the time period we're living in,
writers can have like that anonymity. We just have to
go by the word of their diary, like there's other
ways to check and fact check what they said and
(23:43):
get some corroboration that wasn't available back then. And that
happens so often for historians and scholars who are going
back and looking through people's work. And when I'm going
back and looking at people's biography, sometimes that'll be the
only work. Sometimes it's an autobiography. Sometimes it's biography that
was an official biography that where they specifically talk to
the person and wrote the biography for them. And you
(24:05):
have to go on their word for us today because
we don't have any other sources to be able to
fact check. So you end up with inaccurate information. And
some of that information is like more key, some of
its small things. But like for instance, like with birth dates,
people lied about their birthdates all the time. They be
lying by decades by decades, location child.
Speaker 1 (24:30):
They just be making stuff up and knowing they don't know,
which I love. That's one of my favorite parts about
reading biographies. But one thing I did like was that
first diary entry that I read, when she talked about
how she wished she would have written journals before. I
really love that because she's commenting on the significance of
diary writing just for herself. Because so we were talking
about how she probably knew that there would be some
(24:51):
observation of her diary entries at some point, or imagine
there might be, or assumed there would be, but it
clearly was doing something for her mental state, and she
acknowledged that, and she said, you know, I wouldn't have
had the confusion now if I think that was the truth.
I think this is a moment of an unreliable narrator.
I think she was still confused because life is life,
(25:12):
and life was life and for her, because we haven't
even gotten into Paul Laurence Dunbar who he had tuberculosis
I think it was, and he was prescribed alcohol for
it and got hooked on alcohol. So I mean not
laughing because it's a funny, funny thing, but it's just
like it's really dramatic, Like her life is really dramatic
in a lot of that is shown in this diary.
(25:32):
And she'll end some of the years like it'll be
the way the book is organized as chronologically, and doctor
Hole will give this kind of overview of what's to come.
Speaker 2 (25:44):
In the year, which is saucy. Just read those and
you're like, oh my god. But you get to the
end and she'll be like, this year was terrible. Yeah,
And I'm like, girl, you're still confused. And that's okay
or is just her perception of things, because I know,
like I'll be complaining about stuff and people be like girl,
and they'll like be like boom boom boom, like laying
(26:06):
out all this stuff about my life that they see
from a different perspective. But I'm just complaining about like
this one thing that's getting on my nerves. And it's like, well,
just how I feel like you can see all this
stuff like oh you pop in blah blah blah.
Speaker 1 (26:18):
Well I don't feel that way.
Speaker 2 (26:20):
It was that terrible year.
Speaker 1 (26:23):
I am one there with you. I feel you on that.
I think it's because the negatives often outweigh how the
positives feel.
Speaker 2 (26:30):
Yeah, there you feel them more. You feel them one
hundred percent more. It's so easy for me to go
back and lay out all the really bad things that
happen rather than the ups and I have to in
my own life. I check myself on that a lot
of the time and definitely make sure that I acknowledge
those things and offer myself gratitude. I got to come
back to earth sometimes. But she did go through a lot.
Speaker 1 (26:49):
She had deaths in the family and dealt with the
marital issues, stepping out, her, stepping out, him, stepping out,
step step.
Speaker 2 (26:59):
Stepside to side, front to back, double dishes.
Speaker 1 (27:03):
Girl, they was doing line dances at a cookout. So yeah,
I think that was her perception of how things went.
And there were ups and downs in her life, and
we got to read about it, and we got to
read about it, and I am grateful for it. I
think there are many stories that could come out of
her life, like dramatize or fictionalized stories that could come
out of her life. Yeah, that is clear from her diary.
Speaker 2 (27:27):
Oh it could be like you know how Moesha had
the diary, okah diary. It could be her doing a
little voiceover and then it like goes into the little
vignette of what she wrote about.
Speaker 1 (27:37):
Okay, next production coming up from.
Speaker 2 (27:39):
Eves and Katie, somebody give me a studio. So after
the break, our last diarist brings us home. Last, but
definitely not least, Alice Walker. Yeah, another Alice, So we'll
(28:02):
call her by her last name. She's a little different
than our last two diarists because she's still living and
because her journals were published recently.
Speaker 1 (28:10):
Yep, Valerie Boyd edited Gathering Blossoms under Fire, The Journals
of Alice Walker nineteen sixty five to two thousand. It
was published in twenty twenty two, so we get a
kind of real time look at how Walker changed as
a person and as an artist over time. There's a
good chance y'all know her, especially with the release of
the twenty twenty three version of The Color Purple film.
(28:31):
But Alice Walker is a writer and activist, best known
for writing the novel The Color Purple. The book made
her the first black woman to win the Police Surprize
for Fiction, but she also wrote the novel The Temple
of My Familiar, the nonfiction book In Search of Our
Mother's Gardens, and many poetry collections, along with dozens of
other works. Suffice it to say she has classics in
(28:53):
the literary canon. So it makes sense that now, as
she enters her eighties, we get to take a peek
behind the curtain and see how she thinks about the
big capital eye issues and the small joys of life.
She wrote about her discovery of Zora Neil Hurston, her Grave,
and other black women authors whose quote lives ended in
(29:13):
poverty and obscurity. As she put it August twenty first,
nineteen seventy three, I did not return to this notebook
to write about the Caribbean cruise in July, but to
write my impressions of Eatonville and my hurt and horror
at the neglect of Zora's memory as evidenced by her Grave.
I still can't write about it, but I must. She
(29:35):
wrote a lot about love, relationships, and romance. July sixteenth,
nineteen ninety nine. The Mother Piece says the sun will
shine again soon, that there is a chance to be
lovers in a way that heals old wounds. That I
can handle complexity except when I'm tired. I want a
simpler life, fewer things, more quality, time with people I love.
(29:59):
She also wrote about how her work made her feel.
June sixteenth, nineteen seventy three. I'm glad, I wrote in
Search of our Mother's Gardens to read at the Ratcliffe
Symposium on Black Women. But why did I have to
burst into tears in the forum later? The truth is
that in a way, I am not embarrassed by tears
if they are speaking to feeling in life, as opposed
(30:19):
to abstractions which the forum presenters were indulging in June
was wonderful. She hugged me. And after Barbara and tear said,
you're trying to carry your mother and the weight is
too heavy. June said, but why shouldn't you carry your mother?
She carried you, didn't she? That is perfection? In a
short response, it is just that I learn as I
(30:43):
write about her, all our mothers, just how fantastic they
were and are. Sometimes I want to write about smashing
a white face, but it always comes to this. I
would rather write about our mothers, write up until time
to smash. Then I just smash, and then if I
live to tell the tale, I probably wouldn't even bother
to tell it. I go back to describing our mother's face,
(31:06):
And that same day questions came up related to her
social and political ideologies. I am upset deeply about the
subservient condition of African women. I wonder how other women
feel about this. In an undated nineteen eighty entry, Walker
said the following, what do we want, my god, what
do black women writers want? We want freedom? Freedom to
(31:29):
be ourselves, to write the unwriteable, to say the unsayable,
to think the unthinkable, to dare to engage the world
in a conversation it has not had before. So Katie,
I was thinking when I was reading Alice Walker's journal
entries that she knew somebody was going to read those.
Speaker 2 (31:48):
Yes, she's been famous for a very long time.
Speaker 1 (31:50):
She has been famous for a long time, and these
entries go back to you to the earlier years of
her famous. She's been famous for a long time still.
Speaker 2 (31:59):
But the way she was right in the full sentences
m dashes, she knew yeah. And it's funny her diary
entries like she'll spill some like t on people that
are still alive, and most people don't do that. Like girl,
you do not care. Like it's funny when you like
are encountering like old black people, I think especially they
(32:22):
do not care they're like whatever, Like what you're gonna do.
They'll just say anything, yes and write it down. Do
you think that's wrong or are you cool with that? I
mean personally you didn't talk about me because but I
mean I think it's just like honest, Like, I know,
people be like mad at you when you like talk
(32:43):
about them about some shit they did, like you did it. Like,
as long as I'm not lying on you, you did it,
So don't be mad, be mad at yourself. All I
can do is pray for you.
Speaker 1 (32:53):
Yeah, they're gonna be mad still though, Keep praying.
Speaker 2 (32:59):
But yeah, I do find that like funny about Alice
Walker's diary entries. But I do like that hers were
released while she was still alive. I think there's something
about like the agency of it that I appreciate. She
did work with Valerie Boyd, who unfortunately passed away before
the collection was published, but she was the editor for
it and worked really hard on that. And Emory holds
(33:20):
the Alice Walker papers, so you can go to Emory
Library and see her diary entries. Not all of them
are like as as neat like some of them. It's
just like legal paths and she's drawing stuff, like she
had a really beautiful house, like drawing the estate and
planning parties, and so it's like really cool to see
(33:42):
her social life, all the people she's been in relationships
with so many people, like romantic but also just like platonic,
Like she's friends with a lot of people and seeing
them come in and out of her sphere is really
cool too.
Speaker 1 (33:54):
Yeah, I like that about I like that. You know,
there was name dropping across all these diary entries, all
even and sometimes there were closer personal relationships, like with
the when we were talking about Francis, those were lectures
she was going to see if people. But once we
get into Alice Dunbar and Nelson and we get into
Alice Walker, they're like, this is who I was colt
sing with, you know, yeah, I mean Langston Hughes. You know.
(34:17):
In the journal entries, Alice Walker had an entry of
I think it was a poem she wrote to Langston
Hughes and he was a mentor of hers, and she
obviously had a lot of feelings after he died. And
I just felt like spaces were so lively, like I
could see the back and forth, like the communication and
the camaraderie that was happening between people whose names I know,
(34:40):
you know, people who was writing that I admire, or
just artistry in general that I admire, and they're like, yes,
this person came to my party. We were at this bookstore,
and I'm just like, wow, that seems so warm. It
just felt so warm and yellow in so many moments
in the diary entries and from a way where we
saw the be happy about that, because I feel like
(35:02):
now when we look at artists that we admire from
the outside, it looks like it can be like a
keeping up, like there's images you're trying to keep up with,
or like levels you're trying to reach. It can be
a lot of social maneuvering around it, and we don't
often get to see when we don't know people people
we admire who are in public spheres, like how they
(35:23):
feel about their writing, how they feel like, wow, I
did this, I'm proud of myself, or I love my people,
I'm glad my people showed up for me.
Speaker 2 (35:32):
An interview that you know is going to be published
on this day, or an acceptance speech where like, of
course you have to say those things, but like, what
are you saying, like to yourself, like before you go
to bed at night.
Speaker 1 (35:43):
Yeah, exactly. And it can also seem like people are
so self assured about their fame and success and that
they're just like this, it is what it is. I'm
in these circles now, I'm on this different level now,
and it just is. It just be And it's nice
to see some of the struggles, like in Alice Dunbar
Nelson's case, she had a lot of struggles with getting
(36:05):
her work published that she actually talked about, and also
seeing the humanity behind the notoriety. Yeah, that was nice.
So Alice Walker did do an interview with The New
York Times not that long ago, and she said, quote,
I want the journals to be used so that people
can see this working through of disappointment, anger, sorrow, regret.
(36:28):
So in that sense, it's a medicine book. And I
liked that quote. I liked thinking of these diaries as healing.
I think that was like a good way to go
back and think about all of the diary entries we
have from black women. And we did talk a lot
about people who have actual storytelling capacities, but it wasn't
that way for you know, everyone, and not to the
(36:49):
same extent as to the Alicees was for Francis, but
they were medicine for themselves, which they actually said, this
made me feel better, As Alice Dunbar Nelson said, there
are medicines for people who are reading and getting to
see more of that interiority of people that we might
look up to or who had challenges, like some of
the enslaved people's narratives, and that we get to see
(37:12):
that range of emotions and that it's not all things
aren't always so cut and dry, they're not always so
wrapped up in a nice, neat little bow like they
are when they're presented to us, and even personal narratives
like biographies, and I appreciate that, and that we can
see that happen over time with the three people we
had today, like this is from the eighteen hundred to
(37:34):
the nineteen hundreds to this very moment with Alice Walker
still living today.
Speaker 2 (37:40):
One thing I would like to see is diary entries
from kind of just regular black women, because like these women,
they had a certain amount of leisure time. You know,
like the first lady, she's living in a time where
slavery is existing, but she's a free black woman. But
it's like, what was it like to be a black
woman with five kids in the South d'ur in the sixties.
(38:04):
You know, I don't think those people really had the
luxury of sitting down and writing all that down.
Speaker 1 (38:10):
They did not. I think doctor Hole actually talks about
that in her scholarship. You're starting from a specific place
when you have the luxury of these journals, and you
can see that influx in these people's diaries too, because
some of it is that it's just not extant, but
some of it is that they just weren't writing at
those times, and those times we have evidence of. But
I think sometimes we too can also assume like they
(38:32):
just didn't have as much space in their lives to
write these journals. I agree with you, and I also
think on the flip side, it's nice to see black
women have ease to be able to do that. Yeah,
But I think, you know, these women we talked about today,
it's like their heritages were really mixed too, and there
were free people of color, and they had like high
(38:52):
status in society, had money, So yeah, it was a
lot of social class privilege that was happening for these
people for sure, and education.
Speaker 2 (39:05):
How Alice Walker said it could be medicine, Like, I
don't know, I don't think I want to get our
Alice's level, you know, and most people aren't going to
be an Alice Walker, but a lot of people are
going to be just more normal. So it's like, what
were normal black women who did not have access to
all these like really cool scenes and people and travel,
(39:25):
Like where's our medicine? Not saying that we can't get
anything from these women who are living different lives than us,
but I just want to see more.
Speaker 1 (39:33):
More yeah, more variety, more range. I mean, we still
ask them for those things today at a media representation, and
it would be nice to have those that kind of
perspective on this smaller level that is more touchable, that's
more accessible to us. They exist, but they're farther and
fewer between. And I also would imagine that like archiving
(39:53):
becomes another issue in this for people like that. So
these people have families who had spaces to keep them,
but we start talking about housing and being itinerant or
you know, not always having financial, economic and housing security.
You know that probably also went along with the people
who were like have five kids and they didn't have
this writing stature or any sort of artistic our professional stature,
(40:17):
and travel. These women did a lot of traveling. You know,
they didn't have all that and they didn't have people
who could keep up with it and make sure that
it remained in existence over time. So I think, you know,
those are harder, but yeah, we do need more of those,
and not just from a personal perspective, I think also
from a like sociological anthropological perspective for us to get
(40:39):
a better handle and sense of how life was in
the past. And this just scratches the surface of all
the diaries that writers and non writers alike have kept.
There are the diaries of activists and teacher Charlotte for
ingrim Key, journalist Ida B. Wells, poet Gwendolyn Bennett, and
(41:01):
writer Jaanita Harrison, and they're all storytellers with some name
recognition exactly. There are people like Emily Francis Davis, who
was a free black woman in Philly during the Civil War.
She wrote a diary that can help us time travel
and see what day to day life was like for
her and get engauge on responses to the Civil War.
Mary Virginia Montgomery and Laura Hamilton Murray and plenty of
(41:23):
other black women named and unnamed have penned diaries.
Speaker 2 (41:36):
Now it is time for roll credits, the segment where
we give credit to a person, place, or thing that
we encountered during the week. Ease, who are what would
you like to give credit to?
Speaker 1 (41:46):
I'll give credit to Ida b Wells, who we briefly
mentioned it today's episode, but she also wrote diary entries
where we got to learn more about her journey, her journalism,
the events that happened to her, all the work that
she was doing back in the day, and you can
read those and those are super insightful about her work
as well.
Speaker 2 (42:06):
I would like to give credit to celebrating posthumous birthdays.
Yesterday would have been my grandpa's eighty seventh birthday, and
so I made a dish that he was known for making,
and me and my family ate it and it was
just a way to celebrate that was not sad. So
I've been doing that for the last couple of years
(42:27):
since he passed and it's fun.
Speaker 1 (42:29):
On whatever.
Speaker 2 (42:30):
Happy birthday, Grandpa, Thank you, and with that, we will
see y'all next week.
Speaker 1 (42:36):
Bye y'all bye. On Theme is a production of iHeartRadio
and Fairweather Friends Media. This episode was written by Eves,
jeffco and Katie Mitchell. It was edited and produced by
Tari Harrison. Follow us on Instagram at on Theme Show.
You can also send us an email at Hello at
(42:57):
on Theme Dot Show. Had to one Theme Dot Show
to check out the show notes for episodes. For more
podcasts from iHeartRadio, visit the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or
wherever you listen to your favorite shows.
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