We Speak Your Names: A Celebration (3 page)
CICELY TYSON
Born December 19, 1933, New York, New York;
model, stage actress, Oscar-nominated screen actress, Emmy
winner for
The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman,
inducted into the Black Filmmakers Hall of Fame in 1977
There is a moment in Cicely Tyson's Oscar-nominated performance in the film
Sounder
when her character, Rebecca, glimpses her beloved husband coming home after months in jail, during which the family barely survived. She whispers his name over and over, afraid to believe it's really him, and then runs into his arms, weeping in relief and celebration. The scene is a powerful evocation of a love that endures, and of all her amazing stage and screen performances, that brief moment is the one that still moves me to tears.
ALICE WALKER
Born February 9, 1944, Eatonton, Georgia;
poet, novelist, activist, essayist, recipient of the Pulitzer Prize
for
The Color Purple
Alice Walker is my personal
shero.
The fearlessness of her writing always moves and inspires me. As a young woman, having my first success as a writer, I was often terrified of the demands and responsibilities of this new life. Flying around the country, signing books, and sharing my work with new people at every stop, I sometimes found myself exhausted, overwhelmed, and weepy. At those moments, I'd ask myself one question:
What would Alice Walker do?
The answer was always the same:
Take a deep breath and get on with it.
DIONNE WARWICK
Born December 12, 1940, East Orange, New Jersey;
singer, multiple Grammy Award winner,
television show host
Dionne Warwick's voice doesn't remind you of anyone else's. It is her own unique gift, creating an intimate exchange with her listeners that cannot be duplicated. I remember hearing her sing “Walk On By” when I was still in high school and running to the record store to buy the album. She looked so elegant in the cover photo, wearing a long white gown, more like a jazz singer than the Motown girls I was used to, but her voice defied categorization. It didn't matter what you called it. The important thing was, you couldn't resist it. I still can't.
NANCY WILSON
Born February 20, 1937, Chillicothe, Ohio;
singer, Emmy Award winner for
The Nancy Wilson
Show,
multiple Grammy Award winner
The first time I went to Jamaica as a summer exchange student at the University of Kingston, I discovered that one of the boys in my literature class was a fiend for Nancy Wilson. A group of us went to his house one evening and had a great time listening to his cherished collection of her records. Through the open windows, from the darkness of the nearby Blue Mountains, we could hear the muffled drums of a gathering of Rastafarians, while inside my friend's house, Nancy Wilson was singing “How Glad I Am.” I'm sure Bob Marley would have approved.
OPRAH WINFREY
Born January 29, 1954, Kosciusko, Mississippi;
talk show host, actress, producer, philanthropist,
world changer
Our hostess for the
Legends Weekend
wasn't sure she wanted to be included in the list of remarkable women whose names we were calling in our praise poem. We young 'uns argued that as the one whose vision had brought us all together she certainly belonged there. Feeling our oats, we also said we were prepared to overrule her objections and call her name anyhow.
I still am.
ABOUT THE AUTHORS
P
EARL
C
LEAGE
is the author of four novels, including
Babylon Sisters
and
What Looks Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day …,
and a dozen plays, including
Flyin' West
and
Blues for an Alabama Sky.
Her new novel,
Baby Brother's Blues,
will be published by Ballantine/One World in the spring of 2006.
Z
ARON
W. B
URNETT
, J
R
. is a novelist and theatre artist and the award-winning creator of the “Live at Club Zebra!” performance series. He is currently at work on the screen adaptation of his novel
The Carthaginian Honor Society.
Frequent collaborators, Pearl and Zaron make their home in southwest Atlanta.
ABOUT THE TYPE
The text of this book was set in Nofret, a typeface designed in 1986 by Gudrun Zapf-von Hesse especially for the Berthold foundry.
Copyright © 2005 by Pearl Cleage
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by One World Books, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York. A portion of this title was published in the August 2005 issue of
O Magazine.
One World is a registered trademark and the One World colophon is a trademark of Random House, Inc.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Cleage, Pearl.
We speak your names : a celebration / Pearl Cleage with Zaron W. Burnett, Jr.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-307-49864-9
1. African American women-Poetry. I. Burnett, Zaron W. II. Title. PS3553.L389W425 2005
811'.54-dc22 2005051826
v3.0