Members of the Sisterhood, 1977. Front row, from left: Nana Maynard, Ntozake Shange, and Louise Meriwether. Back row, from left: Vertamae Smart-Grosvenor, Alice Walker, Audrey Edwards, Toni Morrison, and June Jordan.
The first thing I knew about writers was that you could not trust them in a group. My older sister is a writer. She went to the University of Iowa for playwriting, and by then, as a precocious teen, I knew it was where the supposedly best novelists studied in the fiction program. "Oh, the fiction writers won't even talk to us," my sister told me. "They stay by themselves. And the way they find out if they are doing badly is by their mailboxes. If they don't like your work, they move your space around so everyone knows it and you lose your funding."
Was this true? Had she been joking? It didn't matter. I knew by then that I, too, desperately wanted to write. It would be embarrassing, I thought, having your artistic work reduced to a mailbox assignment, but it would be a deeper, more troubling thing to discover you were the type of person who would abide by that humiliation. If that's what being in a community of writers was, I didn't want any part of it.
I am lucky enough to say that my life as a writer and my relationship with other writers have been different. I'm part of a community I can trust implicitly, where I can confess some tender insecurity or just a rant about a book I irrationally envy. But that kind of jockeying for power, that relentless attention to an imaginary pecking order that skims just above actual talent, makes me wince, gives me the same light-headed feeling that comes from drinking too much rum.
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 2023-Ausgabe von Harper's BAZAAR - US.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent ? Anmelden
Diese Geschichte stammt aus der March 2023-Ausgabe von Harper's BAZAAR - US.
Starten Sie Ihre 7-tägige kostenlose Testversion von Magzter GOLD, um auf Tausende kuratierte Premium-Storys sowie über 8.000 Zeitschriften und Zeitungen zuzugreifen.
Bereits Abonnent? Anmelden
Tipping POINT
When the PROGRESSIVE A-LIST CLIENTELE of the fashionable workout BALLET BEAUTIFUL learned that its FOUNDER was MARRIED to an ARCHITECT of the MAGA BLUEPRINT to impose an ultraconservative social agenda, PROJECT 2025, many felt SHOCKED and even BETRAYED
SABATO's Way
hor GUCCI creative director SABATO DE SARNO, remaking the storied Italian HOUSE for a NEW ERA isnt about OUTRUNNING its PAST. ts about MAKING some HISTORY ofhis OWN.
Inner DRIVE
KENDRICK LAMAR has consistently PUSHED the ART of HIP-HOP to NEW HEIGHTS. In advance of his SUPER BOWL performance, he gets PERSONAL with friend and fellow artist SZA
NECK Tech
When it comes to COSMETIC TREATMENTS, the face may get all the attention, but the NECK deserves love too. Novel TECHNOLOGIES that go beyond creams deliver LIFTED, SCULPTED necks—WITHOUT SURGERY.
PLAN de PARIS
EXPLORE the CITY of LIGHT through the eyes of our FASHION EDITORS
FREE Spirits
BOHO is BACK in a big way. We tapped some of the ARCHITECTS of the STYLE's REVIVAL over the past three decades to tell us HOW WE GOT HERE.
Like a VIRGO
This month, our columnist DEREK C. BLASBERG talks to poet CLEO WADE and reality icon NICOLE RICHIE about the mysteries of the ZODIAC, the power of the INVISIBLE, and why having a VOICE starts with being a good LISTENER
This Is HOW YOU #WINWITHBLACKWOMEN
The BLACK WOMEN who organized the HISTORIC 44,000-person fundraising Zoom for KAMALA HARRIS explain how COMMUNITY, FRIENDSHIP, and a SHARED SENSE of UPLIFT got the job done
EMPIRE STATE OF MIND
Channel the boldness and dynamism of the city that never sleeps with the Twilight high jewelry suite by MARLI New York.
PLAYLIST
“I have a 10-HOUR PLAYLIST of all the songs that have ever INSPIRED me,” says SZA, “that over TIME have SHAPED me and played a part in BUILDING my IDENTITY.”