Project in English
      English III

  BOOK REPORT

Submitted by : Sai-rah Maricia Buan
Submitted to : Mr.Umpad
III-Obedience

Dorothy West (June 2, 1907 – August 16, 1998) was a novelist and short story writer who was part of the Harlem Renaissance. She is best known for her novel The Living Is Easy, about the life of an upper-class black family.
Dorothy West is still not as well known as she once was during the Harlem Renaissance and through much of the 1930s, nor as she ought to be. Born to well-to-do, transplanted Bostonian parents in 1907, West, in her first novel, The Living Is Easy, demonstrated in 1948 that she should have essayed that form earlier. Her second novel, The Wedding, reaffirmed in 1995 that she still possessed the eyes, hands and brains of an artist. The present Stories, Sketches and Reminiscences are very welcome proof that she has maintained her mastery of short fiction forms all along. Comparisons among writers are frequently irrelevant, but inevitable. Her name is often--perhaps unfairly and too routinely--linked with Zora Hurston's for being a woman central to the Renaissance. I was going to write that her work generally is not as explosive and flamboyant as Hurston's, but West must be tired by now of reading remarks that suggest she is somehow deficient because she does not write like someone else who has been taken up more greatly than she, Perhaps it would be better to state that Hurston is not generally as subtle and quietly powerful as West, or simply that they are both fine writers who started out together.

EARLY YEARS West was born in Boston on June 2, 1907, to Isaac Christopher West, an emancipated slave who later became a successful businessman, and Rachel Pease Benson, one of 22 children. West reportedly wrote her first story at the age of 7. At age 14, she won several local writing competitions.

DEATH West died on August 16, 1998, at the age of 91. At her death, she was one of the last surviving members of... [continues]

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