Dorothy West

Dorothy West (June 2, 1907 – August 16, 1998) was an American novelist short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance.

Born on June 2, 1907, West rose to prominence during the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music.

She became involved in the Harlem Renaissance in the 1920s and was a member of the literary and artistic community centered around the Harlem Writers Guild.

There, West met other writers of the Harlem Renaissance, including Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Wallace Thurman.

In 1926, West tied for second place in a writing contest sponsored by Opportunity, a journal published by the National Urban League, with her short story "The Typewriter".

She tied with future novelist Zora Neale Hurston[7].

"The Typewriter” appeared in Dodd Mead's annual anthology "The Best Short Stories of 1926" alongside work by Ernest Hemingway, Ring Lardner, and Robert Sherwood.[8]

In 1926, she co-founded the literary magazine Fire, which featured the work of Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, and other prominent Black writers.

In 1927, she applied for a playwright role in the original production of Porgy and Bess but was offered a small acting part instead.

Between 1928 and 1930, some of West's other early writings were published in the Saturday Evening Quill, a short-lived annual literary magazine that grew out of a literary club of the same name, of which West was a founding member.[9]

West took a break from writing to pursue acting for a few years.

The opera ran for three months in London, where West traveled with the production in 1929.

She was one of the few Black women writers to be published in major literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s.

In June 1932, she joined other Harlem Renaissance intellectuals on a trip to the Soviet Union to film Black and White, a film about racism in the United States.

[11 ][12 ].

Although the film project was cancelled shortly before their arrival, West decided to stay in the Soviet Union for a year, returning home only after her father's death [1 ].

During the Great Depression, West's principal contribution to the Harlem Renaissance was to publish the magazine Challenge, which she founded with $40 in 1934, the final issue being published in spring 1937[7].

She is best known for her 1948 novel The Living Is Easy, as well as other short stories and essays, about the life of an upper-class black family.

Dorothy West was a renowned American writer, known for her short stories and novels that explored the complexities of the black experience in the United States.

She is best known for her 1948 novel, The Living Is Easy, which tells the story of an upper-class black family and their attempts to climb the social ladder.

In addition to this, West wrote numerous short stories and essays that challenged stereotypes and explored themes such as race, class, and gender.

Her work paved the way for future generations of African American writers, and her legacy continues to inspire and influence writers today.

Dorothy West was born in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Rachel Benson, one of 22 children, and Isaac Christopher West, a former slave who became a successful businessman.

At the age of seven, Dorothy's father gained his freedom and at ten, he had saved enough money in a cigar box to establish his own business.

When Dorothy was born, her family was already the most affluent black household in Boston, thanks to Isaac West's ownership of a wholesale fruit company, which earned him the nickname "Black Banana King" of Boston [2 ].

Her mother was from Camden, South Carolina.

Her parents divorced when she was young, and her mother moved the family to Harlem, New York, in search of better opportunities.

West attended Girls' High School in Brooklyn, New York, and then enrolled in Boston University's School of Journalism, but she dropped out after a year to pursue a career in writing.

The poet Helene Johnson was West's cousin.[5 ] Late in life she wrote that in Boston Blacks "were taught very young to take the white man in stride or drown in their own despair [3 ]".

She detailed how her mother guided her and her many cousins, all with varied skin tones, into the inhospitable world [4 ]:

"We were always stared at. Whenever we went outside the neighborhood that knew us, we were inspected like specimens under glass. My mother prepared us. As she marched us down out front stairs, she would say what our smiles were on tiptoe to hear, "Come on, children, let's go out and drive the white folks crazy." She said it without rancor, and she said it in that outrageous way to make us laugh. She was easing our entry into a world that outranked and outnumbered us. If she could not help us see ourselves with the humor, however wry, that gives the heart its grace, she would never have forgiven herself for letting our spirits be crushed before we had learned to sheathe them with pride."

West began her writing career as a teenager, publishing stories in The Boston Post and the Boston Chronicle.

West reportedly wrote her first story at the age of seven.

Her first published work, a short story entitled "Promise and Fulfillment", appeared in The Boston Post when she was 14 years old [5 ].

As a child, West reportedly became interested in writing after seeing an advertisement for a writing contest in the magazine Crisis, which was published by the NAACP.

Her mother, seeking to protect her daughter from the news in the magazine [4 ], inadvertently inspired her daughter to pursue her passion for writing.

West won several local writing competitions and eventually attended Girls' Latin School (now called Boston Latin Academy), from which she graduated at the age of 16.

She went then on to study at Boston University and the Columbia University School of Journalism[6 ].

The film provided material for a 1985 essay that described her encounter with the film director Sergei Eisenstein[13 ].[7]The film was abandoned by the Soviets, and she returned to the United States after a year when she learned of the death of her father.[14 ]

Shortly before winning the Opportunity writing contest, West moved to Harlem with her cousin, the poet Helene Johnson.