Authors

Discussion

An often overlooked voice of Afro-America's Harlem Renaissance Movement is the prolific Dorothy West who penned hundreds of short stories during her literary career spanning nearly seven decades. Curiously, the giants of nineteenth-century Russian literature were her “gods of good writing” from whom she learned that “salvation lay in the soul.” West even decided to “re-examine [her] own soul” on her beloved authorship’s native soil (West 206). She sojourned to Russia, more specifically, for her love of Dostoevsky who was her favourite author and greatest literary influence (Dalsgård 33). In fact, Dostoevsky was her inspiration to embark upon a literary career after being moved to tears at the age of fourteen when she first read his work and discovered what “genius” truly meant (West206).  

Dostoevsky’s major thematic influence in West’s short stories has been treated in only one published work, Margaret Perry's Silence to the Drums: A Survey of the Literature of the Harlem Renaissance (1976), which offers a brief yet highly valuable commentary on the little-known literary kinship. Perry observes that Dostoevsky’s impact appears chiefly in West's pervasive depiction of confining physical environments, the indelible innocence of children, self-sacrificial suffering and spiritual salvation attained thereby. Like the Slavic writer, her tales are also pervasive with overworked, dissatisfied wives devoid of spiritual life and despairing, unfulfilled husbands who closely identify with their daughters (Perry 132). I build upon Perry’s analysis as a springboard to offer a more comprehensive exploration of the Dostoevskian imprint in a considerably expanded pool of West’s short story collection.