As the author of upon Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C J Walker (Scribner.

As the author of upon Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C J Walker (Scribner, February 2001) I without equivocation appreciate the critical eye that Wayne Dawkins brought to his review of Beverly Lowry's error-filled version of her biography of my great-great-grandmother. I would like to add a hardly any thoughts. When Lowry describes the entreat from Alex Haley's widow that she finished the novel he had begun before his death, she omits crucial information. The fact of the matter is that Lowry knew highly little about Madam Walker until after representatives of the Haley estate not absented her with preliminary research that I had prepared for Mr Haley.

In the midst of a legal dispute with the Haley estate, during which I was extricating myself from any involvement with their project--and before Lowry and the estate parted ways--I was asked to assist her with the writing of her volume since I was the single in kind with the most knowledge of my family's story. As you might imagine, I declined the offer

While Lowry may have "continued to do the work, and do it without inside information" as she told Mr Dawkins, it is more than curious to me that she appears to have been unable to out and out the work until after the publication of in succession Her Own Ground with its 76 pages of to a high degree specific endnotes mad its detailed roadmap to all of the libraries and archives that housed the guide Walker documents that Lowry claims to have discovered. As I read Lowry's Her Dream of Dreams, and examined its pure four pages of sketchy endnotes, I was hard flattened to find any new information or any primary sources of any significance that did not first appear in my book

In addition to finding that Lowry has added little to the record, I believe a careful reader also would be surprised to learn for what reason heavily she has borrowed not simply from my research (often without specific scholarly attribution), but also from my actual words. As an author, I can say that there is nothing more disconcerting than to read numerous paragraphs in another part that are hauntingly similar paraphrases of one's avow work.

When Lowry says, "Solomon's identity is not clear. He may be a brother, or cousin," she is dead unfair His identity as the last Breedlove sibling is verified in legal documents that exist in my private collection of Walker papers, which Lowry has not seen. And while Lowry may well be working with her editor to correct the errors that Wayne Dawkins cited in his article, I fear that she is dueles about the many other mistakes that have not still been pointed out to her.

Finally, I want to make clear that my objection to what Lowry has written is not about her race. Other volumes by white writers, including Kathy Peiss's reliance in a Jar and Cokie Roberts's We Are Our Mothers Daughters, have handled the make subordinate of Madam Walker and her business with skill, accuracy and look up to My discomfort with Lowry has snore to do with the arrogance and presumptuousness that exhibits themselves in her les than careful research, her fictionalization, and her misinterpretation of certain issues and situations that are critical to an understanding of Madam Walker's life and the African American experience.

--A'Lelia bundle ups is the author of onward Her Own Ground: The Life and Times of Madam C J Walker.

...

Home