We love talking about books, and we especially love talking about them with people who are just as passionate about forgotten books by women authors as we are. Dear Reader, if there was ever a dream interview for us, this one was it–as this podcast was one of the things that inspired us to go for and start the presses!
Amy Helmes and Kim Askew are the hosts of Lost Ladies of Lit, a podcast which uncovers and discusses lost classics by women writers. We always say a good book from yesterday is a great place to start a conversation today, and we had a wonderful time when we joined Kim and Amy last week to chat about Plum Bun, the second book in the Quite Literally Books library, originally published in 1928 (1929 in the US).
Plum Bun’s author, Jesse Redmon Fauset was a well-known figure during her lifetime. Langston Hughes called her “the midwife of the Harlem Renaissance.” As literary editor at the NAACP’s The Crisis magazine from 1919 until 1926, Fauset discovered and championed some of the most important Black writers of the early 20th century. Her own novels contributed to The New Negro Movement’s (later known as the Harlem Renaissance) cultural examination of race, class, and gender through the lens of women’s experiences. Yet, as we discuss, her work as novelist and poet has largely been forgotten.
Like much of Fauset’s writing, Plum Bun portrays middle class American life, diving into still-contemporary themes of family, love, identity, gender, racial inequality, and class conflict. It tells the story of Angela Murray, a beautiful and talented light-skinned Black woman growing up in Philadelphia in the 1920s. With ambitions beyond what she believes her race and family will allow, Angela makes the big decision to move to New York to pursue her art and hopefully meet the man of her dreams (sound familiar, anyone? anyone?) – and let the world perceive her as white. But that means cutting ties to her sister, her community, and her own history and navigating life completely untethered and on her own. Plum Bun explores questions like, What do you gain and what do you lose when you let someone else define who you are? What’s worth giving up for a chance at the “good life” and what happens when your idea of the “good life” changes? Full of bold decisions, a regrettable love affair, and a shot at redemption, it’s a beautifully-written novel about a complicated woman by an incredibly important author, who should be a household name but shockingly is not.
Listen to our conversation with Lost Ladies of Lit here.
Subscribe to Lost Ladies of Lit’s Substack
Subscribe to the Quite Literally Books Substack