Conversations with Margaret Walker Edited by Maryemma Graham Photo credit: Diana Young University Press of Mississippi Jackson Books by Margaret Walker Contents For My People. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1942. Jubilee. Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1966. Prophets for a New Day. Detroit: Broadside Press, 1970. How I Wrote Jubilee. Chicago: Third World Press, 1972, October Journey Detroit: Broadside Press, 1973. A Poetic Equation: Conversations Benveett Nikki Giovanni and Margaret Walker.Washington: Howard University Press, 1974. Introduction vii For Parish Street Green, &Gruffly 27, 1986. Jackson, Mississippi: 1986. Chronology xv Richard Wright, Daemonic Genius: A Portrait of the Man, A Critical Look at His Work. New York: Warner Books, 1988. Margaret Walker and Nikki Giovanni: Two Women, Two Views This Is My Century: New and Collected Poems. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 1989. Nikki Giovanni 3 Howl Wrote Jubilee and Other Essays on Life and Literature. Ed. Maryemma Graham. New York: Feminist Press at the City University of New York, 1990. Poetry, History, and Humanism: An Interview with Margaret On Being Female, Black and Free: Essays by Margaret Walken 1932-1992. Ed. Maryemma Walker Charles H. Rowell 19 Graham. Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 1997. Black Women and Oral History: Margaret Walker Alexander Marcia Greenlee 32 Interview with Margaret Walker Claudia Tate 59 A Mississippi Writer Talks John Griffin Jones 72 www.upress.state.ms.us Interview with Margaret Walker Ruth Campbell 92 Copyright 2002 by University Press of Mississippi Southern Song: An Interview with Margaret Walker All rights reserved 98 Manufactured in the United States of America Lucy M. Freibert A Writer for Her People Jerry W Ward, Jr. 113 10 09 08 07 06 05 04 03 02 4 3 2 1 An Interview with Margaret Walker Alexander Kay Bonetti 125 Looking Back: A Conversation with Margaret Walker Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Alferdteen Harrison 137 Walker, Margaret, 1915— Conversations with Margaret Walker / edited by Maryemma Graham. The Fusion of Ideas: An Interview with Margaret Walker p. cm. — (Literary conversations series) Alexander Maryemma Graham 143 Includes bibliographical references (p. ) and index. ISBN 1-57806-511-9 (alk. paper) — ISBN 1-57806-512-7 (pbk. : alk. paper) Margaret Walker's Reflections and Celebrations: An I. Walker, Margaret, 1915—Interviews. 2. Authors, American-20th Interview Jacqueline Miller Carmichael 153 century—Interviews. 3. African American authors—Interviews. 4. African Americans Spirituality, Sexuality, and Creativity: A Conversation with Margaret in literature. I. Graham, Maryemma. II. Title. III. Series. Walker Alexander Dilla Buckner 172 P53545.A517 Z468 2002 818'.5209—dc21 2002016898 Conversation: Margaret Walker Alexander Joanne V. Gabbin 176 British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available Index 189 Ruth Campbell /1983 93 And so I, yes, I invented playmates. Miss Choomby is one of our invented Interview with Margaret Walker playmates. We played Miss Anne and Miss Choomby. Miss Ann was the Ruth Campbell / 1983 white lady, and Miss Choomby was the black lady, and we took turns being Miss Ann and Miss Choomby. Transcribed from an interview aired on Mississippi Educational Tele- vision, August 4, 1983. Reprinted by permission of the Mississippi RC: That's marvelous. What has influenced your writing most—family, Authority for Educational Television. commitment to the Southern sense of place, race? MW: Well, I think it's all of those. I think it begins with my family, my mother's music, the Southern landscape, the woods and the world around me, RC: Alexander, when did you first begin to write? and the problems of race in America. I think all of those have been grist in MW: Well, as nearly as I can figure, I was writing prose before I wrote my mill. It's more than family, it's more than the Southern environment. But poetry. I was composing little pieces when I was ten years old—that's the that Southern climate, that southern landscape, both social and physical—that earliest prose. But I began writing poetry at age—oh, I'm not sure whether it environment has been of tremendous influence. If you look at the poetry, you was 11 or 12—but I have poetry that dates back to age thirteen. I know I was will see that the images have come out of the Southern landscape. You will writing before then. My father said it was a puberty urge. I began writing find the rhythms of black music in much of my work and of course my about the time I entered puberty. I don't remember when I learned to read, mother, grandmother and my father, who made indelible impressions upon and I finished grade school at age eleven, and I finished high school at age me as a child. The whole sense of morality, which I think is fundamental fourteen. So I had a problem of social adjustment, yes. The older girls and for me. I read somewhere in Newsweek where Margaret Walker is one of boys in my class were always using me to help them get their work. And I those moral writers and that is supposed to be a form of derision, but to me, thought that it was because they wanted to be friendly with me; they were I could not have a greater compliment, since my morality is obviously in really using me. And I really had no peers my age. Even in college that was conflict with the new morality. true. I understand that college is the age when young people are courting and RC: How does a writer like you approach writing? How do you begin? looking toward marriage or careers—and I was too young for anything. Cour- What do you do first? ting was out of the question. I didn't know what it was all about until I was out of college. MW: Well, the first thing you do in any creative task is think about it. The idea comes first. The concept and the thought and the idea are there before RC: You must have been a little lonely then. you have the word and the sentence and the paragraph, or before you have a MW: I don't think so. I always had a world within. And that world was a figuration of ideas or a configuration. And writing grows out of creative very satisfactory world. I look back now in journals that I kept—I kept diaries thinking, which is nothing more than what perceptive and apperceptive are and journals—and when I had nobody to talk to, I wrote to myself. And I —conceptualization. So that's the first thing. The first step is conceptualiza- was not aware of extreme loneliness. I realize now that I did not talk to people tion. Sometimes you are conscious of that conceptualization, sometimes you around me; I was in conflict with those around me. are not. You perceive a thing outside yourself and the idea or the concept or the thought and the idea grow from that. Whenever society is in ferment, RC: When you were young, did you have imaginary playmates? Did that wherever the trouble spots are, you can look for extraordinary and fine writ- influence your writing? ing. There's an explosion of the imagination out of social ferment. MW: As a very young child, my mother said I would come in from school and if it, even in the wintertime, I would put on a hat and go out in the RC: Is it best, do you think, to follow a daily schedule in writing, or to backyard in my coat and hat and talk to all my imaginary playmates. My write when you have a flash or inspiration? sister didn't want to play [outside]. She wanted to play the piano all the time. MW: It depends upon what you're writing. When I was an adolescent— 92 94 Conversations with Margaret Walker Ruth Campbell / 1983 95 the time I began writing until I was early twenties—I wrote every day. I wrote style. The form and the content need to be wedded, yes, but when you talk diaries and journals, I wrote poetry almost every day. I wrote papers or vi- about style and the stylistic elements in the writing, you are talking about the gnettes, little characters sketches. I wrote because that was my only outlet, method that [a writer uses]. so I wrote all the time. But after I had graduated from college and after I'd had some very bitter experiences with other writers that every day pace RC: Are any of your characters based on real people? slacked. I became more conscious and self-conscious. And when you are MW: I think I do some things with character, other than to base them on extremely self-conscious, you do not write as much. I've written three novels. real people. I have a rule of thumb for character that was taught to me when I started a novel when I was twelve, and I never finished that novel. But I I was out at Iowa and living with Miss Hoovey.' And she taught me there are wrote hundreds of pages; I'd just sit at the typewriter and write. It was a very only five things you can do with any character, and given those five things, sentimental, religious, non-racial thing, I guess more white than black, and I every time that they appear, the character appears, there must be consistency. didn't know what I was doing. But I was learning to type, so I was using that You can only describe the character and tell how he looks.