An Analysis of “How I Wrote Jubilee”
Margaret Walker’s essay “How I Wrote Jubilee” is an essay that summarizes the author’s vast research for the Novel Jubilee. Based on stories her great-grandmother portrayed as bedtime stories in her childhood, the novel itself depicts the life and times of a character named Vyry that went through slavery, the Civil War and reconstruction. This responsive essay gives way to an establishment of educated and factual data through timing, oral history of the stories of those who were in slavery, and primary research of the subject matter, thereby providing ample documentation of the credibility of her novel.
When gauging whether an author’s writing is credible, one must first inquire what their educational background is. Keeping this in mind, there are several references of the educational background of Walker in the essay “How I Wrote Jubilee.” Graduating from Northwestern University in Iowa at the young age of 19, Walker went on to obtain her master’s in English from the University of Iowa in 1939, graduating in just a year in 1940. Here she studied at the Writer’s Workshop and began writing her thesis on the Civil War, compiling and reading a laundry list of books about the South, the Negro during slavery, and the slave codes in Georgia. Although Walker’s poem “For My People” was published in 1942 her father heeded warning by stating, “I would have to eat if I wanted to live, and writing poetry would not feed me (Walker 52).” It is clear in this passage that Walker’s father had a substantial influence on her decision to so heartedly pursue an education. Receiving a Rosenwald fellowship for research on the novel Jubilee in 1944, Walker then went to Yale as a Ford Fellow in January of 1954. In the autumn of 1962 she left her family and teaching position at Jackson State to return to Iowa and complete her doctorate in English.