For My People

Book Description

New York.: Limited Editions Club., 1992.. This Edition Limited to 400 numbered copies of which this is #142. Signed by Walker and Catlett to Colophon. . Hand-sewn and Bound in imported red Japanese linen over heavy boards.Black titles embossed to front cover. Encased in an ultra-suede lined black cotton Solander box with black titled grain morocco label to top. . A Very Fine, Pristine, apparently unread copy. LEC Letter laid-in. . Elephant Folio. 18.5" x 22.25".. Illustrated with six striking, four-colour lithographs by Elizabeth Catlett, especially created for this Edition. Margaret Walker (1915-1998) participated in virtually every significant African American literary movement in this century. Born in Birmingham in 1915, she was deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance, receiving personal encouragement from Langston Hughes and W.E.B. Du Bois. During the Depression, she joined Illinois WPA Writers Project and worked alongside Saul Bellow, Studs Terkel, Arna Bontemps and Richard Wright, becoming Wright's close friend and biographer. In 1942, she was the first African American to win the coveted Yale Younger Poets award for her poem, "For The People" ,her most recognized and monumental work.She returned to the South, teaching at Jackson State for forty years and establishing there one of the first Black Studies center in the nation. Her epic novel Jubilee, published in 1966, took 30 years to write; it was based on the life of her own great grandmother and pays tribute to the solidarity of a slave family. During the '60s she was an outspoken political activist and a mentor to a new generation of writers in the Black Arts movement including Nikki Giovanni and Sonia Sanchez.Among Walker's numerous accolades are six honorary degrees, a Rosenwald Fellowship (1944), a Ford Fellowship (1953), a Fulbright Fellowship to Norway (1971), a senior fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities (1972), the Living Legacy Award, given by the Carter administration, the Lifetime Achievement Award of the College Language Association (1992), and the Lifetime Achievement Award for Excellence in the Arts, presented by William Winter, then governor of Mississippi (1992)."For My People," the title poem in the author's first volume, is a timeless piece. The poem poignantly describes the joys, heartaches, and triumphs of African Americans in the United States. Written in free verse, the poem chronicles the everyday and often mundane aspects of hard labor and the simple pleasures of a dispossessed people. Yet it also makes blacks complicit in their own misery and calls for a new day, a revolution of the masses. But, finally, Walker envisions the creation of a more egalitarian society--a society that she hopes will "hold all the people, / all the faces, all the adams and eves and their countless / generations." She calls for a new order and offers a fantastic vision of freedom.Elizabeth Catlett,(b 1919), is a master sculptor, painter, printmaker, activist and warrior. Catlett-Mora has demonstrated a life-long commitment to fighting injustices and showing her support in the struggle for equality for the poor and oppressed.In the 1930's, Catlett-Mora attended Howard University where she majored in design, but soon changed her major to painting. She was later introduced to sculpture at the University of Iowa, where she earned an M.F.A. As an artist and teacher, she traveled throughout the United States as well as Mexico, finally to become a full citizen of that country. There, she resumed work at the Taller de Grafica Popular with colleagues Diego Rivera, David Siqueiros and Francisci Mora, whom she wed in 1947.Regarded as a significant 20th century artist, Catlett-Mora's work exudes her complex character, pride, gentleness and brilliance. Many of her graphic works, expresses her genuine interest in the issues of race and ethnicity and in issues involving women. Her works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art in new York, the Library of numerous import private and public collections.

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