Born in Sun Prairie, Wisconsin, to Francis O’Ke-
effe, a farmer, and his wife, Ida Ten Eyck Totto,
O’Keeffe attended the Art Institute in CHICAGO
and the Art Student League in NEWYORKCITY.
She held art-related jobs in Amarillo Texas, the
University of Virginia, and Columbia College in
South Carolina before she began exhibiting her
work. It was ALFREDSTIEGLITZ, her future hus-
band, who engineered the first exhibit without
O’Keeffe’s knowledge or consent, in 1917. O’Ke-
effe lived in NEWYORKCITYwith Stieglitz be-
tween 1918 and 1928. It was during this period
that she became part of the circle of artists and
intellectuals that included WALDOFRANK,SHER-
WOOD ANDERSON,LEWIS MUMFORD,HART
CRANE, and JEANTOOMER.
O’Keeffe’s connection to the Harlem Renais-
sance was established through her relationship
with Jean Toomer, a writer and poet with whom
she had a love affair and a shared interest in spir-
itual and mystical matters, particularly the teach-
ings and practices of mystic GEORGESGURDJIEFF.
O’Keeffe and Toomer, who had been friends for
at least a decade, became intimate in late 1933.
In letters to Toomer, O’Keeffe confessed her
“wish so hotly to feel you hold me very very
tight” and admitted that she “like[d] knowing
the feel of your maleness and your laugh (Ker-
man and Eldridge, 216). In 1934, Toomer mar-
ried Marjorie Content, one of O’Keeffe’s close
friends. O’Keeffe, despite some sense of loss
about her relationship with Toomer, did maintain
contact with Toomer and Content after their
wedding. O’Keeffe died in Santa Fe, New Mex-
ico, in March 1986.
Bibliography
Castro, Jan Garden. The Art and Life of Georgia O’Keeffe.
New York: Crown, 1985.
Eisler, Benita. O’Keeffe and Stieglitz: An American Ro-
mance.New York: Penguin Books, 1992.
Kerman, Cynthia Earl, and Richard Eldridge. The Lives
of Jean Toomer: A Hunger for Wholeness.Baton
Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1987.
Lisle, Laurie. Portrait of an Artist: A Biography of Georgia
O’Keeffe.Albuquerque: University of New Mexico,
1986.
Messinger, Lisa Mintz. Georgia O’Keeffe,New York:
Thames & Hudson, 2001.
Ollie MissGeorge Wylie Henderson(1935)
The first novel of GEORGEWYLIEHENDERSON,an
Alabama native and former TUSKEGEEINSTITUTE
student. The story centers on the figure of Ollie
Miss, an itinerant young woman who joins an Al-
abama farm community in Macon County. A hard
worker, she receives support from Uncle Alex, the
man who provides her with an abode and the oppor-
tunity to reap some profits from her labors in the
field. Ollie’s true love is a handsome but emotionally
elusive man named Jule. He and Ollie now live apart
from one another, but she travels back to find him
once she has settled into a routine with Uncle Alex.
Ollie is reminiscent of the winsome, desired
women in CANE, JEAN TOOMER’s acclaimed
sketches of the South. She maintains control over
her sexuality in spite of the intense physical desire
that the men in the community have for her. She is
unafraid about living alone in a small cabin, and
much to the chagrin of some of the older religious
ladies of the community, she defends her right to
use tobacco and keep company with whomever she
chooses. Like Janie, the protagonist of ZORA
NEALEHURSTON’s THEIREYESWEREWATCHING
GOD(1937), Ollie Miss suffers the intense scrutiny
of her community. Her voracious appetite makes
her both plaintive and threatening to some of the
women; her unself-conscious allure and apparent
lack of interest in local men drives her fellow male
workers to complete distraction.
Critic Blyden Jackson remarks that the “the
tone of Ollie Miss... is neither polemical nor trac-
tarian. “A lyricism,” he suggests, “genuinely sweet,
tempers Ollie Missfrom its opening pages to its last,
making of [the novel] truly a poem in prose.” The
novel’s sparse prose, evocative images, and absorb-
ing narrative contribute to Henderson’s haunting
images of life in the black belt region of the South.Bibliography
George Wylie Henderson. Ollie Miss with an Introduction
by Blyden Jackson.1935, reprint, Tuscaloosa: The
University of Alabama Press, 1988.“On Being a Domestic”Eric Walrond
(1923)
A fictional documentary sketch by ERIC WAL-
RONDthat illuminated the types of unrelenting“On Being a Domestic” 401