The black experience, one might automatically assume, is known to every
Black author. Henry James was pondering a similar assumption when he said: “You
were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it.” This disparity
between an experience and knowledge of that experience is the longest bridge an
artist must cross. Don L. Lee, in his picture of the Black poet, “studying his
own poetry and the poetry of other Black poets,” touches
on the crucial point. In order to transform his own
sufferings—or joys—as a Black person into usable knowledge for his readers, the
author must first order his experiences in his mind. Only then can he create
feelingly and coherently the combination of fact and meaning that Black
audiences require for the reexploration of their lives. A cultural community of
Black authors studying one another’s best works systematically would represent
a dynamic interchange of the spirit—corrective and instructive and increasingly
beautiful in its recorded expression.
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