Biographer Who Opened Doors For Others

Entranced by a book she read as a college freshman, she decided to become a writer whose career path took many turns. Eventually she encouraged a generation of young writers to pursue their own careers in nonfiction. 

FAMILY BACKGROUND

Valerie Boyd (VB) was one of two children – the others were her two brothers – born in a Southern city. Her father owned a gas station and later a tire shop. Her mother was a homemaker.

CHILDHOOD

As a child, VB was a good student throughout her school years. As soon as she could read, her mother took her to the main city library and “made a big deal” out of having VB obtain a library card in her own name. Then mother and daughter would often head to the library on weekends to select a new book to read and later return within the two weeks allowed for each loaned book. 

EDUCATION

Thinking that she might like to be a writer, VB was accepted by a prestigious university’s school of journalism, from which she graduated with a Bachelor’s degree. 

As a university freshman, VB first read a novel by Zora Neale Hurston, “Their Eyes Were Watching God.” 

Editor – Zora Neale Hurston, the granddaughter of Alabama slaves, was an American author, anthropologist, and filmmaker. A Black woman, she graduated from Howard University, one of the Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and later earned a Master’s degree from Barnard College / Columbia University. She wrote about racial struggles in the early 1900s in the American South. Her work encompassed books and more than 50 short stories, plays and essays. Many of her stories were set in her childhood residence, Eatonville, Florida. 

INTEREST TURNS INTO A PASSION WHICH TURNS INTO A CAREER

VB quickly became devoted to Hurston’s writings, finding and reading every other Hurston authored book and many of her other writings. A decade later, VB decided to write Ms. Hurston’s biography. 

In pursuit of further background regarding author Hurston, VB attended an annual festival honoring Hurston, held in the small town where Hurston had grown up. There, VB listened to a talk by one of Hurston’s previous biographers, Robert Hemenway, a White man, who had written his book about Hurston 22 years earlier. He told the audience that it was time for a new biography – and this time that it should be written by a Black woman. 

As soon as VB heard the call for a new biography, “I decided I was that Black woman,” she later told a literary critic who was preparing a review of VB’s biography about Hurston. 

SIX TURNS ALONG THE SAME CAREER PATH

VB’s many jobs within the writing profession started with a newspaper as a copy editor (1), later moving within the same newspaper to work as a reporter (2)  and editor (3), even while – in her off hours – she plunged into researching Hurston’s life story. Eventually, the time demands of researching and writing drafts of the biography led VB to request a leave of absence from the newspaper. When the paper said ‘no’, she quit, moving to a quiet, country area closer to her subject’s native grounds and to find the peace and quiet to essentially be a full-time writer (4). To support herself financially, VB found a series of part-time jobs. 

(Editor – part-time ‘jobs’ are not considered a ‘career’ which this collection of career stories defines as: “An occupation undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress.”)

Every Sunday, VB would buy a family-sized bag of salad greens, enough to provide her lunch during the week, so that she hardly needed to pause during her marathon stretches of writing. At the end of each day, as a reward, she would take a walk on the beach. 

When the biography manuscript was done, VB returned to the newspaper as an arts editor (5), remaining there until she moved to a university town, where she had accepted an academic position as a creative writing professor. (6)

VB’s biography of Hurston, “Wrapped in Rainbows – The Life of Zora Neale Thurston” won widespread critical acclaim. While that book took almost a decade to research and write, VB was already well known around the South as both an “electrifying essayist” and an energizing mentor, which role she attended to while a professor. 

CAREER SATISFACTION

At the university, VB built a creative non-fiction program designed to open doors for women and people of color, bringing in well known minority writers as instructors and speakers and most important, building a supportive network of writers that would continue to grow along with her students, long after they had graduated. 

“If you look at any book of narrative journalism, that kind of thing is typically full of a whole bunch of White men,” said one of the first university students taught by VB. “And here was a woman saying, ‘No, there are other people who have something to say, and I’m going to clear that path.’ “

“She was a really excellent writer, but also someone who valued research and history,” said a fellow writer. “And she valued the culture of the Black community and wanted to represent it in her work in every way possible.” 

In addition to her paid writing and teaching work, VB volunteered to serve on the Board of the Southern Foodways Alliance, which she helped to create a fund for young writers to tell the stories of under-represented groups. Said a fellow Board member, “(VB) made a purposeful effort to build (the Alliance) but also in her social networks, she built a broad-based and genuinely diverse and equitable community of writers. She’s spun this kind of web and a whole bunch of us got pleasantly stuck in it. “

This career story was based on an obituary written by Clay Risen, published within the NY Times on 2/19/22.