Esther Popel

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Ester Popel (* 1896 in Harrisburg (Pennsylvania) ; † 1958 ) was an American writer, poet and teacher. Booger was a well-known poet of the Harlem Renaissance . She has worked as an editor for a number of African American magazines, primarily for The Journal of Negro Education .

Life

Popel was born in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania and graduated from Dickinson College in Carlisle in 1919 as the first African American woman . She taught Spanish and French at two schools in the Washington, DC area : Francis Jr. High and Shaw Jr. High. Popel was a member of the Phi Beta Kappa . She spoke four languages ​​perfectly: French, Spanish, Latin and German. She lived during the Great Depression and during the formation of the Harlem Renaissance. These historical events influenced her thinking and show up in many of her poems ("Harlem").

Many of her own works, and reviews of the works of others, show her keen interest in the injustices of the American system towards African Americans. These often deal with either political or religious subjects and their style has been described by many poetry analysts as "lyrical". She was active in the literary salon of Georgia Douglas Johnson , who was also a poet. She also worked often with other poets and was friends with Langston Hughes and Marita Bonner during her work in the Harlem Renaissance .

She published her first volume of poetry in 1934, after which she played an important role in Afro-American literary history. She used the written word to motivate the readers of the booger poems to fight against prejudice. In one of her strongest poems, Flag Salute , she portrays the gap between black and white experiences in the United States by contrasting the Pledge of Allegiance with a report on lynching and rioting in Maryland's Eastern Shore to help readers understand the differences between American ideals and recognize black experiences.

These early poems were derivative and ordinary, much like the lyric poems of many other poets in the early 20th century. They are all about the beauty of nature, the rhymes are predictable and the tone wistful. Each of the boogers' poems could have been included in Willa Cather's collection of poems April Twilights due to their similar styles . The narrators are indistinguishable from each other because they both imitated Alfred Edward Housman .

As a member of the Lincoln Memorial Congregational Temple, Popel was a noted speaker. Her “Personal Adventures in Race Relations” speech was published by the Women's Press of the YMCA in New York. She also wrote six plays for high school students.

Her first book, A Forest Pool , was only printed privately. In her review for A Colored Woman in a White World of Mary Church Terrell Popel put the attention on the fact that HG Wells began writing against his self-imposed precedent and questioned how the president of Cornell University , Andrew Dickson White (1883 ), was able to make such bold statements as that America is free of prejudice and intolerance. Wells was quoted as saying that life as described in Terrell's autobiography was full of violence, injustices and insults that she was "forced to live her life" into. Booger pointed out that it was important to ponder why Wells chose to write his thoughts in such a straightforward book that highlighted the problems facing African Americans.

Little is known about her personal life details, but it is known that she was married to William A. Shaw (died 1946). They had a daughter, Patricia Shaw Iversen. In the 1940s, Booger encouraged her daughter to attend Dickinson College based on her positive personal experience. Although Patricia was accepted, she was not allowed to live on campus. So she decided to go to Howard University instead. Dickinson College President William G. Durden later apologized to Patricia on behalf of the college for the injustices she had suffered.

Works (selection)

  • Credo (Opportunity, January 1925)
  • Kinship (Opportunity, January 1925)
  • Theft (Opportunity, April 1925)
  • Little Gray Leaves (Opportunity, September 1925)
  • Night Comes Walking (Journal of Negro Life, August 1929)
  • Bagatelle (Opportunity, November 1931)
  • October Prayer (Opportunity, October 1933)
  • Reach Down, Sweet Grass (Opportunity, April 1934)
  • Flag Salute (Crisis, August 1934)
  • Blasphemy American Style (Opportunity, December 1934)
  • A Forest Pool (Modernistic Press, 1934)

Reviews

  • A Colored Woman in a White World (Mary Church Terrell)
  • Gladiola Garden (Effie L. Newsome)
  • The Hills of Yesterday and Other Poems (Aloise Barbour Epperson)
  • My Happy Days (Jane Dabney Shackelford)
  • The Negro in the Armed Forces: His Value and Status, Past, Present and Potential (Seymour J. Schoenfeld)
  • The Pastor's Voice (Walter Henderson Brooks)

literature

  • Anne P. Rice: Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond. Rutgers University Press, 2003
  • Aberjhani., Sandra L. West: Encyclopedia of the Harlem Renaissance. Infobase Publishing, 2003
  • Maureen Honey: Shadowed Dreams: Women's Poetry of the Harlem Renaissance. Rutgers University Press, 2006

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Anne P. Rice: Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond. Rutgers University Press, 2003.
  2. ^ Esther Popel biography. In: Harlem Renaissance Women Writers. Retrieved December 9, 2012
  3. ↑ Abigail McCallister: Esther Popel: A wonderful Rolemodel. Retrieved December 9, 2012
  4. ^ Sharon O'Brien: Straight Talk - First Known Female Black Graduate Wrote Powerful Poems, Illuminated Social Injustices. ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Dickinson Magazine. January 2, 2010, accessed December 9, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dickinson.edu
  5. ^ Sharon O'Brien: First Known Female Black Graduate Wrote Powerful Poems, Illuminated Social Injustices. Excerpt from Dickinson Magazine. Accessed December 9, 2012 (PDF; 6.1 MB)
  6. ^ Anne P. Rice: Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond. Rutgers University Press (2003), 282.
  7. ↑ Mary Alice Bitts-Jackson: Crossing Borders - Trailblazing Dickinsonians expand the horizons of Dickinsonian community. ( Memento of the original from January 4, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: Dickinson Magazine. April 18, 2012, Retrieved December 9, 2012 @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.dickinson.edu
  8. ^ Dickinson College Apologizes for 1940s Racial Slight. In: The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. May 4, 2012, Retrieved December 9, 2012
  9. ↑ Book Review: A Colored Woman in a White World. By Mary Church Terrell. Preface by HG Wells. Washington, DC: Ransdell, Inc., 1940. Pp. 437. (PDF; 281 kB)
  10. ↑ Gladiola Garden. By Effie L. Newsome. The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 10, No. 4. (Oct., 1941), pp. 688-689. (PDF; 297 kB)
  11. ↑ The Hills of Yesterday and Other Poems . By Aloise Barbour Epperson. The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 14, No. 1. (Winter, 1945), pp. 64-65. (PDF; 286 kB)
  12. ↑ My Happy Days. By Jane Dabney Shackelford. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 30, No. 2. (Apr., 1945), pp. 219-221. (PDF; 290 kB)
  13. ^ The Negro in the Armed Forces: His Value and Status, Past, Present and Potential. By Seymour J. Schoenfeld. The Journal of Negro History, Vol. 30, No. 3. (Jul., 1945), pp. 331-334. (PDF; 398 kB)
  14. ^ The Pastor's Voice. By Walter Henderson Brooks. The Journal of Negro Education, Vol. 15, No. 1. (Winter, 1946), pp. 66-67. (PDF; 303 kB)
personal data
SURNAME Booger, Esther
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Booger Shaw, Esther
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American writer, poet and teacher
DATE OF BIRTH 1896
PLACE OF BIRTH Harrisburg, Pennsylvania
DATE OF DEATH 1958