What goes around , comes around.
When I was a child, I heard that phrase and shrugged. What did I know then?
I’m a fiction writer. My particular interest is novels and short stories that address exclusions in the (mostly) North American historical narratives. I’ve been a reader since early childhood so I’ve always wanted to be in books and of books, as well as, write and produce books. But the books I had early access to, the ones endorsed by the mainstream tastemakers, did not imagine me in any full or wholesome way. I gobbled up the classics anyway. Then in high school and college I discovered the work of African American writers. Following Toni Morrison’s great directive to “write the book you want(or need) to read”, I dreamed up a novel, River, Cross My Heart which is based on my parents’ recollections of growing up in Georgetown.
So after writing my second novel based in the Georgetown neighborhood of Washington, D.C., Stand The Storm which has at its center the District of Columbia’s Compensated Emancipation Act of April 1862, I am surprised, exhilarated, and awe-struck to discover facts about an actual ancestor. I’ve found that this ancestor, my great grandfather Alfred Clarke, was directly affected by the edict. Note: great-grandfather. A large part of the fascination and sobering realization is that I am in such close proximity to this personal history of slavery. Here he is depicted with his wife. Their images are on a small set of cufflinks and a brooch. I am as fascinated with this particular commemorative depiction as with the subjects.
Along with his mother and grandmother, Alfred Clarke was emancipated in April, 1865 at the age of ten years. He been enslaved at The City Tavern by Eleanor Lang, a woman who had purchased his grandmother at the age of 14 years.
The discovery of facts about Alfred’s life at The City Tavern, have come to light due to the genealogical spadework on the Clarke Family by Yvette LaGonterie, historian and speaker. She has developed a webinar, Enslaved At The Georgetown Hotel, which details the work discovered about The Clarke Family.
I will be giving a talk about the impact that the discovery of these scant facts about this ancestor has affected my life and work in fiction at The City Tavern in Georgetown on May 19, 2022 at 6:30p. I’ll be completing a circuitous journey of inquiry and hungrily consuming the history of the last remaining Federal Tavern in D.C.
If you are in the DMV, please come out to The City Tavern. Register here:
Author Talk with Breena Clarke
I chuckle to think of the many times my father, his brothers, my mother and her sister and friends ran past the City Tavern in its many iterations, throughout their childhoods in Georgetown and did not know its history and theirs. All indications are that Alfred didn’t discuss his story. I am fascinated to know facts about his mother, Lizzie and his grandmother, Mary Ann, as well as his wife, Virginia.
Honoring Clara Lemlich on May 12 at 6:00pm
Since I was introduced to these awards by my friend and sister-writer, Esther Cohen, who organizes the event, I’ve looked forward to the ceremony. Founded in 2011, the Clara Lemlich Awards honor the memory of famed union activist, Clara Lemlich by celebrating mature women in today’s world who have been working for Good and Better their whole lives. The awards are organized by LaborArts and the Remember the Triangle Fire Coalition and generously sponsored by the 21st Century ILGWU Heritage Foundation, the Puffin Gallery for Social Activism at the Museum of the City of New York and Tamiment Library, New York University.
Read more about the award and about previous honorees here Clara Lemlich Awards
The list of 2022 honorees is outstanding including: 107 year old Dorothy Burnham, human rights activist and educator; Dolores Huerta, co-founder of the United Farm Workers Association; Rev. Jeanette J. Phillips, a pioneer in securing health care access for the disenfranchised for over five decades; Kathie Sarachild, a Freedom Summer activist, abortion and voting rights advocate and organizer;
AND the great Maria Mazziotti Gillan
She’s a poet, educator and the founder of the legendary Poetry Center in Paterson, New Jersey. Maria Gillan is the very definition of the activist poet. Formal or informal, her poems encapsulate moments in our lives: our struggles as women, as immigrants, as workers. Literary lights and ordinary listener-readers find beauty, energy and recognition in the work of Maria Gillan. Maria has also been a Participating Writer at Hobart Festival of Women Writers in 2014 and 2015. Through her brilliance and literary resilience, she is an inspiration to writers of all ages. For information about her many books and publications, go to http://www.mariagillan.com/
The Clara Lemlich Awards will take place via zoom on Thursday, May 12 **PROMPTLY AT** 6-6:30p. Register here.
ADMISSION IS FREE. DON’T BE LATE.
for more information about Breena Clarke's books
That sounds like it will be an amazing talk, sorry to miss it. I love the cufflinks and brooch with their faces on them.