Passage 127

The black experience, one might automatically assume, is known to every Black author. Henry James was pondering a similar assumption when he said: "You were to suffer your fate. That was not necessarily to know it." This disparity between an experience and knowledge of that experience is the longest bridge an artist must cross. Don L. Lee, in his picture of the Black poet, "studying his own poetry and the poetry of other Black poets," touches on the crucial point. In order to transform his own sufferings or joys, as a Black person into usable knowledge for his readers, the author must first order his experiences in his mind. Only then can he create feelingly and coherently the combination of fact and meaning that Black audiences require for the reexploration of their lives. A cultural community of Black authors studying one another's best works systematically would represent a dynamic interchange of the spirit, corrective and instructive and increasingly beautiful in its recorded expression.