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Toi Derricotte: An Annotated Bibliography
of Secondary Sources and of Sections from The Black Notebooks
By Students in English 260, Approaches to Literary Studies,
Winter Semester 2001
"Contributor Spotlight: Toi Derricotte." Ploughshares 22.1 (1996): 208-211.
This brief article gives an overview of Derricotte’s autobiographical approach in her poetry. It provides helpful biographical details that illuminate some of her poems and briefly outlines the way "Derricotte’s literary career has blossomed" by tracing her publication history. The article introduces the issues of "race and gender, family and society" discussed in Derricotte’s works and includes quotations from an interview with the poet. Judy Wood
Derricotte, Toi. "Among School Children." The Black Notebooks: An Interior
Journey. New York: Norton, 1997. 97-116.
"Among School Children" analyzes the pain and heartache felt by young black children. Derricotte speaks of the way her young students deal with their blackness. Children tell stories about their body features and other things they would change in order to fit into society. Blackness creates unhappiness for many students, and Derricotte changes many attitudes and beliefs when she reveals her racial identity. 15 pages. Nancy L. White
---. "Blacks in the U." The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey. New
York: Norton, 1997. 73-96.
Derricotte concentrates on internal and external racism. She uses these journals to express her feelings about being black, the expectations given for being black and what black go through because they are black. These journals amplify some themes of her poems such as "Blackbottom" and "Poem for My Father." Derricotte’s open display of the effects of racism shows the audience the anxiety and turmoil that blacks deal with. Derricotte’s style is much like that of a storyteller in whose story is not in chronological order.
LaDonna Morrow
---. "Face to Face." The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey. New
York: Norton, 1997. 153-202.
In "Face to Face," Toi Derricotte reflects on her childhood and life experiences. In journal entry
form, Derricotte reveals how she struggles with her identity and how people generally deal with racism. She tells descriptive and straightforward stories of situations where she sometimes feels like an outcast among family and friends and guilty for having to choose between black and white. "There is some evil I sense, an evil that comes of losing a great battle in the self to accept and love all its parts, even the parts most hated by this world" (171). "Face to Face" reads very easily and in fifty-one pages, Derricotte dissects the various forms of racism and her personal fears of living in a world that reacts in such complicated ways to race. Aminata Waller
---. "Race in the Creative Writing Classroom." The Black Notebooks:
An Interior Journey. New York: Norton, 1997. 127-135.
"Race in the Creative Writing Classroom," focuses on Derricotte as a graduate school student and, later, as a creative writing professor in a graduate school. She also looks back at her past and examines the rage that erupts over race in the classroom: "The person who was the catalyst for the angry poem, unaware of the long history of oppression and internalized rage, takes it as a personal insult" (121). Derricotte finds that the anger in her students’ poems helps her to understand her own father’s rage. 15 pages. Anwar D. Harper
Furious Flower: A Video Anthology of African American Poetry 1960-95. 3:
Seers. Prod. California Newsreel, San Francisco. Videocassette. 1998.
A 14-minute interview conversation between Derricotte and Opal Moore. Derricotte talks about the presence of female sexuality and intimacy in her poems and her son’s response to Natural Birth, a book of poetry written about his birth. Derricotte also discusses the need for liberation of black women who grow up in a strict society that teaches them to be ashamed of who they are. The interview includes readings of "Before Making Love," "Clitoris," and "Coming." Kandi J. Williams
Gilbert, Roger. "Dialogues of Self and Soul." Michigan Quarterly Review 39.1
(2000): 149-166.
Gilbert analyzes four contemporary writers who successfully "keep the soul flickeringly visible behind the dense layers of history and circumstance that make up the postmodern self" (150). The works examined are Thomas Lynch’s Still Life in Milford, Toi Derricotte’s Tender, Mark Halliday’s Selfwolf, and Kathleen Pierce’s The Oval Hour. Gilbert concentrates on the close relationship between Derricotte’s Tender and her prose memoir The Black Notebooks and how the outline of Tender "falls into numbered sections that map key regions of the self" (155). He dissects segments of a few poems in Tender, focusing especially on the third section of the book in which Derricotte reveals "the complex and ambivalent attitudes toward color differences among blacks themselves" (156) and on the last section which "turns to the realm of sexuality" (157). Gilbert also explores how Derricotte treats tenderness in the different sections. 15 pages.
Sara-Theresa Johnsson
Gilyard, Keith. "Kinship and Theory." American Literary History 11.1 (1999): 187-
195.
Gilyard uses many examples from a variety of movies, musicians, and authors in an attempt to assert that there an African American culture. In reviewing works by Robin Kelley, C. Eric Lincoln, Todd Boyd, and Toi Derricotte, Gilyard considers Derricotte’s The Black Notebooks "the most introspective." Through her work, he observes, Derricotte gives insight into the "meaning of her light complexion in a world of color politics." Gilyard concludes by placing her work in the context of that of the other writers he considers. Shawna M. Rice
Kaye/Kantrowitz, Melanie. "Opening a Vein." The Woman’s Review of Books. May.
1998: 4-6.
In an analysis of Derricotte’s Tender and The Black Notebooks: An Interior Journey, Kaye/Kantrowitz writes of the "multi-perspectived anatomy of racism" and the "pain you can just barely tolerate" that "characterizes both these books" (4). She examines a few poems from Tender to show how "‘tender’ is transformed from absolute victimization to the open space of love" (5). Kaye/Kantrowitz also explores how Derricotte in The Black Notebooks contrasts "the intimate family sites of blackness, fraught with danger, pain and desire, with the outer, white world, occasionally vicious, more frequently clueless and flat" (5). 3 pages. Sara-Theresa Johnsson
Macklin, William R. "Seen and Not Seen." The Philadelphia Inquirer.
http://www.philly.com/packages/history/arts/literature/toi.asp
Macklin writes that Derricotte establishes her blackness before addressing an audience, laying to rest any questions about her heritage. Derricotte admits that she has not always been proud of her African American heritage and has, Macklin
says, "accepted the privileges" of looking white. She recalls racism, whether it is traveling as a young girl on a train or being approached by strangers questioning her identity. "Being a person who does not appear to be what she is" can leave one insecure, and Derricotte admits to wariness about reading her work before African Americans. However, she asserts, "‘The critics in your head . . . are far worse than the critics in the world.’" 5 pages. Andrea Wallace
Raz, Hilda. Birth, Death and Captivity. Kenyon Review, 13.2 (1991), 175-179.
A solid review of Derricotte’s Captivity, using prior works to support the recurring themes of abuse, racism and gender issues. Raz offers an in-depth look at Derricotte’s work, providing refreshingly useful information about the poet and her work. Raz uses direct quotations from Derricotte’s poems to support her interpretations of the work, providing insights into the experience of African-American women and Detroit-born poets. Donald Martin
Rowell, Charles H. Toi Derricotte. "Beyond Our Lives: An Interview with Toi
Derricotte." Callaloo 14 (1991): 654-664.
In a telephone interview, Derricotte gives insights about the ways the birth of her son inspired her volume Natural Birth. She speaks of her childhood visits to her grandparents’ home above the funeral parlor they owned. She would answer phones and sometimes view the bodies of the deceased. She speaks of her adult life as an instructor at Duke Ellington High School in Washington, D.C. Derricotte reflects on her poems from Captivity and The Empress of the Death House and especially on her poem "Unburying the Bird." Erin A. Hepburn
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