peaceworkmagazine.org/pwork/0700/072k20htm.
Accessed October 18, 2006.
McNaron, Toni, and Miller, Carol. “Barbara Neely.”
Voices from the Gaps: Women Writers of Color.
University of Minnesota. 2002. Available online.
URL: http://voices.cla.umn.edu/vg/Bios/entries/
neely_barbara.html. Accessed October 18, 2006.
Neely, Barbara. Blanche among the Talented Tenth.
New York: Penguin, 1994.
———. Blanche Cleans Up. New York: Penguin,
1998.
———. Blanche on the Lam. New York: Penguin,
1992.
———. Blanche Passes Go. New York: Penguin,
2000.
Witt, Doris. “Detecting Bodies: Barbara Neely’s Do-
mestic Sleuth and the Trope of the (In)Visible
Woman.” In Recovering the Black Female Body:
Self Representations by African-American Women,
edited by Michael Bennett and Vanessa D. Dicker-
son, 165–194. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers Uni-
versity Press, 2000.
Jay Hart
Neely, Letta (1976– )
Born and raised in Indianapolis, Letta Neely
walked onto the literary stage at the end of the
20th century as a popular New England slam poet,
playwright, and civil rights activist who seeks to
confront homophobia, emerging as an important
voice of the gay and lesbian movements, along
with poets ESSEX HEMPHILL and ASSOTTO SAINT.
Like the members of the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT,
Neely, who admits to having an obsession with
history, uses her works to address political issues;
however, her focus adds sexuality and sexual ori-
entation as yet another important aspect of voice
that should not be ignored or denied. Neely writes,
“it is important to say i am a black lesbian (dyke)
because when I first started looking for our rela-
tives (to know i am wasn’t alone) i smiled the first
time i read Audrey Lorde’s bio” (Neely, 440).
Neely’s best-known play, Hamartia Blues, ex-
plores the lesbian relationship between Jay/San
and her lover Neferdia and their interaction with
Jay/San’s brother, Afir, who will soon be released
from prison. Another one of Neely’s plays is about
breast cancer, basketball, and lesbianism. Neely
has published two collections of poetry, juba and
Here. In her poetry, Neely unabashedly celebrates
lesbian love: “girl / when you / come / I swear I /
feel god / squeezing / my hand” (“3 Movements”).
Neely, who was named Best Local Author 2001 by
a Boston Phoenix reader’s poll, was twice a finalist
for Lambda Literary Awards for lesbian poetry.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Neely, Letta. “3 Movements.” In Step into a World: A
Global Anthology of the New Black Literature, ed-
ited by Kevin Powell, 347. New York: John Wiley
and Sons, 2000.
Wilfred D. SamuelsNegritude (la négritude)
As a literary movement, Negritude, scholars argue,
preceded the HARLEM RENAISSANCE and the New
Negro movement. It is often associated with the
Pan-African movement of the early 20th century,
in which W. E. B. DUBOIS played a major role, al-
though it blossomed as a movement during the
1930s and 1940s and was clearly influenced by the
major Renaissance writers, particularly LANGSTON
HUGHES and CLAUDE MCKAY. Critics agree that the
Negritude movement was begun by three Franco-
phone writers: the Martinican poet Aimé Césaire,
who is credited with coining the term négritude;
the Senegalese intellectual and political leader Lèo-
pold Sèdar Senghor; and French Guyanese poet
Leon Damas. Also central to the movement was
Haitian novelist Jacques Roumain. Equally impor-
tant, however, was the interest Europeans took in
African culture, particularly art, during the 1920s
and through the art of Pablo Picasso; the writings
of Jean Cocteau, Blaise Cendrars, and André Gide;
and the music of Darius Milhaud.
As political leaders, intellectuals, philosophers,
and writers, Césaire, Senghor, and Damas, French
colonial subjects, sought, in their respective home-
lands and their Paris-based intellectual venues,
to valorize black African culture and experienceNegritude 391