Mari Evans
Mari Evans was an influential African American poet, playwright, and scholar, born in Toledo, Ohio. Raised by her widowed father, Evans's early exposure to literature, particularly works by Langston Hughes, fostered her writing talent and pride in her African heritage. She gained prominence in the 1960s as a key figure in the Black Arts movement, which paralleled the Black Power movement, focusing on cultural expression and social justice. Her poetry, starting with her first collection *Where Is All the Music?* (1968), often explored themes of love and identity, while her signature poem from *I Am a Black Woman* (1970) celebrated the strength and beauty of African American women.
Evans's work extended beyond poetry; she authored critical essays on African American literature, contributed to children's literature that embraced black culture, and wrote dramas adapted from classic novels. Throughout her career, she taught at various universities, sharing her expertise in African American literature. Recognized for her significant contributions, Evans received numerous awards and honors, including honorary doctorates and a lifetime achievement award. She passed away on March 10, 2017, leaving a lasting legacy in the literary world, particularly in advocating for racial justice and empowering African American voices through her diverse body of work.
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Subject Terms
Mari Evans
Poet
- Born: July 16, 1923 (according to some reports, she was born in 1919)
- Birthplace: Toledo, Ohio
- Died: March 10, 2017
- Place of Death: Indianapolis, Indiana
Writer
Mari Evans’s poetry helped formulate aesthetic standards for African American literature emphasizing black pride during the Black Arts movement of the 1960s. Evans was a major figure committed to using art to advance social and political reform.
Areas of achievement: Literature; Poetry; Social issues
Early Life
Born in Toledo, Ohio, Mari Evans was raised primarily by her father, who was widowed when she was seven years old. Her father’s enthusiastic encouragement nurtured Evans’s writing talents and instilled pride in her African heritage. In an autobiographical essay, she recalled how her father cherished a short story she had written as a fourth-grader. Reading Langston Hughes’s “The Weary Blues” when she was ten years old also was instrumental in helping her gain confidence in her literary gifts.
After graduating from high school in Toledo, Evans attended the University of Toledo, where she studied fashion design and creative writing. She honed her writing skills as an editor of information systems at a chain-manufacturing plant. From 1968 to 1973, her stint as creator, director, and host of The Black Experience, a television show broadcast on WTTV in Indianapolis, Indiana, provided her the opportunity to engage in dialogue with the local African American community and explore cultural, political, and social issues related to black life.
Life’s Work
Evans’s writings helped shape and define the Black Arts movement, the artistic and cultural component of the Black Power movement of the 1960s. Where Is All the Music? (1968), her first published volume of poetry, contains few poems with political themes; instead, the poems in that volume focus on intimate portraits of affairs of the heart, emphasizing mostly heterosexual love affairs. The publication of I Am a Black Woman (1970), which emphasizes woman-centered themes, initiated her journey into social activism. The title poem from this collection—Evans’s signature work—underscores the grace, beauty, and strength of African American women and exudes racial affirmation and pride in black womanhood.
One of Evans’s popular poems, “When in Rome,” presents a conversation between an African American domestic worker and her white employer. Embodying Evans’s characteristic style, this simple, direct, and humorous poem examines the complexity of American race relations. The two women speak in very different voices—formal English versus African American vernacular—to indicate race and class. Evans’s poetry often employs vernacular to create realistic portraits of black life. In the collection Nightstar, 1973–1978 (1981), Evans’s major themes address the African American community, particularly women. She continued to celebrate the lives of ordinary working-class African Americans in Continuum: New and Selected Poems (2007).
Evans’s seminal collection of critical essays, Black Women Writers, 1950–1980: A Critical Evaluation (1983), firmly established her as a black feminist literary scholar. For this work, she compiled literary reviews, interviews, and critiques of fifteen accomplished authors, including Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks, Audre Lorde, Alice Walker, and Lucille Clifton. A major strength of the work is its bringing together of strains of traditional and nontraditional criticism with myriad feminist voices.
Evans revealed her versatility with the publication of the dramas River of My Song (1977) and Eyes (1979), the latter of which is a musical adaptation of Zora Neale Hurston’s classic novel Their Eyes Were Watching God (1937). In addition, Evans published books for children and young adults that embrace black culture and traditions, and she integrated African American rhythms and cadences into children’s poetry. Clarity as Concept: A Poet’s Perspective (2006) is a wide-ranging set of essays of social, political, and artistic commentary. The following year, she published Continuum: New and Selected Poems.
Evans enjoyed a distinguished career teaching African American literature and creative writing. Since 1969, she held appointments at Indiana University–Purdue, Northwestern University, Purdue University, Spelman College, Washington University, the State University of New York at Albany, and Cornell University. She received many prestigious awards and honors, including a John Hay Whitney Foundation fellowship for creative writing (1965–66); a Woodrow Wilson Foundation grant (1968); honorary doctorates of humane letters from Marian College (1979), Martin University (1999), and Indiana University (2000); a National Endowment for the Arts grant for creative writing (1981–82); and the Indianapolis Public Library's Indiana Authors Lifetime Achievement Award (2015).
Evans died in Indianapolis, Indiana, on March 10, 2017.
Significance
Although Evans is known primarily for her poetry, she contributed widely to the African American literary tradition through her fiction, plays, and children’s and young-adult books. One of the founding writers of the 1960s Black Arts movement, she also pioneered in publishing criticism of African American women’s poetry, largely neglected by critics. Evans continued to use her poetic voice as a platform to redress racial injustice and was active in movements supporting prison reform and the abolition of capital punishment.
Bibliography
Allen, Jessica. “Mari Evans (1923–).” Encyclopedia of African American Women Writers. Edited by Yolanda Williams Page, vol. 2, Greenwood, 2007, pp. 186–90.
Dorsey, David E., Jr. “Evans, Mari.” The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature. Edited by William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster, and Trudier Harris, Oxford UP, 2001, pp. 133–34.
Douglas, Robert L. Resistance, Insurgence and Identity: The Art of Mari Evans, Nelson Stevens and the Black Arts Movement. Africa World, 2008.
Evans, Mari. “Acclaimed Poet Mari Evans on Being a Black Writer.” Interview by Herb Boyd. Crisis, Mar.–Apr. 2007, pp. 34–35.
Evans, Mari. Clarity as Concept: A Poet’s Perspective; A Collection of Essays. Third World, 2006.
Higgins, Will R. "Remembering Black Arts Movement Poet Mari Evans' Intense, Unblinking Life." USA Today, 20 Mar. 2017, www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/03/20/black-arts-movement-poet-mari-evans-funeral/99434136/. Accessed 3 Apr. 2017.
“Mari Evans.” The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. Edited by Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Nellie Y. McKay, 2nd ed., vol. 2, Norton, 2004, pp. 1850–52.
Matthews, Kristin L. “Neither Inside nor Outside: Mari Evans, the Black Aesthetic, and the Canon.” CEA Critic, vol. 73, no. 2, 2011, pp. 34–54.
Salaam, Kalamu ya, and Kwame Alexander, editors. 360°: A Revolution of Black Poets. BlackWords, 1998.