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Biography -- Osbey, Brenda Marie (1957--)
Family: Born December 12, 1957, in New Orleans, LA; daughter of Lawrence C. (a boxer) and Lois Emelda Hamilton (a teaching assistant and homemaker; maiden name, Hamilton) Osbey. Ethnicity: "African American." Education: Dillard University, New Orleans, Louisiana, B.A. (French and English), 1978; Université Paul Valéry, Montpéllier, France, 1976-77; University of Kentucky, M.A., 1986. Hobbies and other interests: New World African religions, African languages, tropical horticulture and architecture, old and rare books, Afro-Francophone literatures and cultures. Memberships: Poetry Society of America, Academy of American Poets, National Writers Union, Modern Language Association, Associated Writing Programs. Addresses: Agent: _____. E-mail. Poet and essayist. Faculty member at Dillard University, New Orleans, LA, University of
California, Los Angeles, CA, and Loyola University, New Orleans, LA. Director of public and community relations, Arts Council
of New Orleans, 1985. Loring-Williams Prize, Academy of American Poets, 1980; Associated Writing Program award,
1984; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1990; fellow, MacDowell Colony, 1984, Millay Colony, 1986, Bunting Institute
(Radcliffe College), 1985-86, Kentucky Foundation for Women, 1986-87, and Fine Arts Work Center at Provincetown, 1987-88;
writer-in-residence, Marion County, Kentucky, 1986-87; scholar-in-residence, Southern University, 1999-2001; American Book
Award 1998, for All Saints: New and Selected Poems. WRITINGS BY THE AUTHOR:
Contributor of essays to periodicals and journals,
including Creative Nonfiction, American Voice, and Georgia Review. "Sidelights” A native of Louisiana,
Brenda Marie Osbey was raised in New Orleans's Seventh Ward, a predominantly African-American community. She told an interviewer
for Amazon.com, "Growing up in a literary family, writing seemed a natural form of expression. I remember actually
deciding to become a writer while in junior high school." Her roots in Creole culture are evident in her four books of poetry,
which speak of the culture and geography of Louisiana, as well as the complexities of the African-American woman's mind. Osbey
admits being influenced by the work of Jean Toomer and also by the musical language of such jazz artists as Dinah Washington
and Sarah Vaughan. Osbey's first book of poetry, Ceremony for Minneconjoux, uses the many voices of
black women of New Orleans to weave what Mary A. McCay in American Women Writers called "a tapestry of black New Orleans
life." These women, whom Osbey calls "madhouse women," reflect their African backgrounds but also the influences of the Spanish
and French cultures so prevalent in New Orleans. The title character, "minneconjoux," for example, speaks of her Indian heritage. In a review in Parnassus, Calvin Hernton noted that Osbey's preference for moving
from an omnipotent, communal narrator's voice to a more individual voice is a throwback to the "folk method of Tall Tale narratives"
in the black community. Hernton pointed out that Osbey also draws on the chorus-like cadences of the "call and response" common
in African tradition and in blues music. Hernton called attention to the book's "eclectic richness" as it captures "the French,
Spanish, and African-American culture of New Orleans" and its "extraordinary artistry and command of down-home folk techniques
and modalities." Thulani Davis in Essence called Ceremony for Minneconjoux "interesting, lyrical and strong."
In African American Literature, John Lowe wrote that the book was a "stunning . . . fusion of incidents, remembrances,
and details" that "arrest[s] and amaze[s]." Osbey's In These Houses continues the story of generations of New Orleans "madhouse"
women. Many actually end up in "infirmary," the state institution for the insane at Jackson. Her characters are somewhat off-center:
Elvena, for example, goes mad by "touching neighbor-women/ on the edges of their fingers"; and Thelma is described as "so
loose/ she couldn't even hold onto herself." In many of the poems, mother-figures or healers bring other women back into the
care of the community. Lowe, writing in African American Literature, asserted that Osbey, in interpreting Louisiana
culture and ethnic language for the reader, acts as "a kind of Virgil leading the Dante-like reader into 'unknown realms.'"
McCay in American Women Writers called the book "a chronicle of the spiritual lives of women," and Louis McKee in a
review for Library Journal said that the women's "stories weave a wonderful cloth." In Essence, Paula Giddings
asserted that the poetry was "stirring," and Booklist's Mary Patricia Monaghan stated that Osbey's work is an indication
that "regionalism . . . may win the day" despite the current "academic imperialism" of the literary world. Osbey's next book, Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous Woman, unlike her previous
work, is a single narrative poem, divided into numbered cantos. It tells the story of Marie Crying Eagle, who seeks come to
terms with her past and especially with the memory of her assertive mother. Important characters in the poem cycle are her
lover, Percy, a former lover of her mother's named Olender, and Regina, a "conjure woman" who helps Marie to understand the
mysteries of life. According to a review by Gardner McFall in American Book Review, "Osbey suggests that all we are
is memory and that memory, finally is what we make it." Reviewers were generally positive in their evaluations of Desperate Circumstance, Dangerous
Woman. Although Ben Downing in Parnassus felt that the poetry is often "lifeless and flat" and that the book "contributes
little to our literary image of New Orleans," he also found interesting Osbey's use of the "idiosyncrasies of language. .
. . She cares for her local expressions with the same solicitude scops must have lavished on their word-hoards." Lowe in African
American Literature found the book "richly evocative," and Colleen J. McElroy in the Women's Review of Books said
that the poems "are filled with rich tales of spirits and conjure. . . ." McFall also asserted that the volume "captures the
nuance and complexity of human ties, the essential mysteries of love and death." In All Saints: New and Selected Poems, for which Osbey won an American Book Award,
she pays homage to the dead of New Orleans and the ways they remain a living presence in the Faubourg Tremé (neighborhood).
As Jabari Asim wrote in a review for the Washington Post Book World, "In many of these poems skulls, spells, visions,
and graveyards combine with sprinklings of Catholicism, Hoodoo, and various African belief systems to produce a spicy, appetizing
stew." In an interview with Christina Masciere for New Orleans Magazine, Osbey summed
up her own feelings about the book: "My family goes back to freedom and slavery in New Orleans. . . . That's really all I
write about . . . the way we talk, the way we think, the way we live. And in this book in particular . . . our relationship
with the dead. . . . I think the people who best understand my work are people who are black, working-class New Orleanians,"
she explained to Masciere. "I don't do any dialect, because I don't believe people talk that way anyway." In another interview
with John Lowe in the Southern Review, Osbey said, "[In All Saints] I wanted to do something that would touch
on several aspects of black New Orleans life . . . specifically on religion, especially on Voodoo and Catholicism combined.
. . . I'm happiest when black New Orleanians tell me that they see themselves, that they get it." Osbey told CA: "I have never wanted to do or to be anything or anyone other than
a writer. In the end, it's all that really matters--the work." FURTHER READINGS ABOUT THE AUTHOR:BOOKS
PERIODICALS
OTHER
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