Jessie Redmon Fauset was instrumental in the success of so many legendary authors like Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen, and yet she herself is not famous for this extraordinary accomplishment or her groundbreaking novel, There Is Confusion. Why do you think she was forgotten in history?
She stayed in the background and never looked for attention. She was brilliant and so good at what she did; a woman behind the man story. This book will help get her name out there. It is too bad she couldn’t break through that ceiling to get a real editor’s job.
She wanted to be the main editor of a company and unfortunately did not get a job after she left her current job as a literary editor. Being a teacher certainly was important but she was not in the public’s eye anymore.
I am looking forward to reading There Is Confusion. I do not know why she is not more well-known. I would suspect it is because she is a woman and because she had an affair with a leader in civil rights. It has probably been easier to forget Jessie Redmon Fauset than to remember that W.E.B. Dubois had an affair with her. I suspect that in protecting W.E.B. Dubois’ reputation, Jessie Redmon Fauset’s identity has been forgotten.
Outside the publishing world, very few people could name a literary agent and/or editor so not knowing anything much about Jessie Redmon Fauset didn’t surprise me. Plus, she was a Black woman at a time when society didn’t give much attention to either African-Americans or women. Also, I think she tied her star to WEB DuBois, who sucked all the air out of whatever room he was in and rather than elevate her, he was happy to keep her in the background.
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Because she was an African American woman and stayed in the background. This book so reminded me of ‘The Personal Librarian’, although that character did not have an affair with her employer but had to hide her race as well. I think Jesse was also hampered by the fact that she worked for a powerful man, was his lover, so couldn’t take time to develop her own career, and if she did, people would think her success was due to her relationship with De bois. It’s a fascinating time in history where art and music came together in Harlem.
I would guess she isn’t remembered as much because she was a woman. The men usually take credit even when a woman is doing all of the work, and this was definitely the case with Jessie and WEB.
There are many wonderful people who have been forgotten in history. Women have definitely suffered some have been remembered in negative ways - the witches of Salem, Cleopatra, Anne Boleyn. I have recently read about Mary McLeod Bethune and today I just saw a wonderful facebook article about Ruth Bradley, a nurse who starved herself in order to feed children in a Japanese prison camp during WWII. Jesse was an interesting woman but she was a woman in the background and her job was promoting other writers. I doubt many of us know the editors of many of the magazines we read. It was an interesting story and she was interesting but not necessarily a person of historical interest,
I think she was left behind because she was a black woman at a time where there wasn’t a lot of respect for black women. She devoted her career to helping others succeed instead of pushing her career forward.
Faust became just another women - lost in the shuffle of time.
Well put,Sandi. Her talents were left undiscovered. I was sad to hear she finished her career in the teaching field. I think she had some much untouched talent. She devoted herself to helping others instead of pushing forward her career, especially writing.