Edythe Mae Gordon (c. 1897 – 1980) was an African-American writer of short stories and poetry during the era of the Harlem Renaissance.
Edythe Mae Chapman was born in Washington, D.C., likely June 4 sometime in the period 1895–1900; the date is uncertain because the existing documents differ on her birth year.
[2] M Street School employed literary figures Anna J. Cooper, Carter G. Woodson, and Jessie Redmon Faust during Gordon's education and may have influenced her writing.
The last public records of her life were a 1938 transcript to Boston University, a note with two poems published in Negro Voices in 1938, and her 1942 petition for divorce from Probate and Family Court.
"[1] It was listed among the year's distinguished stories by the O. Henry Award prize committee, which at the time rarely noticed works by non-white authors.
Gordon's fiction focuses on the unhappy lives of urban African-American couples, challenging some of the era's social norms.
[8] This compilation includes a total of seventeen works, three short stories and thirteen poems, with her Master's thesis, "The Status of the Negro Woman in the United States 1619-1865" in the center of the publication.
[4] That same year, "Subversion" and another story, "If Wishes Were Horses", were republished in the anthology Harlem's Glory: Black Women Writing, 1900-1950.
Analysis of the story suggests a message "articulating the limits of Mazie's options for self-actualization in the early twentieth century.
"[4] The story begins with a man named Tom at a dance asking to marry her but Mazie takes it as a joke.
Despite her best friend Lettie's warning, Mazie feels certain she deserves to enjoy her life and be happy, propelling her to pursue Bill without care to her husband.
Mazie finds that the table is set for two and quickly learns her friend Lettie and Jack married one another just yesterday.
[4] Themes in Gordon's short stories include capitalism, particularly the damage that capitalist mindsets can have on the health of interpersonal relationships.
This single stanza poem centers the speaker's desire push past their lover's closed off persona and hold this person intimately to her chest.
The poem is focused on love that guides one through difficulty and darkness through one's life while also including imagery of natural beauty in the world, equating breezes through the trees to the sound of violins.
This poem is a single stanza and focuses on the pain of being barren, comparing the speaker's sterile life to that of a picture of the Madonna with a baby Jesus held to her chest.
The poem invokes the beauty of nature, particularly the sun, and its ability to heal inner brokenness and salve wounds to one's soul.
The poem uses comparisons to the natural world, such as palm leaves and wind, to exemplify the beauty found in lovers.
The speaker addresses her lover in second person, calling upon the reader to kiss her wreath of Jasmine and make promises of eternal love.