A writer whose work gave voice and vision to the lives of generations of Black women has died. Author and playwright Shay Youngblood, perhaps best known for her semiautobiographical novel “Black Girl in Paris” and similarly reflective, nationally staged play, “Shakin’ the Mess Outta Misery” (based on her book, “The Big Mama Stories”), died of ovarian cancer on June 11 in Peachtree City, Ga., according to the New York Times. She was 64.
Born Sharon Ellen Youngblood on Oct. 16, 1959, in Columbus, Ga., Youngblood was the only child born to Mary Lee Kemp and Lonnie Willis Crosby, reportedly given the surname of one of her mother’s husbands. She was only two years old when her mother died. With her biological father reportedly absent from her life, she was placed under the care of her maternal grandmother and great-grandmother and raised in the 1960s and ‘70s amid a close, candid, and colorful community of older Black women she would later immortalize in writing as the “Big Mamas.
After earning a bachelor’s degree in communications from Clark Atlanta University, Youngblood joined the Peace Corps, working on assignment in Dominica. Upon her return to Atlanta, the young-twentysomething worked at the longstanding feminist bookstore Charis Books & More. There, Youngblood began her writing career as the store’s founder, Linda Bryant, convinced the reluctant talent to participate in one of the store’s poetry readings. She would also travel to Paris during this decade of her life, working as an au pair and artist’s model, the Times reports.
Youngblood’s early experiences would become the foundation for her first two novels. “Soul Kiss” published in 1997, chronicled a girl’s search for her absent father following her mother’s death. Her second, “Black Girl in Paris,” followed a 26-year-old Black Southern woman’s adventures during a daring, delicious and sometimes dangerous summer in Paris. Published in 2000, the…
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