page_title: Dorothy West (writer)
section_title: Literary works
hierarchical_section_title: Dorothy West (writer) / Literary works
caption_attribution_description: English: Biography: To our knowledge, Dorothy West is the only living writer of the Harlem Renaissance. Born in Boston, the only child of Isaac Christopher and Rachel Benson West, she has pursued a literary career spanning 60 years. Demonstrating an early interest in writing, she had completed her first story by the age of seven, and by the age of ten was regularly winning prizes from the Boston Post for her stories. When she was nineteen she won second prize for an essay submitted to Opportunity magazine. She studied at Girls' High School (Boston), Boston University and the Columbia University School of Journalism. When she lived in New York, she became involved with the many writers, artists, philosophers, and musicians who made up the intellectual and artistic movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. Carl Van Vechten encouraged her writing, and George Bye, a literary agent, helped her get stories published in New York magazines and in the Daily News. Miss West has worked as an actress, a social work investigator in Harlem, and as editor of two Black quarterlies published in the thirties, Challenge and New Challenge. She was among a group of twenty writers, including Ted Poston and Langston Hughes, who were invited by the Soviet Union to go there to make a film on Black life in the United States. Her novel The Living Is Easy was published in 1948 and reissued in 1982. Langston Hughes included her stories in his 1967 anthology, The Best Short Stories of Negro Writers. Residing in Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard for the past 20 years, she works as a cashier in a restaurant, writes a weekly column for the Vineyard Gazette, and continues to work on her novels and short stories. Description: The Black Women Oral History Project interviewed 72 African American women between 1976 and 1981. With support from the Schlesinger Library, the project recorded a cross section of women who had made significant contributions to American society during the first half of the 20th century. Photograph taken by Judith Sedwick Repository: Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America. Collection: Black Women Oral History Project Research Guide: http://guides.library.harvard.edu/schlesinger_bwohp
context_page_description: Dorothy West was an American novelist and short story writer during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel The Living Is Easy, as well as many other short stories and essays, about the life of an upper-class black family.
context_section_description: After both magazines folded because of insufficient financing, West worked for the Works Progress Administration's Federal Writers' Project until the mid-1940s. During this time she wrote a number of short stories for the New York Daily News, where she was the first black writer published. She then moved to Oak Bluffs on Martha's Vineyard, where she wrote her first novel, The Living Is Easy. Featuring an ironic sense of humor unique to West's style, the story chronicles the life of a young southern girl in pursuit of the upper class lifestyle. Published in 1948, the novel was well received critically but did not sell many copies.
  In the subsequent four decades, West worked as a journalist, primarily writing for a small newspaper on Martha's Vineyard. In 1948, she started a weekly column about Oak Bluffs people, events, and nature. In 1982 The Feminist Press brought The Living Is Easy back into print, giving new attention to West and her role in the Harlem Renaissance; she was included in the 1992 anthology Daughters of Africa (ed. Margaret Busby). As a result of this renewed attention, at the age of 85 West finally finished a second novel, entitled The Wedding, which portrayed the message that while race may be a false distinction, love knows no bounds. Published to acclaim in 1995 — the Publishers Weekly review stated: "West's first novel in 45 years is a triumph." — the novel was a best-seller and resulted in the publication of a collection of West's short stories and reminiscences called The Richer, the Poorer. Oprah Winfrey turned the novel into a 1998 two-part television miniseries, The Wedding.
caption: Dorothy West in 1981
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