Young, Stanley. “Tough and Tender: Review of Let Me
Breathe Thunder.” New York Times Book Review,
25 June 1939.
Warren J. Carson
Aubert, Alvin (1930– )
Poet, playwright, founder of the black literary jour-
nal Obsidian, editor, publisher, and literary critic
Alvin Aubert was born in Lutcher, Louisiana, on
March 12, 1930. He was the youngest of Albert and
Lucille Roussel Aubert’s seven children. At age 14,
he dropped out of high school and later joined the
U.S. Army, where he remained until 1954. In 1947,
he completed his high school general equivalency
diploma and in 1955 entered Southern University
in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, where he received his
B.A. in English in 1959. A year later, he earned his
M.A. in English from the University of Michigan
and later pursued two years of graduate work at
the University of Illinois. An educator since 1960,
Aubert has taught African-American literature
and creative writing at Southern University in
Baton Rouge, the University of Illinois, the Uni-
versity of Oregon, and the State University of New
York, Fredonia. Currently, he is professor emeri-
tus at Wayne State University in Detroit, where
he taught creative writing and African-American
literature and served two years as interim chair of
the department of Africana studies; he lives with
his wife, Bernadine Tenant.
In 1975, Aubert founded and edited the journal
Obsidian: Black Literature in Review, which pro-
vided many aspiring writers in the 1970s and 1980s
an opportunity to publish their works. The edito-
rial board included Kofi Awooner, ERNEST GAINES,
Blyden Jackson, SAUNDERS REDDING, and DARWIN
T. TURNER. After it ceased publication in 1982, the
journal was reissued as Obsidian II in 1986. Obsid-
ian III: Literature in the African Diaspora is now a
semiannual journal of contemporary poetry, fic-
tion, drama, and nonfiction prose aimed at publish-
ing works in English by and about writers of African
descent. Housed at North Carolina State University,
this outstanding journal, under the leadership of
Joyce Pettis and its former editors, Gerald Barrax
and Afaa M. Weaver, continues to debut the works
of many scholars and creative writers worldwide.
An award-winning poet, Aubert has published
his work in a number of journals and anthologies
since 1966. Though he was criticized in the 1970s
for not embracing the BLACK ARTS MOVEMENT, his
poetry is nevertheless distinguished by his atten-
tion to craft and his focus on personal experiences,
rich in the use of Louisiana folk culture and dic-
tion. His first poetry collection, Against the Blues
(1972), deals with his childhood in Louisiana, and
Feeling Through (1975) reflects on military expe-
riences, knowledge of African-American writing,
and adolescence. Of his second volume, Jerry Ward
observes that the poems “are informed by clarity,
wit, and the easy rhythmic flow of human speech”
(2). Both South Louisiana: New and Selected Poems
(1985) and If Winter Come: Collected Poems, 1967–
1992 (1994) include a diverse range of experiences.
His latest collection, Harlem Wrestler, and Other
Poems (1995), incorporates many of his previous
themes and continues with personal reflections on
national holidays, retirement, self-awareness, and
maturing romance.
Aubert has received numerous awards, grants,
and honors. At the University of Michigan he was
a Woodrow Wilson Fellow in 1959, a 1968 Bread
Loaf Scholar in poetry, and a recipient of two cre-
ative writing fellowship grants from the National
Endowment for the Arts for his poetry in 1973 and- He also received an Editors Fellowship Grant
in 1979 from the Coordinating Council of Liter-
ary Magazines to publish Obsidian and received
the 1988 CALLALOO Award for his contribution to
African-American cultural expression. In 2001 he
was the inaugural recipient of the Xavier Activist
for the Humanities Award.
Aubert has donated his papers and records
of Obsidian dating from its founding in 1975 to
Xavier University Library of New Orleans. In ad-
dition, he has given more than 2,500 volumes on
the creative writing of African Americans, one of
the largest gifts by a single donor, and many rare
books published by the now-defunct BROADSIDE
PRESS of Detroit.
20 Aubert, Alvin