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Obituaries
A
Tribute to Stephen Jay Gould '63
A
Tribute to David Mayer Epstein '52
A
Tribute to Virginia Hamilton '57
The
Antiochian is published by the Office of Development and Alumni Relations.
Articles submitted for publication should be addressed to the Antiochian
Editor, Antioch College, Yellow Springs, Ohio 45387-1697. Or send via email: alumni@antioch-college.edu Editor:
Rachel Moulton '97
Contributing
Writers:
Laurien Alexandre
Derek Ali
Patricia Corrigan
Masha J. Etkin '63
Lauren Heaton
Dan Kaplan '76
Fred Kraus
Mary Laskowski '02
Meredith Moss
Rachel Moulton '97
Robyn Overstreet '96
Anne Townsend '03
Photography:
Dennie Eagleson '71
Lauren Heaton
©2002
Antioch College
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A Tribute
to Virginia Hamilton '57
Reprinted with permission of the Yellow
Springs News, copyright 2002
Virginia Hamilton, a Yellow Springs resident who was
one of America's
most distinguished writers of children's literature died on Tuesday,
Feb. 19, at Miami Valley Hospital, not far from the Yellow Springs
farmland where her family lived for five generations. The cause of
death was breast
cancer.
The author of more than 35 books for young readers,
Hamilton was the recipient of every major award in her field, including
the John Newbery Medal,
three Newbery Honors, the National Book Award, the NAACP Image Award,
the Coretta Scott King Award, the international Hans Christian Andersen "Nobel" Medal,
the Edgar Allan Poe Award, and the Laura Ingalls Wilder Medal for her body
of work. She was also the only writer of children's literature to receive
a MacArthur Fellowship.
A superb storyteller, Hamilton came from a multigenerational,
extended family of "tellers."
She was born Oct. 12, 1936, "on the outer edge of the Great Depression," the
daughter of Kenneth James and Etta Perry Hamilton.
The youngest of five children, Hamilton grew up on a
Yellow Springs farm surrounded by her mother's large Perry family, who lived on adjacent
farms. Often, she said, she and her cousin roamed all day and never left
Perry soil. By the time she was 7, Hamilton knew that the land was the family's
nourishment and strength.
An advocate and creator of "liberation literature," Hamilton
grew up with an appreciation and knowledge of history, of generations
and of books and writing. She eventually became a powerful force and
contemporary pioneer of African-American literature and often drew upon her
own
heritage,
as her grandfather Levi Perry and her great-grandmother Mary Cloud
escaped from Virginia via the Underground Railroad to Ohio in the late
1850s.
As Hamilton wrote, "Liberation literature … makes us aware of
how very precious is our own freedom. Reading about the struggle of those
victimized by the American slavocracy serves to demonstrate through the story
lines that all of us need to take care and keep a close watch over our own
liberty. One of the constant concerns of the literature is the unbroken line
of communication -- from writer to reader by word and deed, and understanding
among free people, through all times."
A scholarship student at Antioch College, Hamilton graduated with a
major in writing. She went on to attend Ohio State University and the New
School for Social Research in New York City. While in New York, she met poet
Arnold Adoff and they married in 1960.
In 1967 Hamilton published her first book, the children's
novel Zeely. She continued her career with a steady publication of outstanding
books,
including M.C. Higgins, the Great, the 1974 winner of the John Newbery
Medal, the National Book Award and the Boston Globe-Horn Book Award,
the first book
ever to receive all three major awards.
Other award-winning books include three Newbery Honor books, The Planet
of Junior Brown; Sweet Whispers, Brother Rush; and In
the Beginning: Creation Stories from Around the World.
Hamilton's fine ear for the sound of oral literature
and her ability to capture its essence in written form led to several
classic collections
of award-winning African-American folktales, such as The People Could
Fly and When Birds Could Talk and Bats Could Sing.
Hamilton "heightened the standards of literature as few other authors
have" wrote the critic Betsy Hearne.
Hamilton wrote, "Words that make worlds are magic
to me. The miracle of words is that the language they convey can be made
meaningful in terms
of human desires. Language is magic; it has always been magic, since
the time sorcerers uttered their incantations and wrote their symbols,
which steeped our human past in marvelous myth. Oh, I am a believer in language
and its magic monarchy! To bind its boundless spell to me is why I
write."
In November, Hamilton completed her last book, Time Pieces, a semi-autobiographical
Yellow Springs-related tale, which will be released in the fall.
"
Virginia was always so generous and warm to me, and treated me as an
equal, which I wasn't," said local writer Suzanne Clauser. "She
was a kind of genius, a great lady of American letters. We were lucky
to have her here."
Hamilton is survived by her husband, Arnold Adoff of Yellow Springs;
her children, Leigh of Berlin, Germany, and Jaime of New York City; her brothers,
Kenneth James Hamilton Jr. and William Hamilton; and her sisters, Nina Anthony
and Barbara Davis.
The family requests that friends support the American Cancer Society,
breast cancer research, the Urban League, the NAACP and the Virginia Hamilton
Conference of Multicultural Literature Youth.
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