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Alice M. Dunbar-Nelson (1875
- 1935)
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 Laughing
to Stop Myself From Crying by
Alice Dunbar-Nelson
What men call love and the gods adultery is far
more common where the climate's sultry. Life amongst the Creole
community in New Orleans is a gumbo mix of tropical heat, romance
and petty squabbles tied to long-forgotten historical feuds all of
which spill over into the pages of Laughing To Stop Myself
Crying. Alice Dunbar-Nelson writes about difference: Catholic
versus Protestant, black versus white. The dark Manuela employs a
voodoo madam to vanquish her blonde rival in romance; Tony's wife
is beaten and kicked out on the street by her husband and an old
grandfather hangs his head in shame as his beautiful granddaughter
ignores the ways of a family which has held itself proudly aloof
from `those Americans` from time immemorial to marry a white
man...
The
Works of Alice Dunbar-Nelson by
Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Gloria T. Hull (Editor)
Spanning the gamut of literary genres, from
autobiographical short stories to poetry, journalism, and
novelettes, this is a comprehensive collection of one of America's
most seminal women writers. A testament to the nineteenth century
as birthplace for black woman writers, The Works of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson offers insight into the themes of oppression and intolerance,
often considered dangerous or ignored in the nineteenth century,
but now pervade much writing today. Themes such as crossing racial
boundaries, infused with Dunbar-Nelson's autobiographical fervor.
"Blistering Bayou nights. Crowds of Creoles
- laughing, dancing, loving, scheming. Voodoo queens, solemn
cathedrals. Victorian gowns, greasy markets. Steamy streets of the
French Quarter, angling away from moonlit Gulf lagoons. Boatmen
languishing under the stars shimmering over smarmy Lake
Pontchartrain. Seductive images so vivid and sensuous, they
transport readers back to the Bayou country of late
nineteenth-century southern Louisiana. Alice Ruth Moore Dunbar
suspends time in the twenty-nine vignettes and poems of Violets
and Other Tales, published in 1895, and the fourteen
selections in The
Goodness of St. Rocque and Other Stories, composed after her
marriage to Negro Poet Laureate Paul Laurence Dunbar and published
in 1898. While the stories in The Goodness of St. Rocque
are especially well-crafted, all of her fiction demonstrates her
early genius. Peppering her stories with a variety of dialects,
she creates a chorus of voices that are contrasted with the
sometimes romantic, sometimes ironical, always teasing voice of
her narrator. Mostly, the stories are about love - unrequited,
illicit, betrayed, avenged. And her lovers, like the author
herself, are an ethnic mélange: immigrant grocers of the old
countries -- France, Italy, Greece; Camille, the beautiful,
sequestered orphan; Annette, an accomplished, deceived songstress;
the garrulous woman who sells pralines by the Archbishop's chapel,
endlessly waving a latanier fan; an abused, distraught wife;
M'sieu Fortier, Athanasia, Mr. Baptista, La Juanita, Titee. The
characters and stories enchant with complex themes, pathos and
beauty, color, and wit" -- Joycelyn Moody, from
500
Great Books by Women
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From Women
of Color Women of Words, Rutgers University
Excerpt:
Alice Ruth Moore was born on July 19, 1875 in
New Orleans. Dunbar-Nelson graduated from a 2-year teacher
training program at Straight College, now Dillard University. She
later studied at Cornell University, Columbia University , and the
University of Pennsylvania where she specialized in psychology and
English educational testing. Throughout her life she taught in
public schools.
On March 6, 1898 she married the celebrated poet
Paul Laurence Dunbar after a courtship by correspondence, and
moved to Washington, DC. They separated in 1902. The second of
three marriages, she secretly married a fellow teacher, Henry
Author Callis in 1910, but divorced a year later. Her final
marriage, one which lasted until her death, was to Robert J.
Nelson, a journalist, in 1916.
Dunbar-Nelson, who was very light complexioned,
often passed for white, and was sometimes frustrated in her
relations with darker-skinned African Americans because of it. A
complex woman who was a poet, journalist, playwright, and
unpublished novelist, Alice engaged in intimate relationships with
both men and women...
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Universe of Delaware Library
The Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers consist of the
literary, professional, and personal papers of Alice
Dunbar-Nelson. The papers include an extensive collection of her
incoming correspondence. Of particular note is her correspondence
(1895-1904) with Paul Laurence Dunbar, which also includes her
letters to Dunbar. The Alice Dunbar-Nelson Papers also include a
comprehensive collection of manuscripts of her writing, including
novels, stories, poetry, drama, and essays. Dunbar-Nelson
maintained a daily diary for most of her adult life and the extent
portions of her diaries are present in her papers. The Alice
Dunbar-Nelson papers also include significant collections of
family papers, scrapbooks, newspaper clippings, ephemera, and
memorabilia.
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By Alice Dunbar-Nelson
Excerpt:
The direct rays of the August sun smote on the
pavements of the city and made the soda-water signs in front of
the drug stores alluringly suggestive of relief. Women in scant
garments, displaying a maximum of form and a minimum of taste,
crept along the pavements, their mussy light frocks suggesting a
futile disposition on the part of the wearers to keep cool.
Traditional looking fat men mopped their faces, and dived
frantically into screened doors to emerge redder and more
perspiring. The presence of small boys, scantily clad and of dusky
hue and languid steps marked the city, if not distinctively
southern, at least one on the borderland between the North and the
South...
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Prepared as part of The Digital Schomburg, a
project providing electronic access to collections on the African
Diaspora and Africa from The New York Public Library.
Excerpt:
"And she tied a bunch of violets with a
tress of her pretty brown hair."
She sat in the yellow glow of the lamplight
softly humming these words. It was Easter evening, and the newly
risen spring world was slowly sinking to a gentle, rosy,
opalescent slumber, sweetly tired of the joy which had pervaded it
all day. For in the dawn of the perfect morn, it had arisen,
stretched out its arms in glorious happiness to greet the Saviour
and said its hallelujahs, merrily trilling out carols of bird, and
organ and flower-song. But the evening had come, and rest.
There was a letter lying on the table, it read:
"Dear, I send you this little bunch of
flowers as my Easter token. Perhaps you may not be able to read
their meanings, so I'll tell you...
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