Book premise: A dramatic poetry book that tells the remarkable rags-to-riches story of Madam C.J.Walker and her daughter A’Lelia Walker.
Audience: Women aged 18-55, young adults, high school and college students, teachers and professors, cultural institutions like Museum of African American History and Culture, etc.
Madam C.J. Walker Poetry Book Hits the Zeitgeist
“Debut Collection Tells Walker’s Story Through Dramatic Poetry.”
New York, NY, July 2020 — Author, producer and emerging poet Rojé Augustin has written a groundbreaking debut collection of dramatic poems about hair care entrepreneur Madam C.J. Walker and her daughter A’Lelia Walker. Out of No Way: Madam C.J. Walker & A’LeliaWalker, A Poetic Drama tracks Walker’s phenomenal rise from penniless orphan to America’s firstself-made female millionaire in dramatic verse.
Born Sarah Breedlove to former Louisiana slaves in 1867, Madam C.J. Walker was orphaned at seven, married at 14, became a mother at 17, and was widowed at 20. After the death of her first husband, Sarah moved to St. Louis with her daughter where she earned $1.50 a day as a washerwoman. When her hair starting falling out she developed a remedy and sold her formula across the country. In the process she became the wealthiest Negro woman in America.
Rojé’s highly original and accomplished poetry is written through the lens of the mother/daughter relationship via different poetic forms — from lyric poems to haikus, blackout poetry to narrative (one poem takes its inspiration from Edgar Allan Poe’s ‘The Raven’) — with each chapter addressing issues relevant to their lives at the time. Written against the backdrop of the Jim Crow era, Out of No Way is ultimately an examination of what W.E.B Du Bois called “conflicting identities.” Sarah was a proud African American on the one hand and a woman seeking America’s acceptance on the other. She was a pauper who achieved the American Dream while denied the rights and protections of the American Constitution. She was a wife, mother, and businesswoman who juggled the demands of family with the demands of career. And she was an orphan who had to transcend a brutal childhood in order to be a loving mother to her child. As Du Bois stated at the time, “One ever feels a two-ness. An American, A Negro…Two warring ideals in one dark body.”
Indeed Madam C.J. Walker/Sarah Breedlove was an American and a Negro, as was her daughter, A’Lelia Walker, both of whom likely viewed herself through their own conflicting identities. What did they see?
Watch Videos!
-1-
Out of No Way tells Walker’s remarkable rags-to-riches story by exploring thoughtful questions —
What impact did Sarah’s busy work life have on A'Lelia?
What was the bond between a mother orphaned so young and the daughter who might wait days or weeks for her return?
Could the death of her parents when she was a child have compromised Sarah’s nurturing instincts?
How did A’Lelia feel about their newfound wealth? What, if any, were the drawbacks of that wealth?
Rojé’s collection of dramatic poems joins an exciting line up of works about Madam C.J. Walker and A’Lelia Walker — from a forthcoming book by Walker’s great-great granddaughter, A’Lelia Bundles, to Self Made a Netflix original series, this trailblazing woman’s life story serves as an important reminder that race is a barbaric construct to be dismantled and discarded for good.
My Thoughts!
AUTHOR BIO:
Rojé Augustin is a native New Yorker who grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan. Her first novel, The Unraveling of Bebe Jones, on which her drama series pitch BEAU REVE is based, won the 2013 National Indie Excellence Award in African American fiction. She wrote the novel while living in London and Sydney as a stay-at-home-mom. She established Breaknight Films shortly after her move to Sydney in 2009 to develop and produce projects across a range of formats, including television, web, and audio. Her first Sydney based project was a podcast and visual web series called The Right Space, which explores the relationship between creatives and their workspace. In 2013 Rojé’s script The Weekly: Women Who Shaped a Nation was selected for the
Australian Writer’s Guild Pathways Program. In May 2020 Rojé published a debut poetry collection titled, Out of No Way Madam C.J. Walker and A’Lelia Walker, A Poetic Drama, which tells the story of Madam Walker’s phenomenal life story. Rojé continues to work as a producer while also writing in her spare time. She is an Australian citizen who currently lives in Sydney with her Aussie husband and two daughters.
No comments:
Post a Comment