Novels should have a message. Literature should reflect the issues affecting peoples lives, protesting against war, defending workers' rights, and the struggle against racism and sexism.
This is what I do in my writing.
Authors that have influenced me:
Zora Neale Hurston - Their Eyes Were Watching God
Alice Walker - Color Purple
Amy Tan - Joy Luck Club
Rita Mae Brown - The Hand that Rocks the Cradle
Marge Piercy - Small Changes - Gone to Soldiers
Robin Morgan - Monster
Joyce Carol Oates - We Were the Mulvaneys
Edna St. Vincent Milay - Collected Poems
Leo Tolstoy - Anna Karenina
Charles Dickens - Great Expectations
Charlotte Bronte - Jane Eyre
George Bernard Shaw - The Inspector Calls
Jane Austin - Pride and Prejudice
George Elliot (Mary Ann Evans) - Middle March
Radclyffe Hall - The Unlit Lamp
Harriet Beecher Stowe - Uncle Tom's Cabin
Mark Twain (Samuel Clemens)- Huckleberry Finn
John Steinbeck - Grapes of Wrath
Emile Zola - Germinal
Sinclair Lewis - It Can't Happen Here
Upton Sinclair - The Jungle
And many others....
Pictures of the union organizing drive I led in 1980-1984 in Cleveland, Ohio with the Communications Workers of America. We just would not give up!
Yes, the picture to the right is me age 30.
Here are some articles I wrote for New Directions for Women (Englewood, NJ):
July/August, 1991 - Corporate Boon: Family Disaster. About strawberry workers on strike in California.
January/February 1993 - Hero Rides Discrimination Out on a Rail. Interview with Corine Scott, a woman subway worker and TWU union activist.
September/October 1990 - Argentine Mother's Vigil. Book review about the Mothers of the Disappeared.
