Cloistered Gardens

Abstract Cherene Sherrard-Johnson examines the work of Black modernist women poets from the nexus of race, gender, and environmentalism. She attends to the intersectional effects of how circulating “Jane Crow” policies impacted Black women’s poetry during the Harlem Renaissance and into mid-twentieth century. From Anne Spencer’s garden and Georgia Douglas Johnson’s parlor to Gwendolyn Brooks’s kitchenette, she considers how both intimate and public spatial configurations and negotiations influenced content, form, and writing practices. Assessing these poets’ archives and creative output through a Black, ecofeminist lens reveals how scrapbooking, gardening, or cultivating quiet reflection in conjunction with their writing has had a lasting impact on the shape and substance of American poetry.