Exalting Negro Womanhood: Black Women Poets and Harlem Renaissance Magazines

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

This is an excellent essay that requires only a few revisions and emendations.

1) The state-by-state catalogue described in line 6 resonates with The Messenger's series, "These 'United' States," so a mention or footnote migt be in order. See Lutz, These 'United' States and/or McKible "Our {?} Country" in Vogel, The Black Press.

2) Line 32: insert comma after (e.g., ""Mrs. Stella D. Nathan")

3) Line 70ff: The Messenger went through three distinct phases, which the author does not recognize in their essay. This magazine was more like Opportunity and Crisis in its middle period but targeted a different audience in its early and late phases. See McKible for this history.

4) Lines 97-101: Using "Exalting Negro Womanhood" twice in close proximity is redundant. Rephrase.

5) Lines 120-22: Using "loving cup" twice is redundant. Use only "trophy" in line 120.

6) Lines 171-184: Reduce the excessive use of the word "these" in this paragraph.

7) Line 172: Change "Charlene" to "Cherrene."

8) Lines 197-199: Delete "the" from "the racist" (197) and "the images" (199).

9) Line 203: "offering proof comes from the regime of white supremacy"--does the need for proof come from or in response to? Also, take a look at the editorial note, "What Shall We Do with the Facts?" on page 625 of Harlem: Mecca of the New Negro (the Survey Graphic issue) and also at Locke's "realistic facing of facts" on page 631.

10) This is my most important suggestion: The essay would benefit from headers and subheads, and this becomes apparent at line 213. The first header should perhaps come at line 70, and then there is a definite need for a header at 213. Let the reader know you are switching from a discussion of  images to poetry (and other text-based material). You might also consider subheads for motherhood, sexuality and community. Also, along the same line, take a look at your topic statements in the second half of the essay. Too many paragraphs start with the name and provenance of the poems rather than with the ideas they introduce.

11) Lines 289-90: "while" used twice, too close together.

12) Line 299: This section looks at three poems, not two (Coleman's "Black Baby" is part of this discussion).

13) Line 350: add commas after "child" and "witness."

14) Line 367: Sum up this section before moving on.

15) Line 549: A better topic statement is needed for this paragraph.

16) The concluding paragraph is a bit perfunctory. Can you say a bit more about the tension between images and texts that you have demonstrated?

Author Response

Very helpful suggestions, almost all of which have been implemented in the revision. 

Reviewer 2 Report

This essay is a welcome contribution to the field. Well over 90% of the essay is well argued and each poet represented builds upon the preceding poet/s. I also enjoyed the engaging discussion about the magazine artwork. The one concern I have with this essay's argument is the Gwendolyn Bennett discussion. Bennett, as this author notes, was also a noted graphic artist. Her July 1926 Opportunity cover when placed in conversation with her poem "To a Dark Girl" is a powerful statement about the importance of lifting up Blackness in all its beauty - art and poetry. The author places this discussion at the essay's conclusion. That placement seems odd as Bennett would seem to be an excellent conduit between the art and poetry sections. (Belinda Wheeler discusses Bennett's use of art and poetry at length in Cherene Sherrard's 2015 collection.) Did the author choose not to lift up Bennett earlier in the essay because the author believes Bennett's powerful cover art and "To a Dark Girl" destabilize his/her/their overall argument? If that is the case, I wonder whether the author would consider removing Bennett from this essay's discussion. I would love Bennett to appear in this essay, but its current placement and potential argument (not to mention not having the powerful image included) does not benefit Bennett or readers. 

Author Response

Thank you for directing me to Wheeler's work on Bennett, which was incredibly helpful in expanding my discussion of her work. 

Reviewer 3 Report

This clear and cogent essay offers readings of poems by important (if too often overlooked) women poets of the New Negro movement to show how poetry complicated a dominant mode of visual representation in such magazines as The Crisis and The Messenger, arguing that where illustrations idealized whiteness and reinforced white supremacist values in a specific discourse of racial uplift, the poems valued Blackness and the work and modes of life associated with lower-class Black people. The analyses of poems (by Grimke, Spencer, Coleman, Johnson, and Bennett) are close, careful, well executed and effective in connecting the textual evidence to the essay’s assertions. The descriptions of illustrations similarly support the claims made about their implicit values and likely effects. I find the essay both persuasive in the elaboration of its arguments and, perhaps just as important, useful in the attention that it brings to these poets and their poems. The author is in dialogue with appropriate scholarship, both that which focuses specifically in similar images and poems (sometimes the same poems and poets) and is deft in addressing and adducing that scholarship. The essay is, for the most part, ready for publication.

 

I offer three small suggestions as areas of possible strengthening and sharpening. First, the essay lacks any real conclusion. The reading of Bennett finishes up and the essay simply stops. This is not a terrible weakness, but it is, I think, a missed opportunity. I’d recommend a concluding paragraph that makes clear the stakes for this argument as the author sees them and that makes a strong claim for the value of the work that has led the reader through the readings and analyses. This essay really does make a contribution; the author should name and claim that contribution in a conclusion. I’d also like to see something more emphatic by way of an introduction to the argument. The current set-up (a descriptive analysis of a photographic feature in The Messenger) leads to a fairly brief statement of the argument about the poems’ cultural work. That could be expanded in a way that, as I am suggesting the conclusion should do, makes clear why the work of this essay, the revealed impacts of the poems, matters. Second, in several of the readings (e.g. the discussion of Spencer’s “Lady, Lady” on page 12) a move from specific textual features (here, the echo of a nursery rhyme) to white supremacist assumptions is perhaps too rapid or telegraphic; these moments will be more persuasive if developed more patiently, if the textual feature’s implication in white supremacy is laid out more clearly and in more detail. Finally, and I recognize the nit-pickiness of this (the fact that I’m pointing out something so small should be seen as evidence that the essay’s larger structures and movements are very strong): the painter of the Mona Lisa is conventionally called “Leonardo” rather than “Da Vinci” (the latter phrase a geographical identifier, not a surname).

 

 As I hope to have suggested, I am grateful for the opportunity to read this essay, which I appreciate and admire. 

Author Response

I have implemented the suggested changes, expanding the conclusion and sharpening transitions from individual readings to the essay's larger argument.