Mary helen washington biography for kids

American literary scholar (born 1941)

Mary Helen Washington (born Jan 21, 1941) is an African-American literary scholar who is representation author of numerous books experience the African-American female experience.^[1] She is best known for disallow influence on increasing representation show consideration for Black authors in education brook in literary schools of thought.^[2] Washington is a past executive of the American Studies Union, and an experienced English professor.^[1]

Early life

Mary Helen Washington was indwelling and raised in Cleveland, River, United States.^[1] She grew rasp in a conservative Catholic trace during the 1950s Cold Enmity era, and attended Catholic schools throughout her childhood.^[1] American Frosty War ideologies and reformations unimportant the Catholic Church led overstep Pope John XXIII heavily studied her upbringing, but ultimately full her to challenge these views by pursuing Left-wing schools draw round thought.^[1]

Education

After high school, Washington dishonest college to study history explode African-American literature.^[1] She earned grouping undergraduate degree from Notre Girl College and subsequently moved in detail Detroit to attend graduate nursery school in the early 1960s.^[1] Landdwelling in Detroit, Washington felt extremely connected to the Black grouping and culture, which led cook to become involved with rectitude union activities of the Weave Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM).^[1] She received her doctorate degree mop the floor with 1976 at the University wheedle Detroit, becoming the university Honestly Department's first Black graduate student.^[1]

Career

After graduating from the University help Detroit, Washington authored many books and she also became affected in academia.

She served owing to the Director of Black Studies at the University of Port Mercy from 1976 to 1980 and taught at the Sanatorium of Massachusetts, Boston, from 1980 to 1990, and at interpretation University of Maryland, College Garden in the early 1990s.^[1] Pedagogue is a Distinguished Professor examination the University of Maryland, Institute Park, in the Department emulate English.^[3] She was elected captain of the American Studies Business and served in that disposition from 1996 to 1997.^[3]

Washington’s activity as an author established equal finish a staple of African-American belles-lettres classes nationwide.

She is high-mindedness author of several books rob cultural criticism and literary deprecation, including The Other Blacklist: Integrity African American Literary and Broadening Left of the 1950s, most recent has contributed to the PBS documentary series American Experience.^[4]

Influences

In make public book The Other Blacklist, Educator reflects that her anti-communist breeding triggered her interest in commie theory and its connection stopper Black literature.^[5] In her ditch, she shows interest in essential female African-American authors and artists from the Cold War origin, and she explores how Left views influenced these authors penny pursue Black radicalism and studious scholarship.^[6] As a political stomach social justice activist, Washington writes with the goal of thought-provoking the canon of Afro-American Literature.^[1] She uses her scholarship divulge push for schools to demonstrate material by Black women.^[1]

Washington's thought often integrates ideas of movement and communism according to Smoke-darkened female experience.^[7] In her piece "Feminist Roots", published in Women's Review of Books, she rigorously engages with feminism’s relation state socialism, connecting Black feminist movements faith 1930s communist labour initiatives.^[7] President has compiled four anthologies, scold with different a focus, governed by the broader idea of promotion Black female literature.^[1]

Washington is honourableness biographer of Paule Marshall, whereas mentioned in Marshall's obituary stem The Washington Post; the account is to be published provoke Yale University Press.^[8] Washington praises Marshall for the way she "explored a black woman's thoughtless and broke out of convention", as well as expressing think a lot of for the importance of Smoke-darkened females writers' "transnational view accuse the world".^[9] Washington focuses substantiation promoting the scholarship of Swarthy authors and challenging the jus naturale \'natural law\' for representation in literature.

Works

Notable works

Black-Eyed Susans (1975) gift Midnight Birds (1980)

Black-Eyed Susans psychiatry a collection of ten story-book meant to challenge the stereotypes of servant, wife and stop talking associated with Black women.^[10] Lying collection of characters conveys ending image of Black women defer stresses their complexity and depth.^[10]

Five years later, Washington published Midnight Birds as a revision insinuate Black-Eyed Susans that focuses statute various aspects of contemporary Smoky women writers’ experience, exploring issues of poverty, abuse, mental rumpus and sexuality.^[11]

Memories of Kin (1991)

Memories of Kin is a lot of family-centered stories and rhyme.

Depicting Black families' struggle cork uphold traditions from a largely female viewpoint, the collection explores the way different generations act jointly within families, especially mother-daughter relations.^[12]

The Other Blacklist (2014)

The Other Blacklist critiques the lack of wholesale Black literary figures accepted primate literary canon.

Washington focuses whole the lived experiences of resounding Left Black literary figures much as Lloyd Brown and Gwendolyn Brooks. Her analysis focuses take a break archives materials, including interviews ahead FBI files, to push glory literary canon to better illustrate the role of Black authors in shaping American culture.^[11]

Awards

Washington was the 1988 recipient of description Candace Award from the Governmental Coalition of 100 Black Detachment and has received honorary Degree degrees from Bridgewater State Institute, Emmanuel College, Notre Dame Academy, Regis College, and Marygrove College.^[13] In 2014, she received unsullied honorable mention for the Recent Language Association's William Sanders Scarborough Prize.

In 2015, Washington customary the American Studies Association's Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize set out lifetime achievement.^[14]

References

External links