Mary Helen Washington

Mary Helen Washington (born January 21, 1941) is an African-American literary scholar who is the author of numerous books on the African-American female experience. She is best known for her influence on increasing representation of Black authors in education and in literary schools of thought. Washington is a past president of the American Studies Association, and an experienced English professor. She then taught at Mills College before teaching at the University of Massachusetts, Boston, from 1980 to 1990, and at the University of Maryland, College Park, in the early 1990s. She was elected president of the American Studies Association and served in that position from 1996 to 1997. She is the author of several books of cultural criticism and literary criticism, including The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s, and has contributed to the PBS documentary series American Experience.

Influences In her book The Other Blacklist, Washington reflects that her anti-communist upbringing triggered her interest in communist theory and its connection to Black literature. In her work, she shows interest in influential female African-American authors and artists from the Cold War era, and she explores how Leftist views influenced these authors to pursue Black radicalism and literary scholarship. As a political and social justice activist, Washington writes with the goal of challenging the canon of Afro-American Literature. In her essay "Feminist Roots", published in Women's Review of Books, she critically engages with feminism’s relation communism, connecting Black feminist movements to 1930s communist labour initiatives. Washington praises Marshall for the way she "explored a black woman's consciousness and broke out of convention", as well as expressing admiration for the importance of Black females writers' "transnational view of the world". Washington focuses on promoting the scholarship of Black authors and challenging the standards for representation in literature.

Works

Foreword to

Notable works

Black-Eyed Susans (1975) and Midnight Birds (1980) Black-Eyed Susans is a collection of ten stories meant to challenge the stereotypes of servant, wife and mother associated with Black women. Its collection of characters conveys an image of Black women that stresses their complexity and depth.

Memories of Kin (1991) Memories of Kin is a collection of family-centered stories and poems. Depicting Black families' struggle to uphold traditions from a primarily female viewpoint, the collection explores the way different generations interact within families, especially mother-daughter relations.

The Other Blacklist (2014) The Other Blacklist critiques the lack of influential Black literary figures accepted as literary canon. Washington focuses on the lived experiences of influential Left Black literary figures such as Lloyd Brown and Gwendolyn Brooks. Her analysis focuses on archives materials, including interviews and FBI files, to push the literary canon to better represent the role of Black authors in shaping American culture. In 2014, she received an honorable mention for the Modern Language Association's William Sanders Scarborough Prize. In 2015, Washington received the American Studies Association's Carl Bode-Norman Holmes Pearson Prize for lifetime achievement.