LibGuides: African American Women Writers: Mae Cowdery

A native Philadelphian, Mae V. Cowdery (1909-1953) was raised in a comfortable middle class home. As a senior at the Philadelphia High School for Girls (a school also attended by Jessie Fauset) in 1927, she won first prize in a poetry contest run by The Crisis, as well as the Krigwa Poetry Prize for another poem. After graduation, she, like Gwendolyn B. Bennett, attended Pratt Institute. She quickly took to New York City and enjoyed Harlem and Greenwich Village cabarets. Cowdery was one of the few women of her time to publish a book of her own poems, We Lift Our Voices and Other Poems (1936). Despite early success and earning the respect of some of the most influential figures of the Harlem Renaissance, Alain Locke and Langston Hughes, Cowdery fell silent after the book’s publication. Her final years are shrouded in mystery. She took her own life at the age of forty-four. (Black Women in America)

Genre: Poetry

By Mae Cowdery

Harlem's Glory: Black women writing, 1900-1950 by Lorraine E. Roses (Editor); Ruth E. Randolph (Editor)
This text unfolds a tradition of writing by African-American women from the first half of the 20th century, hitherto mostly hidden. Each text is placed in historical context, with special emphasis on matters of race and gender. This amalgam of prose, poetry, non-fiction and fiction includes the words of luminaries like Zora Neale Hurston and Georgia Douglas Johnson as well as previously unpublished writings by figures like Angelina Weld Grimke, Elise Johnson McDougald, and Regina Andrews.
Black Sister: poetry by black American women, 1746-1980 by Erlene Stetson (Editor)
Introductory essays are followed by selections from the works of 58 African-American women poets dating back to the eighteenth century.

About Mae Cowdery

Aphrodite's Daughters: three modernist poets of the Harlem Renaissance by Maureen Honey
Maureen Honey paints a vivid portrait of three African American women--Angelina Weld Grimké, Gwendolyn B. Bennett, and Mae V. Cowdery--who came from very different backgrounds but converged in late 1920s Harlem to leave a major mark on the literary landscape.
LGBTQ Literature by Margaret Sonser Breen (Editor)
Call Number: Ebook
This volume examines the relatively new, and expanding, genre of gay and lesbian literature through a diverse set of texts. Essays survey the critical conversation regarding the theme, explore its cultural and historical contexts, and offer close and comparative readings of key texts in the genre. Readers seeking a deeper understanding of the theme and its notable authors can explore it in depth through a variety of critical approaches.