Scope and arrangement
The Richard Witherspoon papers are arranged in five series:
-
1984-1994
-
1972-2007
-
1973-1974
Includes reports, correspondence, memoranda, and notes.
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- Creator
- Witherspoon, Richard
- Call number
- Sc MG 791
- Physical description
- 2.09 linear feet (5 boxes, 1 oversize folder)
- Language
- English
- Preferred Citation
- [Item], Richard Witherspoon papers, Sc MG 791, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, The New York Public Library
- Repository
- Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division
- Access to materials
- Request an in-person research appointment.
This collection includes Witherspoon's published and unpublished poetry, including his best known works: An American Haiku Novel and On the Stair, both in his signature style of linked-haiku or renga. A travel journal kept in Africa, a critique of the Kenyan educational system, a play about the Black hijacker of a bus, an educational program report, various printed material, notebooks, and miscellaneous correspondence complete the collection.
Biographical/historical information
Born in New York City in 1947, Richard Witherspoon (a.k.a. James R. Patton) is a poet who began publishing poetry in the 1970s and subsequently published with Black gay writing groups that produced Yemonja: The Blackheart Collective (1982), Other Countries (1988), and The Road Before Us (1991) as well as more generally in Black Men/White Men (1983), The James White Review (1993), LYNX (1989-1997), frogpond (1981), and New Cicada (1985-1997).
As a gay African American poet, physically and psychically in diaspora, Witherspoon, regarding the hegemonic oppression of difference and publishing nationally and internationally in print and on the Web, transgressively opposes this oppression by creating worlds of linked-haiku (renga) wherein, sexually, all flourish. Additionally, as an educator in the NYC public school system for over twenty-five years, he views education acquisition as a transgressive act of liberation against a system intent on limiting possibilities rather than expanding possibilities for all.
Administrative information
Source of acquisition
Gift of Richard Witherspoon, May 2000.
Revision History
Finding aid updated by Lauren Stark. (2020 October 22)
Processing information
Accessioned by Steven G. Fullwood, June 2008.
Separated material
Transferred to the Moving Image and Recorded Sound Division: audio and moving image materials. For more information, please contact the division at schomburgaudiovisual@nypl.org or 212-491-2270.
Transferred to the Photographs and Prints Division: photographs
Related Material
In the Life Archive (ITLA) miscellaneous collections, Sc MG 736, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Other Countries records, Sc MG 627, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division, Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture
Using the collection
Location
Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, Manuscripts, Archives and Rare Books Division515 Malcolm X Boulevard, New York, NY 10037-1801
Second Floor