Awardees

This eighth of twelve portraits in 2017, honoring alumni from thirty years of Roth Foundation programs, features a recent award winner. Ethelene Whitmire won our support for research she conducted in Denmark in 2015-16. She is a professor at the University of Wisconsin–Madison who focuses on American studies and African American women’s history. Here she recounts how she got interested in the project that took her to Denmark for a book on the experience of the important African American expatriate community there.

I became interested in my new book project, Searching for Utopia: African Americans in 20th Century Denmark, in a very unusual way. I first went to Denmark on a whim in May and June 2010. I was on the first sabbatical leave from my job as a university professor and was finishing my first book, Regina Anderson Andrews, Harlem Renaissance Librarian (2014). I wanted to go on a writing retreat in another country—and selected Denmark because I was watching a lot of Danish films at the time. I didn’t know anyone there. So I rented an apartment in the Christianshavn section of Copenhagen, met a ton of people… and I loved it! Since then, I have returned to Copenhagen twelve times, including every summer.

While renting an apartment in the Nørrebro neighborhood in the summer of 2013, I would take a shortcut through the Assistens Kirkegaard cemetery, where Hans Christian Andersen is buried. On the way back home one day, I encountered the grave of Ben Webster. I was curious about why a clearly non-Danish person was buried there. When I looked him up on the internet I was surprised to discover that he was a famous African American jazz musician and that there were several African American jazz musicians buried all over the city. During and between subsequent visits, I started gathering other information about African Americans who visited, lived, studied and performed in Denmark. I was intrigued and wanted to know more. Two research questions guided me: Why did African Americans go to Denmark? And what were their experiences while there?

Many have written books about African Americans in France, mainly in Paris; but the experience of African Americans in Denmark remains unexplored. So, about three years ago, I decided I would write a book on the subject. In 2015, I received grants from the American Scandinavian Foundation, which allowed me to conduct research and follow in the footsteps of the African Americans all over Denmark. I went to Kerteminde to see where painter William H. Johnson lived and worked. I caught the train to Helsingør to visit the archives at the International People’s College, where many African Americans went in the 1930s to study the Danish folk school and cooperative movements. I searched through the archives of expatriates at the Royal Danish Library and in the Danish National Archives.

This research represents a very new direction for me—one I feel very passionate about. Formerly, I was an administrator in higher education working at Rutgers University in New Jersey, during which time I earned a master’s degree in Library Service. I left Rutgers to pursue a PhD in Higher Education at the University of Michigan, after which I became a professor in the field of Library and Information Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. While conducting an ethnographic study of African Americans in public libraries in Los Angeles, supported by a Ford Foundation fellowship, I came across an article about African American librarians in New York City during the Harlem Renaissance.

Fascinated, I then researched and wrote a book on the librarian Regina Anderson Andrew. This introduced me to the field of African American history and my interest in archival research and recovery work—uncovering the stories of people lost to history. One of the things that interested me in Andrews’ life—aside from her being an actress and playwright during the Harlem Renaissance—was that, as a representative of a civic organization called the National Council of Women of the United States, she travelled abroad to Germany, Brazil, Asia, the Middle East and several Western African nations. This got me very curious about the transnational experiences of African Americans.

Upon returning from my summer 2015 research trip to Denmark, I was delighted and surprised to learn that I had been awarded a Project Support award from the Lois Roth Foundation. This allowed me to return to Denmark the following January to do additional research—including interviews with the widows and children of certain expatriates. The recognition and support represented by this Roth Foundation award was key in helping me earn a Fulbright award to return to Denmark in fall 2016.

That semester, I was a visiting scholar at the University of Copenhagen’s Center for Transnational American Studies and gave a keynote address at a university symposium on “Denmark and African American Culture.” At that symposium, I met an earlier recipient of a Roth Foundation award—Heidi Durrow, author of the novel The Girl Who Fell From the Sky, was the other keynote speaker! Receiving the support of ASF and the Roth Foundation opened doors; my Fulbright year then gave me great opportunities to share my work. During the 2016-2017 academic year, I ended up presenting talks not only at other venues in Denmark, but also in South Africa and Austria… and this fall I will bring it back to the U.S., in an October talk at the conference of the Danish American Heritage Society in Schaumburg, Illinois.

This text evolved from a written interview with Ethelene Whitmire conducted by Skyler Arndt-Briggs. Thanks to Drew Barnhart, our Media and Outreach Manager, for producing our August Portrait.

This third of twelve portraits in 2017, honoring alumni from thirty years of Roth Foundation programs, features noted author Patrick Phillips. You can read about all his publications to date at www.patrickthemighty.com!

Patrick won a Project Support Award to Denmark in 2014 to help him undertake research for his next book project. He teaches creative writing, literature and literary translation at Drew University, where he also directs the Creative Writing Program. The winner of many fellowships and honors, Patrick has published three volumes of his own poetry—the most recent of which, Elegy for a Broken Machine, was a finalist for the National Book Award—and translated a volume of poetry—When We Leave Each Other: Selected Poems of Henrik Nordbrandt—from the Danish.

If Patrick’s name seems familiar to you, however, it may be for his first book of nonfiction, Blood at the Root: A Racial Cleansing in America, which has been garnering a great deal of attention, including in a PBS Newshour piece that aired on Martin Luther King Jr. Day. In gripping prose, the volume chronicles the tragic history of Forsyth County, Georgia, where Patrick grew up. While lynching was not uncommon in Georgia in the early 20^th century, the 1912 murder of a white girl in Forsyth led to a coordinated campaign of arson and terror that drove all 1098 black citizens from the county. In the wake of the expulsions, whites harvested the crops and took over the livestock of their former neighbors, quietly laying claim to “abandoned” land. Building on his own childhood experience, Patrick documents the violent means by which locals kept Forsyth “all white” well into the 1990s.

In retrospect, the publication of Blood at the Root sheds a new light on Patrick’s next project, which he researched in Denmark in summer 2014: a new English translation of journalist Knud Holmboe’s Orkenen Brænder (The Burning Desert). Holmboe’s memoir recounts his drive across the Sahara in 1930, during which he witnessed atrocities against the Bedouin people and an attempted genocide by the colonial Italian government. In his project description, Patrick noted: “As a convert to Islam and one of the first Europeans to live and travel among the Bedouins, Holmboe offers us a rare, ground-level look at the brutal mechanisms of colonial power, as well as a voice of dissent too often lost to history.”

This month, Patrick was gracious enough to share a few thoughts about his work with us. (Read the entire interview on our website.) Here are some excerpts:

“I think my two prose projects are deeply related, in that they both grew out of my fascination with hidden history: shocking, monumental, and once widely-known events that over the course of time have been erased. Both books are accounts of atrocities: Blood at the Root tells of the expulsion of the entire African American community of Forsyth County, Georgia, where I was raised, and The Burning Desert documents the attempted genocide of Bedouin people by the colonial Italian army.

“As far as chronology, I have been thinking about the story of Forsyth County’s black community since I was seven years old. I started actively researching the book about a decade ago. During this same period I learned about The Burning Desert from a writer and translator named Andre Naffis-Sahely, who knew many Moroccans who revere Holmboe for telling the world about the genocide in North Africa—a bravery that cost Holmboe his life. Andre reached out to me in hopes that a new translation could bring fresh attention to the book and to that history.

“What links the two projects, beyond the appalling crimes committed against vulnerable people, is that both events have been almost totally erased from our consciousness. So a common goal of both Blood at the Root and my translation of Holmboe was to bring a buried history back to the surface. History is written by the victors, as they say, and so I wanted both books to counter that, by telling the story of the victims, and reversing that process of erasure and historical amnesia.

“I should also add that these connections are something I see only in hindsight! At the time, I was simply following my curiosity and trying to make myself useful. But clearly one project was influencing the other, and I have no doubt that I was deeply influenced by Holmboe’s drive to expose an atrocity—and to honor the dead by telling their stories.

“The support of the Roth Foundation was absolutely essential to my work on Holmboe, particularly because it came during the very early stages of the project. The grant I received from the Endowment helped support a month I spent in Copenhagen, where I got my conversational Danish back up to speed; spent time in the Kongelige Bibliotek reading Holmboe’s work as a journalist; and devoted long days to translating the text of The Burning Desert.

“Translation is always a labor of love, and that means the translator can often feel very lonely: like the only person in the world who cares about a given author or text, and like someone laboring for very little reward and attention. But receiving a grant meant that for the first time I could take my own interest in Holmboe seriously. Someone else had given that work a vote of confidence and a push forward, which meant the world to me. So everyone at the Roth Foundation has my deepest gratitude!

“To me, the message of the award was simple but absolutely vital: keep going.”

——————————-

This alumni portrait was drafted by Roth Foundation chair, Skyler J. Arndt-Briggs, based on a short interview with Patrick Phillips. Thanks to Drew Barnhart, our Media and Outreach Manager, for producing this third 2017 alumni portrait! 

Interview With Author Patrick Phillips

Conducted by Skyler J. Arndt-Briggs, March 2017

SAB: I am curious about the relationships, if any, that exist for you between your two nonfiction projects, Blood at the Root and the translation of Knud Holmboe’s Burning Desert. How are the two projects related chronologically? Were you working on Blood at the Root when you came upon and decided to translate Holmboe’s memoir?

PP: I think that the two projects are deeply related, in that they both grew out of my fascination with hidden history: shocking, monumental, and once widely- known events that over the course of time have been erased. Both books are accounts of atrocities: Blood at the Root tells of the expulsion of the entire African American community of Forsyth County, Georgia, where I was raised, and The Burning Desert documents the attempted genocide of Bedouin people by the colonial Italian army.

As far as chronology, I have been thinking about the story of Forsyth County’s black community since I was seven years old, and actively researching the book for about a decade. During this same period I learned about The Burning Desert from a writer and translator named Andre Naffis-Sahely, who knew many Moroccans who revere Holmboe for telling the world about the genocide in North Africa—a bravery that cost Holmboe his life. Andre reached out in hopes that a new translation could bring fresh attention to the book and to that history.

SAB: While both Blood at the Root and Burning Desert demand a historical archaeology, the former was clearly a personal project for you (rooted in your years in Forsyth as a young person), while Burning Desert recounts events that took place half a world away. Do you feel that similar or different things drew you to each project?

PP: I love that phrase “historical archaeology,” and that’s very much what I felt I was doing in both cases. What links the two projects, beyond the appalling crimes committed against vulnerable people, is that both events have been almost totally erased from our consciousness. So a goal common to both Blood at the Root and my translation of Holmboe was to bring a buried history back to the surface. History is written by the victors, as they say, and so I wanted both books to counter that, by telling the story of the victims, and reversing that process of erasure and historical amnesia.

I should also add that these connections are something I see only in hindsight! At the time, I was simply following my curiosity and trying to make myself useful. But clearly one project was influencing the other, and I have no doubt that I was deeply influenced by Holmboe’s drive to expose an atrocity—and to honor the dead by telling their stories.

SAB: As an accomplished poet, how does it feel to be working on these two major prose works? Do you feel you get different things out of each form? Or that each brings out different things in you?

PP: Because I have spent most of my adult life working as a poet, I struggled to believe that I could write a long-form book of nonfiction, or translate one. But in the face of that self-doubt, the best thing is to simply carry on: to keep working every day and try to ignore all the questions about whether it will add up to something.

Instead, I taught myself how to write prose as I was working, and I do think that translating Holmboe’s writing was a great boost to my confidence. The wonderful thing about translating is that the translator gets to write without having to invent. You get to work out all the mental muscles that shape precise, elegant sentences, but are freed from the anxiety of what to say.

I think all those years I labored in the fields of poetry were also invaluable, in that poetry teaches compression, concision, and the power of the singular, well- chosen detail. Now that I’ve worked in prose and poetry, I think the distinctions we draw between them are much more professional than they are actual. I have come think of myself as a writer rather than exclusively a poet, and it is thrilling to feel that I can range into some new territory without anxiety about genre. It was also a joy to do something new because I have a short attention span and am very easily bored!

SAB: I know that you have received the support of many organizations and fellowships, so I’m sure that our small contribution to your work did not stand out. But, if there is anything you could say, we would love to hear any thoughts you might have regarding the work and mission of the Lois Roth Foundation.

PP: The support of the Roth Foundation was absolutely essential to my work on Holmboe, particularly because it came during the very early stages of the project. The grant I received from the Endowment supported a month I spent in Copenhagen, where I got my conversational Danish back up to speed; spent time in the Kongelige Bibliotek reading Holmboe’s work as a journalist; and devoted long days to translating the text of The Burning Desert.

Translation is always a labor of love, and that means the translator can often feel very lonely: like the only person in the world who cares about a given author or text, and like someone laboring for very little reward and attention. But receiving a grant meant that for the first time I could take my own interest in Holmboe seriously. Someone else had given that work a vote of confidence, and a push forward, which meant the world to me. So everyone at the Roth Foundation has my deepest gratitude!

To me, the message of the award was simple but absolutely vital: keep going.