This is our third installment from the famous 1983 anthology, Home Girls: A Black Feminist Anthology, edited by Barbara Smith and published by Kitchen Table: Women of Color Press—a project instigated by none other than Audre Lorde. We take two selections from a humorous but serious Donna Kate Rushin: “The Tired Poem: Last Letter from a Typical Unemployed Black Professional Woman” and “The Black Goddess.”

The theatrical nature of these pieces seems quite appropriate when we read about her theater (and creative writing) teaching at South Boston High School. The voice here definitely contributes to what began as the The Colored Museum or For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf and has largely ended up as “the one-woman show.”

Donna Kate Rushin was clearly a powerful contributor to movement of expression that is still echoed to this day.

Credits

Written by . . . . . . . Donna Kate Rushin

Archival Research by . . . . . . . Bryan Wilhite