“Summertime,” which comes from Du Bose Hey-
ward’s Broadway play Porg y. An autobiographical
novel, The Living Is Easy satirizes the snobbery,
shallowness, racism, sexism, and elitism of mid-
dle-class blacks in Boston around 1914, who pur-
sue the false values of white society and connive to
obtain positions of power. Although she does not
love him, 19-year-old, light-skinned Cleo Jericho
Judson, the eldest of several sisters, marries the
wealthy Bart Judson, a much older southern gentle-
man. Situating herself in a space for female power,
the self-serving and domineering Cleo manipu-
lates and deceives her three sisters into living with
her and eventually breaks up their marriages. Then
her own world is shattered when her husband’s ba-
nana business goes bankrupt and he leaves Boston
to find other means of income; her three sisters are
forced to work at the menial jobs she despises.
Although on the surface Cleo appears to get
what she desires, West depicts Cleo’s ultimate de-
feat by her own selfish needs, as well as by prevail-
ing economic and gender issues. For example, Cleo
forgets that Bart is her helpmate and sole means
of financial support, so when the money runs out,
she finds herself caught between her own pride
and the racism of the rest of the world. She forgets,
too, that she occupies only a small space in the
community. Resisting her mother’s control, Judy,
Cleo’s daughter, observes that her mother “was
the boss of nothing but the young, the weak, the
frightened. She ruled a pygmy kingdom” (308).
Skillfully and brilliantly written, The Living Is
Easy is considered West’s most successful book.
One critic stated in the October 1948 issue of
CRISIS, “Miss West has enlarged the canvas of
Negro fiction and has treated a phase of Boston
life which the popular novels of that city have ne-
glected” (Moon, 308). In 1982, the Feminist Press
reprinted The Living Is Easy, with an afterword by
Adelaide Cromwell Gulliver. The novel has since
been widely recognized as a major text in African-
American women’s literature.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Guinier, Genii. “Interview with Dorothy West.” May
6, 1978. Black Women Oral History Project. Cam-
bridge, Mass.: Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Col-
lege, 1981. 1–75.
Moon, Henry L. “Proper Bostonian Black.” Crisis 55
(1948): 308.
Rodgers, Lawrence R. “Dorothy West’s The Living Is
Easy and the Ideal of Southern Folk Community.”
African American Review 26 (1992): 161–172.
Loretta G. WoodardLocke, Alain Leroy (1885–1954)
Philosopher, educator, and cultural critic Alain
Leroy Locke, the only son of Plimy Ishmael Locke
and Mary Hawkins Locke, was born in Philadel-
phia, Pennsylvania. Locke’s parents came from
distinguished free black families. For example, his
paternal grandfather, Ishmael Locke, was a New
Jersey schoolteacher who, during the 19th cen-
tury, had attracted the attention of the Society of
Friends, which eventually sponsored his education
at Cambridge, England, before he was sent to Li-
beria, the American colony in West Africa, where
he established several schools. Returning to the
United States, Ishmael Locke became headmaster
of a school in Providence, Rhode Island; was prin-
cipal of the Institute for Colored Youth in Phila-
delphia; and graduated from Howard University’s
law department before serving as an accountant
for the Freedman’s Bureau and becoming a clerk
for the U.S. Post Office.
Young Locke, who was six when his father died,
grew up with this genteel privilege as his legacy.
His mother, a teacher, saw to it that her son at-
tended one of Philadelphia’s pioneer Ethical Cul-
ture schools advocated by Felix Alder. Restricted
to his home as a result of a bout with rheumatic
fever, young Locke took refuge in “the cloistered
world of books, and in his study of the piano and
the violin.” Despite his illness and restrictions,
Locke was able to attend Philadelphia Central
High School, from which he received a B.A. degree
and graduated with honors. He received a second
B.A. degree from the Philadelphia School of Peda-
gogy before enrolling at Harvard College, where he
completed its four-year undergraduate program316 Locke, Alain Leroy