[Press release: The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Inc. and the Jackson State Alumni Association will Present an Evening with Margaret Walker] Page: 3 of 4
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iIbilee, a historical novel, is the second book on which Walker's literary reputation rests. It is the story
"1 d en family during and after the civil war, and took her thirty years to write. During these years, she married
a disable veteran, raised four children, taught full time at Jackson State College in Mississippi, and earned a Ph.D.
from the University of Iowa. The lengthy gestation, she believes, partly accounts for the book's quality. As she
told Claudia Tate in Black Women Writers at Work, "Living with the book over along period of time was agonizing.
Despite all of that, Jubilee is the product of a mature person," one whose own difficult pregnancies and economic
struggles could lend authenticity to the lives of her characters. "There's a difference between writing about
something and living through it," she said in the interview; "I did both."
Soon after Jubilee was published in 1977, Walker was given a Fellowship award from Houghton-Mifflin,
and a mixed reception from critics. In the Christian Science Monitor, Henrietta Buckmaster comments "In Vyry,
Miss Walker has found a remarkable woman who suffered one outrage after the other and yet emerged with a
humility and a moral fortitude that reflected a spiritual wholeness.
Discouragements of many kinds have not kept Walker from producing works that have encouraged many.
For My People, Jubilee and Prophets for a New Day are valued for their relation to social movements of 20th century
America. In 1973, the poem "For My People" called for a new generation to gather strength from a revolutionary
literature, and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s.
C.W.E. Bigsby in The Second Black Renaissance: Essays in Black Literature states "She has revealed the
creative ways in which methods and materials of the social science scholars may be joined with the craft and
viewpoint of the poet/novelist to create authentic Black literature. She has reaffirmed for us the critical importance
of oral tradition in the creation of our history...Finally, she has made awesomely clear to us the tremendous costs
which must be paid in stubborn, persistent work and commitment if we are indeed to write our own history and
create our own literature.-0-
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Junior Black Academy of Arts and Letters. [Press release: The Black Academy of Arts and Letters, Inc. and the Jackson State Alumni Association will Present an Evening with Margaret Walker], text, April 1998; (https://texashistory.unt.edu/ark:/67531/metadc1615619/m1/3/: accessed July 8, 2024), University of North Texas Libraries, The Portal to Texas History, https://texashistory.unt.edu.; crediting UNT Libraries Special Collections.