Anne E. Fernald

On January 6, 1925, Jessie Redmon Fauset wrote a letter to Langston Hughes from Paris. It's a long letter—over a thousand words—and it balances advice with appeal in ways that capture the intimacy and strength of their friendship. Her first novel, There is Confusion, had been published in 1924 and Fauset was on leave from her position as the literary editor of The Crisis, studying and writing in Paris. She had planned the trip as a celebration: finally, at forty-two, she had published a novel...

There is a lag between the advent of a major social change—the right to vote, the availability of education, working for pay outside the home—and the moment when any one individual avails herself of the opportunities arising from such a change. Activists and visionaries fight for the change long before it comes; pioneers are the first in line to participate; others hesitate and face resistance. Each woman changes her mind at a different rate from the legal and policy changes of the culture at large, and writing by women dramatizes the sometimes liberating, sometimes uneasy responses to those cultural changes.