BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A. Modernism and the Harlem Re-
naissance. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1987.
Brown, Sterling A. The Collected Poems of Sterling
A. Brown, Selected by Michael Harper. New York:
Harper & Row Publishers, 1983.
Gates, Henry Louis Jr., and Cornel West. “Sterling
A. Brown: The Vernacular Poet.” In The African
American Century: How Black Americans Have
Shaped Our Country, 119–121. New York: Free
Press, 2000.
Hughes, Langston. “The Negro Artist and the Racial
Mountain.” In Call and Response: The Riverside
Anthology of the African American Literary Tradi-
tion, edited by Patricia Liggins Hill, et. al., 899–
- Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 1998.
Wilfred D. Samuels
Brown Girl, Brownstones Paule Marshall
(1959)
PAULE MARSHALL’s Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959)
is regarded by many scholars as the beginning of
contemporary African-American women’s writ-
ing. According to BARBARA CHRISTIAN, in Brown
Girl, Brownstones, Marshall “dramatized the idea
that racism is insidious not only in its impact on
a person’s definition of self as black or white, but
also as male and female.... Because of the novel’s
insistence on the relationship of woman as self and
as part of a community, it prefigured the major
themes of black women’s fiction in the 1970s: the
black woman’s potential as a full person and nec-
essarily as major actor on the social, cultural, and
political issues of our times” (104–105).
Through her rich language, vivid characteriza-
tions, and unique social contexts, Marshall gave
voice to black women and the Caribbean im-
migrant community. Set in Brooklyn from the
late 1930s to World War II, this autobiographical
first novel chronicles the coming of age of Selina
Boyce. The daughter of Barbadian immigrant par-
ents, Selina is bright and rebellious. Her mother,
Silla, is a hard-working, unsentimental woman
for whom the United States promises prosperity.
Subconsciously admiring her mother’s strength,
Selina rejects her materialism. Her father, Deigh-
ton, alternately fantasizes about instant American
success and returning home to the Caribbean.
Selina both adores her father and regrets his de-
lusional approach to life. In the novel, Selina and
the reader are educated about love, sacrifice, and
African-American history. Marshall’s focus on a
black girl as protagonist, her exploration of gender
dynamics within the black community, and her
celebration of black immigrant communities qui-
etly revolutionized American and African-Ameri-
can literature.
Though the novel was well received and earned
Marshall a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1960, it did
not become a commercial success until interest in
black women writers heightened in the early 1970s;
it gained widespread recognition only when it was
reprinted in 1981.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Christian, Barbara. Black Feminist Criticism: Perspec-
tive on Black Women Writers. New York: Pergamon
Press, 1985.
Marshall, Paule. Brown Girl, Brownstones. New York:
Random, 1959.
Elizabeth McNeilBullins, Ed (1935– )
Ed Bullins (Kingsley B. Bass) was born in Phila-
delphia, Pennsylvania, on July 2, 1935, to Edward
and Bertha Marie (Queen) Bullins. His mother,
a civil servant, tried to instill middle-class values
in her son. After attending a predominantly Euro-
pean-American elementary school, where he was
a very good student, Bullins, who spent his sum-
mers vacationing in Maryland farming country,
transferred to an inner-city school as a junior high
student. He soon became involved in street gang ac-
tivities. In one confrontation he was stabbed in the
heart and pronounced dead, but he was miracu-
lously resuscitated. Although he attended Philadel-
phia’s infamous Benjamin Franklin High School,Bullins, Ed 81