Dorothy West's Paradise: A Biography of Class and Color

Acknowledgments

A project like this has been enhanced and enabled in so many ways by a very diverse group of people. First and foremost, I thank the Martha’s Vineyard Museum and Historical Society, especially Linsey Lee, for the excellent work she continues to carry on as an oral historian of the island and its people. Without her interviews, through which I was first introduced to Dorothy West’s distinctive and captivating voice, the seeds for the project would not have been planted. In addition to the Martha’s Vineyard Museum, I express my sincere appreciation to the librarians, archivists, and library staff at Yale University’s Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Collections, Emory University’s Woodruff Library, the Schlesinger Library at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study, Harvard University, University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Memorial Library, and the Wisconsin Historical Society. I acknowledge the ground-breaking early scholarship on black women’s writing and the Harlem Renaissance; it was the recovery work of black feminist scholars like Nellie McKay, Mary Helen Washington, Deborah McDowell, Cheryl Wall, Valerie Smith, and Adelaide Cromwell that reintroduced West to the world. I also acknowledge Katrine Dalsgård, Lorraine Roses, Deborah McDowell, and Genii Guinier’s priceless interviews with West. Finally, the scholarship of Verner Mitchell and Cynthia Davis made previously unpublished writings and selected letters of Dorothy West and her cousin Helene Johnson available in Where the Wild Grape Grows (2005) and This Waiting for Love (2000). The publication of West’s letters made my work infinitely easier, and I gratefully acknowledge the editors’ devotion to recovering West’s writing and legacy. I thank Adelaide Cromwell, Constance Williams, Anita Christian, Joyce Steward-Rickson, Elaine Weintraub, the late Della Hardman, and other incidental friends and neighbors I had the opportunity to speak with during the summers of 2005 and 2008 when I was researching this project in Oak Bluffs. I also thank the staff of the Vineyard Gazette and Nis Kildegaard at the Martha’s Vineyard Public Library, who allowed me access to reams of Vineyard Gazette microfilm that contained West’s columns. I thank my research assistants Kate Steinnagel and Mattie Burkert, graduate students at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. ix ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I must thank colleagues at the University of Wisconsin–Madison and especially the fellows, staff, and the director of the Institute for Research in the Humanities (IRH). A Race, Ethnicity, and Indigeneity fellowship from the IRH allowed me the time off from teaching to write this biography in a supportive and intellectually vigorous environment. Visiting IRH fellows Daniel Birkholz and Julia Mickenberg from the University of Texas–Austin graciously hosted an impromptu screening of Battleship Potemkin while I was writing the chapter on West’s visit to Russia, and Francine Hirsch kindly invited me to sit in her graduate seminar on Russian history. A Vilas Associate award provided invaluable travel support, and a Feminist Scholars Fellowship from the Department of Women’s Studies extended my sabbatical year. An external faculty fellowship from Stanford University’s Center for the Comparative Study of Race and Ethnicity provided space and support to reflect and refine the project in its final stages. I extend a special thanks to those who read this project in various stages and/or offered insightful references and observations: Amaud Johnson, Ethelene Whitmire, Craig Werner, Tejumola Olaniyan, Brenda Gayle Plummer, Francine Hirsch, Robert Nixon, Athan Biss, Julia Mickenberg, M. Giulia Fabi, Susan Friedman, Dale Bauer, Furaha Norton, Susan Bernstein, Jennifer Wilks, and Maureen Honey. At Rutgers University Press, Leslie Mitchner has always been a champion editor and sensitive reader; she believed in this biography before I knew for sure that I would write it. I also express my thanks to the anonymous reader who gave the book such an encouraging endorsement. I thank Nancy Cott and the organizers, speakers, and participants of the Schlesinger Seminar on Gender History at Radcliffe Institute in 2007. My thanks also go to the journals African American Review and Letterature d’America for publishing sections of chapters 3 and 6. I send a very special thanks to Adelaide Cromwell and her impeccable generosity. Her words and scholarship continue to inspire. I also thank those who provided encouragement and childcare at critical moments—my parents Martha and Fredric Sherrard. And I always acknowledge my first reader and life partner: Amaud Johnson. Finally, I thank Dorothy West for writing, for living, and for giving me a chance to take my scholarly interests beyond the Harlem Renaissance...