00:00:02.570 - 00:00:23.480

[Marie Laberge] We're on. Part Two. [Akasha Hull] Yeah. Actually, I was thinking about when I was going through the documents in some memo or report early on,

00:00:23.480 - 00:00:35.300

there was a statement that we would begin to do what we do. And then in ten or fifteen years, we would succeed ourselves out of business.

00:00:35.300 - 00:00:46.520

And that reminded me, at that point, we were thinking, "Well, if we all do our jobs in Women's Studies and get ourselves perfectly

00:00:46.520 - 00:00:57.800

and correctly and fully integrated into the traditional disciplines." There would be no need for us to be. I read that And see, I totally,

00:00:57.800 - 00:01:08.040

I had totally forgotten that that was what we thought at that time. And then I was thinking, "Okay, so now why didn't that happen?"

00:01:08.040 - 00:01:17.960

And we know it didn't happen because of that, but that's not the only reason it didn't happen. It didn't happen because

00:01:17.960 - 00:01:32.570

what we actually still do, nobody else does. And maybe in other disciplines they might look at the subject matter areas or something of that sort.

00:01:32.570 - 00:01:55.670

But the orientation toward, and this is Women's Studies at its best, consistently, incisively critiquing power and privilege.

00:01:55.670 - 00:02:28.560

That is the essence of Women's Studies. And making the connections between lived experience and theory. That's what we do. And, and, and, and that's what I think

00:02:28.560 - 00:02:43.220

keeps us in business in a certain way. Because when we think about the ways, See, Women's Studies has changed everything. It's changed the way everybody

00:02:43.220 - 00:02:50.960

does what they do, but they still don't. It still isn't. And I mean, we're, it still isn't like how,

00:02:50.960 - 00:03:03.650

where we come from, so to speak. And you could think about all kinds of things. One of the things we had to keep

00:03:03.650 - 00:03:16.490

saying at the very beginning was, "There's no such thing as being objective when you do your work. And so therefore, just get rid of

00:03:16.490 - 00:03:30.560

that and put yourself in it." You know, say "I" and talk about the ways that your identity, you know, determines what it is you see,

00:03:30.560 - 00:03:54.030

and you say, and that kind of thing. And I was thinking, that was so simple but absolutely brilliant. And it was also absolutely advanced.

00:03:54.910 - 00:04:07.320

Okay. You look at a field now like Anthropology. I mean, they always had a little tradition of putting themselves in their work. But now the embeddedness,

00:04:07.320 - 00:04:18.410

and how that works it out, and how they write, and how now you can be poetic and so forth, and all of that. And I think about how part

00:04:18.410 - 00:04:27.260

of what we did in Women's Studies. And see, this is so important to me that you could say who you are, and you could say "I", and you could talk about yourself.

00:04:27.260 - 00:04:36.800

But you didn't have to write in a cold way, or you could, you know, all those kind of things. And now I'm thinking about, "Okay,

00:04:36.800 - 00:04:44.150

so this whole thing about the relationship between the subject matter and the researcher or the person who's writing about it,

00:04:44.150 - 00:05:01.350

think about a field like Physics. Even. Like their most advanced stuff now is when you observe what's happening with those sub-atomic particles, what they do changes.

00:05:01.350 - 00:05:13.550

I mean, that's what we were talking about. And you see the whole cosmos is going, "Yeah, those girls were right." (Laughs) Kind of thing. No, we were right. Do you understand

00:05:13.550 - 00:05:21.980

what I'm saying? [ML] I do. I do. [AH] So I think about things like that. I like to think like that. No, I think about things like that.

00:05:21.980 - 00:05:37.490

And I think about things that, and this is a contribution of black women and women of color. The whole idea of interlocking oppressions,

00:05:37.490 - 00:05:46.040

interlocking identities. You know, when I started doing this, when we started doing this, people were asking Shirley Chisholm when

00:05:46.040 - 00:05:55.610

she ran for president, "Have you had more problems because you're black or because you're a woman?" And she didn't know that

00:05:55.610 - 00:06:01.500

that was a trick question. [ML] Right. [AH] But now we all know it's a trick question, and how to begin to talk about it.

00:06:01.500 - 00:06:10.910

But everything just got expanded. You know, then you really look at race and work like what Maggie Andersen did. And then we could really talk

00:06:10.910 - 00:06:23.130

about sex and sexuality. You know, and then that got finer and finer. You know what I'm saying? So that, the ways that we have put that

00:06:23.130 - 00:06:36.880

everywhere just has done an incalculable service to learning in general in all the disciplines.

00:06:36.880 - 00:07:01.070

And I think we keep doing stuff like that. But I am, I am an earlier generation person. So it would take somebody. See I'm the people. I meet people and they say, "Oh, yeah. I read you in grad school."

00:07:01.070 - 00:07:08.360

I read you in grad school. And it's kind of like they read me in grad school and it's like, "Oh, good for them." And then they're kind of ahead

00:07:08.360 - 00:07:30.190

doing something else now. And I'm not always exactly sure what, how that works out. But I do like the ways that

00:07:30.190 - 00:07:44.180

things are transnational. I do like all those kinds of expansions because I think that is absolutely how the world

00:07:44.180 - 00:08:10.960

is now, and where the world is going. You know, and I want to see that done, and done in a way that keeps real people from,

00:08:10.960 - 00:08:30.080

Like, because I'm an African-American woman, a third-generation welfare recipient in my hometown in Shreveport, Louisiana, from losing her face in at all.

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And I think there's a little bit of a danger of that. So I am concerned about something like that, and I also am very concerned

00:08:42.380 - 00:08:53.570

about us losing sight of what we were doing. You know, we really are trying to make everything better. Uh-huh.

00:08:53.570 - 00:09:00.710

Because things are much more now professionalized. I think about how savvy these grad students come

00:09:00.710 - 00:09:09.990

out in terms of how they'd better move, what they'd better do, how you do all of that. It makes your head swim. You know, [ML] Yes. [AH] It really!

00:09:09.990 - 00:09:18.320

[ML] I think the University might also be a little better at realizing, you know, tenure-track people a first-year hire, you can't really put them

00:09:18.320 - 00:09:27.470

on all those committees like you did when you did all this. [AH] Oh, yeah. [ML] Because it's just not going to help them. [AH] Oh! Oh yeah. At Santa Cruz, they, the year before you go up for tenure,

00:09:27.470 - 00:09:38.250

they have fellowships for that, or course time-off. You know, just all these kind of supportive things. Of course, we didn't have all that. [ML] And it probably came about through activism. [AH] Exactly.

00:09:38.250 - 00:09:51.810

[ML] People saying, "Hello!" [AH] Hello, yes, et cetera. So I don't feel like I'm the most qualified to talk about how it is now, but I did have those thoughts.

00:09:51.810 - 00:10:04.700

[ML] And what led you to Santa Cruz? You were here until 1988, I believe. [AH] Oh okay, I have to tell you a joke before that. (Laughs) See, what started to happen. This goes back to what I was saying

00:10:04.700 - 00:10:25.580

about finding my connections and energy outside the world of University of Delaware. I got lots of grants. I got a AAUW,

00:10:25.580 - 00:10:39.170

I got a Rockefeller, got a, what was this other big one I got early on. And then I got a Fulbright to University of West Indies, in Mona, Jamaica.

00:10:39.170 - 00:10:57.890

And so I started to be gone a lot. And I think it was Bonnie Scott who told me this, after I came back from a year leave. She said, "Oh, yeah, we were all having

00:10:57.890 - 00:11:10.190

a department meeting and talking about who might we be able to get as a visiting professor. And somebody says, 'Well, Gloria Hull might.'"

00:11:10.190 - 00:11:21.530

(Laughs) And I just think that's a great joke. It's like, "She's gone so much." [ML] She can come back and visit us. [AH] She can come back and visit us sometime. Which was kind of nasty, but cute. You know what I mean, a cute nasty thing.

00:11:21.530 - 00:11:28.280

Because it wasn't like I was gone for three years at a time, or anything like that. But I did start to go a lot,

00:11:28.280 - 00:11:36.560

but I kept doing everything that I did here. And, you know, the other way to think about would've been I was helping to put University of Delaware

00:11:36.560 - 00:11:46.760

on the map because people knew me. I was developing, you know, a wider national and international reputation. And so that was a good thing

00:11:46.760 - 00:12:05.840

actually for the University. But so it was, it was like that and I was coming up for next levels and every time,

00:12:05.840 - 00:12:17.630

you know, negotiating salary and getting a better sense of what people got paid here, and what I was worth, and how I was really doing things.

00:12:17.630 - 00:12:34.970

And I think, this goes back to my initial cameo. People couldn't see me as who I had become. I was still little Gloria Hull in a sense, you know, and I'm not going to say people were

00:12:34.970 - 00:12:43.640

resentful or they still didn't think what I was doing was legitimate, that may have all been in the mix too. You know, but I just think it was

00:12:43.640 - 00:12:55.500

this thing about to get really appreciated as who I had become, I had to go somewhere different from where I began, you know, and

00:12:55.500 - 00:13:08.560

I think, this is also just another funny little story I want to tell, because I don't know about the other women you interviewed. But I know I tell this in retrospect,

00:13:08.560 - 00:13:19.220

like it was as clear in the doing as it is in my current telling, but it of course was not. It's never like that, right? [ML] That's right.

00:13:19.220 - 00:13:28.710

[AH] Okay. So while I'm talking about knowing what was important, and so forth, on some level that was true, but there was still the ambivalences

00:13:28.710 - 00:13:39.050

and the contradictions. This is the contradiction. While we're talking about sexism, sex roles, how we have to be as

00:13:39.050 - 00:13:51.320

women and blah blah, and all of that. This is another one of my cameos, Bonnie Scott and I, of course, we're in the same department, English, at a time

00:13:51.320 - 00:14:01.730

when Zack Bowen was our Chair, if you talk about Zack Bowen, he brought a lot of energy and rejuvenation to everything.

00:14:01.730 - 00:14:11.990

But he's also the person after he was Chair, left his wife and took up with a graduate student. Other men the department started doing the same thing.

00:14:11.990 - 00:14:24.880

And so there was kind of a little bit of that atmosphere. And he was a large guy and hahaha. So he, during a Christmas holidays, he'd put on a Santa Claus suit

00:14:24.880 - 00:14:35.560

and we had our party there. And at one point, don't ask me how we ended up there, I'm sitting on one of his knees

00:14:35.560 - 00:14:46.780

and Bonnie Scott is sitting on his other. Now, is that unfeminist? (Laughs) You may laugh. But that just goes to show you.

00:14:46.780 - 00:14:54.070

Okay, we're these little cute women in the department, sitting on Zack Bowen's knee. And I remember this because obviously the things that you

00:14:54.070 - 00:15:04.960

remember have charge to them. And so that must have been that divided sense of, in a way I don't know what let me, let myself,

00:15:04.960 - 00:15:14.690

me and Bonnie, sit on Zack Bowen's knees You know, because that fed into a certain image, and blah, blah, blah. But see, yeah, that is interesting.

00:15:14.690 - 00:15:27.540

And I don't mind that I'm telling this because I think these cameos ought to be on record somewhere. Anyway. So I

00:15:27.670 - 00:15:44.460

just kind of started being open to what was out there and got an offer to be this big named professor at the College of William and Mary.

00:15:44.460 - 00:15:52.660

And I had accepted that job and was supposed to go there. But at the same time I got the one-year fellowship to

00:15:52.660 - 00:16:02.420

be at Stanford, 1987-88. So I went out there to do that. And a job search in Women's Studies where they were looking for

00:16:02.420 - 00:16:10.790

an African-American woman had fallen through. And I said, "No, I already have a job." They said, "Oh, just come up anyway." So I went up and

00:16:10.790 - 00:16:17.330

it was just very exciting up there in the redwoods and the Bly and California was beautiful, and blah, blah, blah.

00:16:17.330 - 00:16:25.710

I said, "No, but I really got this contract at William and Mary." But the guys at William and Mary, they were gentleman. They let me out of the contract.

00:16:25.710 - 00:16:35.120

Uh-huh. And so I got out of that contract and that's how I ended up at Santa Cruz. And it was really a good thing because everything out there, see,

00:16:35.120 - 00:16:47.510

if I had gone to College of William and Mary, I would have been, you know, Professor Akasha Hall And it would be kind of, I would have brought certain things there, because I

00:16:47.510 - 00:16:57.610

remember my job talk there was Audrey Lorde and her poetry and her life and stuff. So I would have brought things there.

00:16:57.610 - 00:17:05.960

But at Santa Cruz, I learned as much as I brought, you know, in terms of the possibilities of things and just the

00:17:05.960 - 00:17:14.930

fluidity and, and all of that. So it was a good move, but that's how I ended up there. Because it was like at this point,

00:17:14.930 - 00:17:29.980

I needed to go from the place where I had been the little black woman who sat in front of Charles Boehner's office with her husband and baby. I saw a place where

00:17:29.980 - 00:17:42.620

maybe what I was doing was more appreciated. And I don't know the extent to which those, how they interplay with each other. And then it could be just time for me to leave,

00:17:42.620 - 00:18:05.110

do some different. Yeah. [ML] How do you think Women's Studies has influenced your field of English? [AH] I don't actually think my field is English. [ML] Oh! Okay. [AH] Okay.

00:18:05.110 - 00:18:11.920

So. Wait I was just trying to think if there was something else I wanted to say. [ML] First, let's go back then? What do you think?

00:18:11.920 - 00:18:29.200

How do you define your, how you, How would you describe yourself as your field? [AH] Right. My field is Black Women's Studies. [ML] Okay. [AH] Yeah, and yeah, I would say Black Women's Studies,

00:18:29.200 - 00:18:40.520

Women's Studies, African-American literature. And when I look at what I've done, if I just want to narrow it, it would be because,

00:18:40.520 - 00:18:52.560

Okay, I told you my early trajectory and publishing the, okay. What oh, I know what I have to tell you.

00:18:52.560 - 00:19:11.700

This is just too perfect. This goes connected with both how, for me personally and I think for the evolution of Women's Studies here,

00:19:11.700 - 00:19:25.040

things worked out in a Delaware-specific way, like starting with Continuing Education and Mae Carter, like the fact that we were

00:19:25.040 - 00:19:46.130

all sort of new, bumbling, open, a lot of naivete with some goodwill, and just kind of finding our way. Which in a way opens things up more so than

00:19:46.130 - 00:20:03.970

if people are real clear about stuff. And so I really think that that was a factor. So for me, Here's something.

00:20:03.970 - 00:20:12.400

After I started to, what I'm starting off to tell you, just so you know, is how Black Women's Studies

00:20:12.400 - 00:20:30.010

became my field and what that is. All right. After I had begun to teach African-American literature, I was doing a course,

00:20:30.010 - 00:20:47.030

and we were doing, it was either the poetry course or the lit survey. I was teaching them Paul Laurence Dunbar, who was America's first famous black poet,

00:20:47.030 - 00:21:03.410

who wrote at the end of the 19th century, beginning of the 20th. And there was a student in my class who said, "Do you know Pauline Young?"

00:21:03.410 - 00:21:21.630

I said, "Who's that?" "Well her niece was married to Paul Laurence Dunbar. Her name was Alice. And Miss Young has all this stuff up there in her house about them."

00:21:21.630 - 00:21:34.170

I said, "Get out here?" And so they said, "Yeah, we know her. She's right up, she live right up in..." Is it Greenboro? No not Greenboro is way up.

00:21:34.170 - 00:21:46.100

No, Arden. Arden! Arden. She lived in a cottage in Arden. So through that student I got to know Pauline Young, and I got up there.

00:21:46.100 - 00:21:58.730

And true enough, she lived in this little two- bedroom cottage with her doggy and she was quite elderly at the time. And I went up there, and got to know her and,

00:21:58.730 - 00:22:05.390

you know, brought her things. And we started getting to be close and everything. And so the closer we got,

00:22:05.390 - 00:22:14.930

the more she would drag out from under her bed or open this battered old file cabinet, and show me this, ,that and the other. And long story short,

00:22:14.930 - 00:22:22.580

I ended up with access to all this archival stuff that was just sitting up there. And she was happy to have

00:22:22.580 - 00:22:30.170

somebody do it because her intent has always, had always been to do something with it. But she was not in academe.

00:22:30.170 - 00:22:40.270

She had been a librarian, so she knew the value of keeping it all. But it was not really cataloged all that well, but some and you know,

00:22:40.270 - 00:22:49.610

and she herself had not really read it all. Because when she pulled out Alice's, Alice Dunbar Nelson's diary,

00:22:49.610 - 00:23:02.090

it was all there as Alice had kept it, but it was like almost 2,000 pages of stuff and no, and it was handwritten for the most part.

00:23:02.090 - 00:23:12.590

Even though some years when Alice had jobs, that let her have a desk and a typewriter, some of it was typed. She hadn't read every one of those.

00:23:12.590 - 00:23:22.970

And the reason why I knew she hadn't is because if she had known everything that I read, she wouldn't have let me read it.

00:23:22.970 - 00:23:31.130

It told stuff about her that I still haven't told. And won't. And you know, just the contradictions of

00:23:31.130 - 00:23:38.300

the outward life versus the I mean, the public persona versus what was going on and all of that. But I read every bit of

00:23:38.300 - 00:23:48.310

that and that's what I ended up editing before we had help from computers. I remember Betty. What's her name? That was secretary in English.

00:23:48.310 - 00:23:58.010

She just typed drafts of all this stuff. It was, if it was good enough for her to be able to type it, I make copies and I would

00:23:58.010 - 00:24:09.380

say this much, dot dot dot, and this much. And if it wasn't, I had to write it out and give it. Oh it was so much work! But that,

00:24:09.380 - 00:24:20.960

I love archival stuff. And I'd been digging in the New Orleans, Vanguard, in Atlanta, and all of those things.

00:24:20.960 - 00:24:38.230

But what I began to see was just how much there was to get put out about these women. And I had the feminist theory

00:24:38.230 - 00:24:52.580

of knowing that all of these women that we had been trained to relegate to second echelon status, were not always deserving of that status.

00:24:52.580 - 00:25:09.830

So now I began to really rescue, recover, re-enter a bit, elevate, and that became my sort of mission. So Alice Dunbar Nelson was a part of it.

00:25:09.830 - 00:25:15.200

And then the women poets of the Harlem Renaissance, because that's the period. And so I did

00:25:15.200 - 00:25:23.970

the same thing for Georgia Douglas Johnson, Angelina Weld Grimke. Now, this is actually what a lot of people bless me for.

00:25:23.970 - 00:25:36.050

And it did take courage to do this. Because when I did that work, I ran into the fact, and I had no idea about this, no idea whatsoever.

00:25:36.050 - 00:25:51.210

Reading through every page of the diary I saw that Alice had relationships that were amorous, and crushes, and this one definitely fruition,

00:25:51.210 - 00:26:04.540

same-sex relationships. And going through the archives, same thing for Angelina Weld Grimke. No idea about this. Okay.

00:26:04.540 - 00:26:13.690

So I could have done what scholars do forever. Just let it lie. But because of

00:26:13.690 - 00:26:25.540

Barbara Smith and all of that work and because of the opening up of possibility in Women's Studies. And because of whatever it is

00:26:25.540 - 00:26:36.790

in me, in terms of knowing the possibilities within my own self and just knowing what's right. I have a strong sense of you have to tell

00:26:36.790 - 00:26:45.140

the truth about things and just do the right thing. You know, I just I didn't do that. You know, and so it's

00:26:45.140 - 00:26:59.610

a combination of me, the material, and Women's Studies in the times. And so I just kind of figured out how to put it out there.

00:26:59.610 - 00:27:13.650

But that I would. That I would not go that route. And so I did and put it out, supported what I had to say, say it was fragmented,

00:27:13.650 - 00:27:20.780

say this is what she is willing to write in the diary, and it shows this. And some people say, "Well, I don't know if that means..."

00:27:20.780 - 00:27:31.790

Well, okay, you can say it doesn't, but this is what I see. You know, and Angelina Weld Grimke, just say. But I tried to do it in a way so that people

00:27:31.790 - 00:27:43.490

who were hungry to have lesbians, and, let's say, lesbian representation, couldn't ignore the other parts of their life. I was there.

00:27:43.490 - 00:27:50.810

I haven't been successful at that because, you know, to find that Alice Dunbar Nelson did love women, to find

00:27:50.810 - 00:27:58.130

out that Angelina Grimke did. That's what a lot of people want to say without saying, "Well, I mean, she was married three times and she did this

00:27:58.130 - 00:28:05.290

and that with only a part and..." Well, bisexuality has never been like a comfortable place or multi-sexuality, or whatever.

00:28:05.290 - 00:28:12.230

But so, so people take who they need for what they need them for. So that's all out of my hands.

00:28:12.230 - 00:28:23.060

All I could do is put it out there. But the fact that I did, I think is like what I feel is a really important contribution that I

00:28:23.060 - 00:28:34.450

made to talking about those African American women. And... but always doing it, recognizing that that's been

00:28:34.450 - 00:28:47.900

a contentious area for black women because of why were they so cloaked in the first place? You know, going against the stereotype

00:28:47.900 - 00:28:58.580

of being loose and worthy of rape as a slave woman, because "you're just an animal anyway." And you know, and so that's the outside.

00:28:58.580 - 00:29:08.750

But inside they were, you know. So trying to work all of that. But to to put it out-- [ML] And show the complexity of their identity. [AH] Yes. Yes, yes, yes.

00:29:08.750 - 00:29:18.550

To show the complexity of all of that. So I think that that was like a really important thing that I did. And so working that,

00:29:18.550 - 00:29:29.910

and at the same time going way back to the Combahee days when we would sit around and do our own version of consciousness raising.

00:29:29.910 - 00:29:37.850

You used to throw around the idea of power. We talked about power. We talked about spirituality. And we had a sense of

00:29:37.850 - 00:29:53.890

what we were talking about. But I held on to that. And in terms of my own development, that was always a part of what interested me.

00:29:53.890 - 00:30:13.060

And so I began to talk about that as an area: spirituality. When people weren't actually doing that. And to talk about it as not religion.

00:30:13.060 - 00:30:30.320

To talk about it as not just feminine intuition, but to talk about it. So how do you talk about it? And I finally got to ways of talking about

00:30:30.320 - 00:30:40.940

it later on and what helped that, and this I think is the other, if I talk about what I think I've done that's been important.

00:30:40.940 - 00:30:59.020

This would be it too. Around 1980, there began what I call a a Black Female Literary Renaissance. And that's Alice Walker, Toni Cade Bambara,

00:30:59.020 - 00:31:17.510

Sonia Sanchez, Lucille Clifton, the poet, just a whole string of, Toni Morrison who began to have as a major component in their work

00:31:17.510 - 00:31:26.270

something that could go under the definition of this spirituality. [ML] Hm. [AH] Uh-huh. Because they were willing

00:31:26.270 - 00:31:41.270

to talk about the supernatural, the superstitious, not in a downplaying way. They were willing to admit that they did not always know where their characters

00:31:41.270 - 00:31:49.790

or creativity came from. And that The Muse was a convenient way of talking about it. When you didn't want to say

00:31:49.790 - 00:32:02.900

this was an actual presence, who, or you could say, "Well, you know, I felt as if I was having a conversation with my father." You know, and, you know,

00:32:02.900 - 00:32:17.910

so people began to talk about that, and where I went with it goes into Physics, goes into, you know, a very broad base sense of the universe,

00:32:17.910 - 00:32:29.860

the spiritual, as those energies that underlie the universe, us and all of our being. And that the more you put yourself

00:32:29.860 - 00:32:46.100

or allow yourself to be in tune with that, the more conscious and powerful you are. And that kind of resource has been what allowed a lot of

00:32:46.100 - 00:32:55.680

women to survive and succeed. And so began to talk about that and then talk about the ways that it manifested itself like that.

00:32:55.680 - 00:33:06.500

And so by the book I did before this current book, novel was "Soul Talk: The New Spirituality of African-American Women," where I

00:33:06.500 - 00:33:14.800

kind of talk about that phenomenon. And of course, at that point it is tying in with "New Age." But to talk about how

00:33:14.800 - 00:33:25.490

is not fufu "New Age." These are women who are grounded and all of those sociological realities and of race, sex and politics and stuff like that is

00:33:25.490 - 00:33:37.810

not out there in the ozone and stuff. So to do... See, that's the thing about everything. And I don't want to sound like a martyr or anything like that,

00:33:37.810 - 00:33:45.890

but it's almost like, and this is what we would always say as women of color. It's not simple. It's never simple.

00:33:45.890 - 00:33:55.550

Now that is very simple for anybody. But you know, it's like to talk about... See if... It's like black women have really

00:33:55.550 - 00:34:02.990

led the way, in a lot of ways. And so you talk about that and like I'm willing to say, "Oh yeah, these women did this and they were

00:34:02.990 - 00:34:12.810

spiritual in this way" and stuff like that. But at the same time, you know that the overwhelming paradigm still does not favor that.

00:34:12.810 - 00:34:24.090

So you are putting them out there in a way as forerunners. At the same time, are you opening them up to be dismissed? Okay. So always doing that?

00:34:24.090 - 00:34:37.450

Always, you know, but always trying to do it in a way that was aware of everything that was going on, you know. [ML] So what led you into the realm of fiction?

00:34:37.450 - 00:34:47.620

Or had it always been a part of what you do? [AH] No, what I was was a poet. I have published a book of poetry and I've always. See the thing was,

00:34:47.620 - 00:34:59.320

once I knew that we didn't have to write dry, dull, and academic, then that allowed me to be metaphoric. And not... the articles

00:34:59.320 - 00:35:11.760

books to try to make what I had to say not only clear, but beautifully-said. And I like that. And what I really wanted to be was a journalist.

00:35:11.760 - 00:35:24.350

I had the gumption to take my... Okay, the first time I got out of the South was between my junior and my senior year in undergraduate school.

00:35:24.350 - 00:35:36.860

Some people were on campus looking for some black kids to bring up to New Haven, Connecticut for a summer in a program that matched black kids

00:35:36.860 - 00:35:51.360

from HBUC with these elite kids at these white college campuses. I happened to just pass by there, get pulled into the interview, and got selected.

00:35:51.360 - 00:35:59.300

First time I had a plane ride. First time I got out of the South. And I stayed in one of the towers at Yale and worked with

00:35:59.300 - 00:36:10.650

the New Haven Human Relations Commission. It was very interesting. Okay. What did you ask me?

00:36:11.020 - 00:36:18.260

[ML] I was asking how you got to writing fiction? [AH] Yeah. Okay. So... No, there was something else that made me tell

00:36:18.260 - 00:36:27.350

you that story. [ML] You were about to tell me you were a poet first. [AH] Yeah. Okay. So just beginning, Oh yeah.

00:36:27.350 - 00:36:36.820

I know what I was telling you. What I was really trying to tell you is that in undergraduate school, I wrote, this is

00:36:36.820 - 00:36:45.930

a part of being an English major, and studying 19th century. You know, the essays were big. People would just do these musings.

00:36:45.930 - 00:36:56.630

I wrote essays and my senior project was a collection of essays and musings. Okay. Then I began to write poetry that got published

00:36:56.630 - 00:37:08.630

in the journal "Women: A Journal of Liberation"? I think I had my first poem published there in 1973, something like that. Okay, so I was writing poetry and then

00:37:08.630 - 00:37:22.350

published a book of poetry in the 1980s, that Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press did. Okay, so I did poetry and kind of kept that going and loved.

00:37:22.570 - 00:37:40.610

And I loved, I've always loved trying to find the word that says exactly what you're trying to say, you know, or the phrase that captures it.

00:37:40.610 - 00:37:56.690

And so that was happening in the poetry and happening in the academic essays and books I was doing. But I never thought that I could write fiction.

00:37:56.690 - 00:38:16.870

But after I decided early retire, the stuff started coming to me that definitely was about fiction. And so after I retired,

00:38:16.870 - 00:38:32.920

early retired, I just let that begin to happen. And it was, as I said, absolutely informed by the emphasis

00:38:32.920 - 00:38:46.830

I've always had on women, women's issues and so forth. But now it was coming out in this fiction. And so that's how that happened.

00:38:48.330 - 00:39:02.270

[ML[ So what do you think about what still needs to be addressed in Women's Studies? [AH] I don't know. (Laughs) What do you think?

00:39:02.270 - 00:39:11.250

Tell me. Like what are some possibilities? [ML] Well, I personally find that sort of, even as we go, I mean a lot of the issues that you raised, as you said,

00:39:11.250 - 00:39:19.150

we're still doing stuff that is not really necessarily being picked up elsewhere. And so sort of making, sort of pushing the boundaries

00:39:19.150 - 00:39:25.810

of different frameworks. Still. [AH] Like what? In what framework? [ML] Well, like when I have students come to

00:39:25.810 - 00:39:31.520

my classes and they've never even thought about some of the issues that we're talking about, which we see as sort of like

00:39:31.520 - 00:39:36.840

just mundane common sense. You know, talking about gender issues. And they've never had a framework that could,

00:39:36.840 - 00:39:46.790

that enables them to think about gender. So it's like it's a revelation to them. And I'm fascinated that, you know, 40 years later

00:39:46.790 - 00:39:52.770

these concepts are still revelations to these young people. We haven't quite had that impact in terms of

00:39:52.770 - 00:40:01.940

larger social context and really pushing society in general just sort of began to challenge these values. I mean, my son says, "Yeah,

00:40:01.940 - 00:40:12.520

well, I hear it from you all the time." But then I have students who say, "I just never thought about this stuff before." [AH] And that's true. [ML] And I just find that fascinating.

00:40:12.520 - 00:40:28.880

That, you know, it becomes sort of commonplace for us. But we haven't yet been able to make it commonplace elsewhere. [AH] That's actually the big thing. And that's the thing that goes back to how we really do need a social revolution.

00:40:28.880 - 00:40:43.220

And since it's not a social movement anymore, that's the disconnect. And that's why, that's really why we have

00:40:43.220 - 00:40:55.560

all these new generations that come up. See, that's what can be really daunting or disheartening. But on the other hand, it (video freezes) in a way...