Laura Presents Three African-American Classics

Jacquie’s Email Hello Literary Ladies! Just a gentle reminder that the next meeting of the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting this coming Wednesday, February 4th in Gita’s beautiful aerie, from which, I imagine, we will be able to see the ice floes on the Hudson River. As usual, we will meet at noon for luncheon, though luncheon at Gita’s is never merely “usual” but always a delight for all the senses. Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to begin our meeting, after

which Laura will be presenting “Three African American Classics: Cane, Passing, The Invisible Man.” I, for one, am looking forward to revisiting high school reading with one of Hastings’ own English teachers extraordinaire!

Please let our hostess know if you are unable to attend. Stay warm and safe out there! x Jacquie

Frances’ Minutes Eleven members and one associate met in Gita’s sunroom. A cozy place to watch the ice floes on the Hudson River. Joanna rang the bell, business began. The terms of president and vice-president are ending; Joanna has appointed a nominating committee to fill the positions. The committee is Carol, Connie, Jacquie. Several changes made in hostesses. Next meeting Feb 18, will be at Christine’s. The March 4 Annual Meeting will be at Laura’s; lunch will be served. April 8 will be at Joanna’s; it will be a brown bag lunch.

Lori reported our treasury was, as it has consistently been since donating to the Hastings library, $113.12.

A couple of recommendations: Frances thought the Broadway musical Maybe Happy Ending wonderful. Connie recommends two films: A Private Life and Sentimental Value.

The full title of Laura’s presentation was “Three African-American Writers of the Twentieth Century, or Books Not Taught.” Those were Cane by Jean Toomer, Passing by Nella Larsen and Ralph Ellison’s The Invisible Man.  Of the three, Laura had only read The Invisible Man decades ago, when work and family gave her no time to concentrate.

Laura began with Jean Toomer’s Cane. She showed us one version of the novel; more than ¾ of the book was analysis and criticism. Cane is composed of sketches and poems, a sequence of scenes and portraits, modernist in style, moving from rural Georgia to Chicago and back. Toomer’s work has received much attention since it was first published in 1923.

Toomer was born in 1894 in Washington DC. Toomer’s father had been born a slave who as an adult occasionally passed as white. Toomer’s mother’s forebears were of mixed race and Creole. Toomer resisted racial classification, considered he was “a representative of a new emergent race-a combination of various races.”

Toomer’s formative years were turbulent. He went to six different colleges but never obtained a degree. He worked odd jobs, published essays in a socialist paper. In 1921 he took a job as the principal of a new agricultural and manual labor college for Black-Americans in Sparta, Georgia. Jim Crow laws were violently enforced; lynchings frequent.

Toomer composed most of Cane during that time. He saw beauty as well as cruelty around him. His poem “Karintha” repeats: “her skin is like dusk when the sun goes down.” In November Cotton Flower, he writes “Brown eyes that loved without a trace of fear”

He died in 1967.

Passing was recommended by a former student of Laura’s, who had returned to Hastings HS to teach.

Nella Larsen was born in 1891 in Chicago. Her mother was Danish, her father from the West Indies. Passing is an imaginative recreation of the fluidity of race, which Larsen knew well.

Larsen studied nursing at Lincoln Hospital and began working there. In 1919, she married a prominent Black physicist; they moved to Harlem, became part of the Harlem Renaissance. She published her first novel in 1928. Shortly after, learning of an affair of her husband’s, she separated from him. In 1929, she published Passing.

The novel is about two childhood friends, Irene Redfield and Clare Kendry, who reconnect as adults. Clare passes as white and has even married a white racist. Irene identifies as Black. Clare lives under pressure of concealment. Yet she wants to know more about and to be a part of Harlem’s high life. She sees the friendship with Irene as a pathway. Irene senses the risk Clare is taking, avoids her. Clare comes uninvited to a Harlem party; Irene and her husband are there. The sixth-floor apartment is hot and crowded. Clare’s husband has followed her; he bursts in on the party, enraged, shouting. Clare jumps, or falls, we’re not certain, from an open window.

Larsen’s writing life ended abruptly when she was accused of plagiarizing a story. She divorced; she left her work as a librarian to return to nursing. At her funeral, colleagues came, but no family or friends.

Ralph Ellison was introduced with a quote from The Invisible Man “…one of the greatest jokes in the world is the spectacle of the whites busy escaping blackness and becoming blacker every day, and the blacks striving toward whiteness, becoming quite dull and gray. None of us seems to know who he is or where he’s going.”

Ellison was born in 1913 in Oklahoma City. Ellison was not a good student, he applied 3 times to Tuskegee Institute before being admitted. He left without getting a degree, he went to NYC to study sculpture, in 1936. Living in Harlem, he made important contacts: Langston Hughes, Gordon Parks, and critically, Richard Wright, who encouraged Ellison to write fiction.

The Invisible Man was published in 1952 to popular and critical success; it was given a National Book Award. The first-person narrator, never named, begins his story from a coal cellar where he is hiding from a political rival who intends to kill him. The most heart wrenching scene is of an old couple being evicted from their Harlem apartment, she sobbing, he leaning on his cane. A crowd stands around, watching. The narrator yells “put the furniture back in the house … make their home again!” Ellison could create drama and character, he makes us feel, with first person immediacy, the injustices of racism and of poverty.

Laura concluded, “I only hope that we will find our way… to resist what is happening now and that we can put the furniture back…and right some of the many wrongs we see today.”

Carol Presents I, Claudius

Jacquie’s Email Hello Literary Ladies! A late yet gentle reminder that the Literature Club of Hastings-on-Hudson will be meeting this Wednesday, January 21, 2026, for Carol’s presentation on I, Claudius by Robert Graves. Yesterday at this time I was sitting on the beach as my sons joined a crowd at the water’s edge watching three manatees frolicking in the waves. Sigh. Air travel is truly an amazing thing.

Please note the change of venue: while Carla continues to move into her new digs, Barbara has graciously offered to host us at her beautiful hilltop home. We will meet at noon for luncheon and Joanna will ring the bell at 1 PM to begin our meeting (if I remember to bring the bell to the meeting as it is currently sitting atop my pile of Literature Club programs in my living room, so there's a 50/50 chance said bell will actually be rung...)

I imagine many of us know I, Claudius from the amazing BBC production which first aired in the US on Masterpiece Theatre in 1977 with its haunting dissonant opening music and extraordinary who’s who of British acting talent. With a desire to re-visit the work in the late 80s, imagining a rip-roaring yarn of intrigue and romance, and before easy access to streaming, I read the book one summer. My memory is of very tiny print and pages and pages of the details of army supplies and tactics and other minutia of history, but we’ll see what Carol has to say!

Please let our hostess know only if you will be unable to attend. I look forward to seeing you all soon! xo Jacquie

Frances’ Minutes The sunny winter light of Barbara’s home cheered the 13 members and 1 associate who met there. Logs were burning in the fireplace. Outside the kitchen window, birds were eating greedily at the feeder. We ate more politely from the buffet set out on the kitchen table.

Joanna rang the bell promptly at 1 PM. We began with our recommendations. Thanks to Connie and the Persephone Newsletter, Frances read Dorothy Whipple’s Someone at a Distance. Whipple was a mid-20th century British writer whose books went out of print. Persephone, both a bookstore and a publisher in England, has taken up the work of reprinting works of excellent, forgotten writers, especially women. Turns out Barbara Pym isn’t the only forgotten gem.

Two recommendations from Sharon: The Axeman’s Carnival, by Catherine Chidgey, written from the point of view of a magpie and Maggie Farrell’s I Am, I Am, I Am: Seventeen Brushes with Death, A Memoir. Carol added how much she liked Farrell’s The Marriage Portrait. The NY Times 10 Best Books of the Year was the source for two recommendations. From the 2025 list, a non-fiction memoir, Mother Mary Comes to Me by Arundhati Roy and from 2024, Someone Like Us (a novel) by Dinaw Mengestu.

Laura recommended The Antidote by Karen Russell, about a prairie witch who cures mental anguish with the same finesse as an Upper West Side psychiatrist. Joanna liked Andrew Miller’s The Land in Winter, about the cultural shift taking place in England in the 60’s.

I, Claudius by Robert Graves had always been on Carol’s list of books to read. The length intimidated her, and were it not for Lit Club, she wouldn’t have tackled it.

Robert Graves was born in 1895. He received an excellent education; winning scholarships, including to Oxford. He fought in World War I and was severely wounded at the Battle of Somme. He suffered for years from shellshock. His life had been spared, he believed, because fate intended him to be a poet. He earned his living writing, he was the author of 140 publications, the count includes poetry, novels, essays, criticism, short stories, translations. His criticism led to the close reading method, known as the New Criticism. His poetry influenced Ted Hughes, Sylvia Plath, Philip Larkin and Kingsley Amis

He met Laura Riding, a poet, while married to his first wife. All three moved to a house in Majorca. He stayed there from the 1920’s to his death, in 1986, except for 10 years back in England. His romantic attachments and marriages were not as stable.

I, Claudius was published in 1934 to immediate popular and critical success. Claudius was part of a “cruel and debauched ruling class” whose members “sought and maintained power through systematic murder.”  Claudius wrote an autobiography, now lost, which inspired Graves to write this first-person narrative. Graves researched Claudius’ life and times carefully; most events are factual. The inner lives of the men and women in this circle of Roman autocrats and their families are Graves’ imaginative recreation. It is historical fiction.

Claudius was a sickly child. He was lame, possibly due to polio; he stammered, jerked his head, suffered stomach pains. He was reputed to have written over 28 volumes of history while others plotted for power. None of his writing survived. In an era when physical prowess and success in battle was needed to be an emperor, Claudius was believed doomed to obscurity. That Claudius was an incompetent undeserving to become an emperor was the view of 19th century British historian Edward Gibbons, and widely accepted. Graves’ novel challenged that opinion and led to a reassessment of Claudius.

Carol led us skillfully through a maze of poisonings, assassinations, rivalries, incest, executions, and betrayals to the unexpected triumph of Claudius. Graves gave Claudius the following thoughts on becoming emperor:

“No, you would never guess what was passing through my mind. But I shall be frank and tell you what it was, though the confession is a shameful one. I was thinking, ‘So, I’m Emperor, am I? What nonsense! But at least I’ll be able to make people read my books now. Public recitals to large audiences. And good books too, thirty-five years’ hard work in them.’ ”