Pilgrim Journey
$35.00
(Autobiography)
Naomi Long Madgett
“It is a pleasure indeed when a living legend shares with readers the path by which she arrived at that status. In Pilgrim Journey, Naomi Long Madgett invites readers to reminisce with her about the places, people, and events that have shaped her life. Having spent more than six decades creating, preserving, and perpetuating African American poetry, she is one of those rare individuals whose lives matter to a variety of people across a variety of enterprises. Pilgrim Journey allows insight into the brilliant but sensitive young girl who, through shaping in New Jersey, Missouri, Virginia, New York, and Michigan, emerged as one of the premier poets and publishers of the latter twentieth century. This recounting of Madgett’s life and work is a must read for anyone interested in life stories and the shaping of Lotus Press, an institution that has been crucial to the development and perpetuation of African American poetry.” –Trudier Harris, Ph.D., J. Carlyle Sitterson Professor of English, The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
“From the first page, Naomi Long Madgett’s Pilgrim Journey immerses the reader in the family life and culture of a mostly unknown time and place in 20th century American history. Her archival genius gives us vast and thorough coverage, for example, of a middle class African American upbringing that, in spite of emotional difficulties, contradicts the deprivation that has been frequently portrayed. This’ odyssey will be of great interest to poets, historians, sociologists, and the general reader interested in the heroic achievements of one woman through truly the best and worst of times.” –Toi Demcotte, author of’ award winning The Black Notebooks
“In Pilgrim Journey, Naomi Long Madgett retraces encounters with love, difficult marriages, racial prejudice, class conflict within the black community, and the curious satisfactions and disappointments of being a poet. Reaching back in her family history, this autobiography illuminates how African Americans built institutions and an intellectual tradition that Madgett has diligently served as Poet Laureate of Detroit and editor of a small poetry press. As she documents the demographics of her sojourn, we gain insight into the impetus and imagination of a poet, publisher, and professor who had the courage to invent her own space in a world indifferent to poetry, hostile to African American education, and often oblivious to the marvelous intellect of a black woman.”
–Melba Joyce Boyd, Ph.D., Distinguished Professor, Wayne State University and author of Wrestling with the Muse. Dudley Randall and the Broadside Press
