Douglass’ Women fills the many gaps and silences
that history has left unchanged or unchallenged.
Rhodes, who had difficulty getting her creative
work published, has written several guide books,
including Free within Ourselves: Fiction Lessons for
Black Authors (1999), Celebrating Ourselves: Les-
sons in Autobiography, Memoir, and Personal Essays
for the Black Writer (2001), and The African-Amer-
ican Guide to Writing and Publishing Non-fiction
(2002). In them, Rhodes invokes the works of such
writers as JAMES BALDWIN, Hurston, BEBE MOORE
CAMPBELL, RI TA DOVE, HENRY LOUIS GATES, Wide-
man, E. LYNN HARRIS, CHARLES JOHNSON, Yolanda
Joe, and EDWIDGE DANTICAT, among others, to offer
inspirational advice and guidance to prospective
writers, visionaries and artists.
Rhodes’s numerous awards and honors include
the Yaddo Creative Writing Fellowship, the Na-
tional Endowment of the Arts Award in Fiction,
the Creative Writing Delegate for the Modern Lan-
guage Association, an appointment as writer-in-
residence for the National Writer’s Voice Project,
and a Distinguished Teaching Award at California
State University and Arizona State University. For
Douglass’ Women, she also received the Pen Oak-
land Josephine Miles Award, the Before Colum-
bus Foundation American Book Award, and the
Black Caucus of the American Library Associa-
tion Award.
Rhodes is a master of oral traditions, story-
telling, and history, and like her contemporaries,
MARGARET WALKER, SHERLEY ANNE WILLIAMS, and
Chase-Riboud, she has made a valuable contribu-
tion to the African-American literary tradition.
Now, as she continues to write, she can say with
ease: “I am living my best dream. I am a writer...
a mythic storyteller.... I tell stories that I need to
believe in, stories that help me through life....
That’s the nature of myth, I think: to inspire, to
awe, to promote belief in miracles in our own
lives” (“How I Came to Write”). Rhodes is a pro-
fessor of creative writing and American literature,
the former director of the master of fine arts pro-
gram in creative writing at Arizona State Univer-
sity (1996–99), and an affiliate faculty of Arizona
State’s women’s studies program.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Baker, Houston A., Jr. Review of Voodoo Dreams: A
Novel of Marie Laveau. African American Review
29, no. 1 (Spring 1995): 157–160.
Handman, Fran. Review of Voodoo Dreams: A Novel
of Marie Laveau. The New York Review of Books, 30
January 1994, p. 24.
Mvuyekure, Pierre-Damien. “Jewell Parker Rhodes.”
In Contemporary American Novelists, edited by
Emmanuel S. Nelson, 401–406. Westport, Conn.:
Greenwood Press, 1999.
Rhodes, Barbara, and Allen Ramsey. “An Interview
with Jewell Parker Rhodes.” African American Re-
view 29, no. 4 (Winter 1995): 593–603.
Rhodes, Jewell Parker. “How I Came to Write.” March
2, 2005. Formerly available online. URL: http://
http://www.pageturner.net/JewellParkerRhodes/voo-
doo.html.
Loretta G. WoodardRiggs, Marlon (1957–1994)
Journalist, independent film and documentary
producer, and political activist Marlon Riggs was
born in 1957 in Fort Worth, Texas. He earned a
bachelor of arts degree from Harvard, graduat-
ing magna cum laude, and a master of arts degree
from University of California, Berkeley, where he
also became a tenured professor in the School of
Journalism. He participated in activism for a more
democratic television, testifying before a U.S. Sen-
ate Committee in 1988 to create a public television
service that would support independent, non-
mainstream voices.
Although Riggs is an accomplished writer, his
documentaries earned him the most praise and
controversy. Riggs’s filmography includes Eth-
nic Notions (1986), Affirmations (1990), Anthem
(1991), Color Adjustment (1991), Tongues Untied
(1991), No Regret (1992), Boys’ Shorts: The New
Queer Cinema (1993), and Black Is... Black Ain’t
(1994). Beginning with Ethnic Notions, Riggs
shows how American history is infused with racial
stereotypes. Ethnic Notions won critical acclaim
and has become a standard text in classrooms.436 Riggs, Marlon