were STERLINGBROWN, Robert Hayden, Langston
Hughes, and MARGARETWALKER. Advertised as
a “Literary Quarterly,” the magazine was now
based in New York City. Subscriptions dropped to
$1 for the year, and individual copies were avail-
able for 25 cents. Wright published his well-
known “Blueprint for Negro Writing” in the first
issue. Ultimately, she abandoned the project be-
cause she resisted its increasing politicization by
colleague and associate editor Richard Wright.
While the loss of the magazine may have been
devastating, West may have been buoyed by the
spirited words of her friend Hurston who, when
West revealed her plans, told her, “Let the sun go
down on you like King Harold at the battle of
Hastings—fighting gloriously. Maybe a loser, but
what a loser! Greater in defeat than the Con-
queror. Certainly not a coward that rusted out
lurking in his tent” (Kaplan, 296).
Like many other Harlem Renaissance writers,
she sought employment unrelated to her writing
that would sustain her. Before becoming part of
the extensive Works Progress Administration’s
Federal Writers’ Project, she worked for a year and
a half as a welfare investigator in New York City.
Her experiences influenced her writing, and her
sobering story “MAMMY” was based on her en-
counters during that time. She also continued to
write during this period, publishing a number of
stories in the New York Daily News.Her associa-
tion with the Federal Writers’ Project ended in the
mid-1940s, and West relocated to Martha’s Vine-
yard in 1947. It was while living there that she
published The Living Is Easy,her first novel. The
thinly veiled autobiographical novel appeared in
1948, almost 10 years after the close of the
Harlem Renaissance.
West cherished her time on Martha’s Vine-
yard. “The island is my yearning,” she confessed in
a Vineyard Gazettearticle. “All my life, wherever I
have been, abroad, New York, Boston, anywhere,
whenever I yearned for home, I yearned for the is-
land” (Beech, 16). Her family had been one of the
few African-American families to vacation and
then own property on the island. Despite the small
numbers of people of color, however, West revealed
that her family regarded it as “an agreeable num-
ber. There was enough of us to put down roots, to
stake our claim to a summer place, so that the chil-
dren who came after us would take for granted a
style of living that we were learning in stages”
(Allen, 23).
On the island off the coast of Massachusetts,
she became a regular contributor to the Vineyard
Gazette,the local paper. She also initiated a regular
column entitled the “Cottagers Corner,” which was
named in honor of the philanthropic group orga-
nized by the few African-American women who
owned cottages on the island. The group of about
12 women included West and Helen Brooke,
mother of Senator Edward Brooke, the first African
American elected to the U.S. Senate since Recon-
struction. The column, which is somewhat evoca-
tive of GWENDOLYNBENNETT’s “EBONYFLUTE”
and Countee Cullen’s “Dark Tower,” was devoted
exclusively to issues relating to the African Ameri-
cans with links to Martha’s Vineyard.
West’s later publications included a memoir of
WALLACETHURMAN. She published her much an-
ticipated second novel, The Wedding,in 1995 with
support from editor and fellow islander Jackie
Kennedy Onassis. The book inspired a television
production financed by Oprah Winfrey and star-
ring Halle Berry and Carl Lumbly.
West was unmarried all her life. She proposed
marriage in 1933 to her close friend Langston
Hughes, whose nickname for her was “The Kid,”
but he declined. Countee Cullen proposed mar-
riage to her, but she turned him down. In a 1995
interview, West declared that “[a]s a child, I de-
cided I never wanted to be the last leaf on the
tree... and now here I am, the last leaf” (Card-
well, SM47). Two years later, First Lady Hillary
Clinton, in attendance at the memorable 90th
birthday celebration for West, declared the in-
trepid writer a “national treasure” (Yarrow, A29).
West did not hesitate to talk with the many people
who sought her out on the island. She regarded
conversation with visitors as a serious responsibil-
ity. “I know that I will not live forever so therefore
I have to pass on my knowledge. It is a duty that I
owe,” she mused in a 1995 interview (Beech, 16).
She was feted during the last years of her life. On
the occasion of her 90th birthday, luminaries and
distinguished guests gathered at the Union Chapel
on the island to honor West. Among those in at-
tendance were Hillary Clinton, Jessye Norman,
Anita Hill, and Charles Ogletree. Hundreds more560 West, Dorothy