About Dorothy West
Dorothy West (June 2, 1907 – August 16, 1998) was an American novelist, short-story writer, and magazine editor associated with the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement in the 1920s and 1930s that celebrated black art, literature, and music. She was one of the few Black women writers to be published in major literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. West is best known for her 1948 novel The Living Is Easy, about the life of an upper-class black family and their attempts to climb the social ladder. She also explored the complexities of the black experience in the United States in short stories and essays that challenged stereotypes and explored themes such as race, class, and gender. == Early life and education == Dorothy West was born on June 2, 1907, in Boston, Massachusetts, the daughter of Rachel Benson, one of 22 children, and Isaac Christopher West, a former slave who became a successful businessman. At the age of seven, Dorothy's father gained his freedom and by the time he was 10 years old, he had saved enough money in a cigar box to establish his own business. When Dorothy was born, her family was already the most affluent black household in Boston, thanks to Isaac West's ownership of a wholesale fruit company, which earned him the nickname "Black Banana King" of Boston. Her mother was from Camden, South Carolina. The poet Helene Johnson was West's cousin. Late in life, West wrote that Blacks in Boston "were taught very young to take the white man in stride or drown in their own despair." She detailed how her mother guided her and her many cousins, all with varied skin tones, into the inhospitable world: "We were always stared at.
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