Angelene J. Hall spent the first twelve years of her life as the daughter of sharecroppers. Migrating from one tenant farm to another–each socially, economically and geographically signified as, “one of the places across the railroad tracks and down the hill,” her parents taught her to follow her heart as long as she used her head.
A fifth grader in one of the county’s segregated elementary schools, she began writing–sketches of the family’s farm experiences, the rituals of their small colored Primitive Baptist Church, and the dusky eight-block town, divided racially by a Robert E. Lee monument. In later years, she noted that as a girl, fresh off the farm, she saw herself as a “colored” phoenix rising from the ashes of sharecropping.
By the time she was twelve and in the eighth grade, she had found a covetous satisfaction in creative writing. She wrote the play her eighth-grade class presented upon their graduation from elementary to high school. When her parents left sharecropping for a small town in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, she sketched paragraphs about the newness of the transition—the shriek of tires against pavement, the lacquered scent of untrampled wood in their new small-framed house, the unfamiliar joy in the absence of a landowner’s withered face at the back door, and eventually a grim awareness of the likeness of town and country in a place unready for change.
Yet, she changed. Sharpening her focus on academic achievement, she carved out a comparable sense of self and established a clearly defined purpose. During college and graduate school, Angelene, of necessity, broadened her writing scope beyond fiction and paid particular attention to scholarly work.
Notwithstanding the demands of the academic profession, she frequently returned to her long held aspiration for creative writing, in which she is now fully engaged.
From a sharecropper’s daughter to a Bachelor’s from Bennett College in Greensboro, to a Master’s from the University of Cincinnati, to a PhD from Union Institute and Graduate School, she is now Professor Emerita, University of Cincinnati. Having taught courses in black creative expression, including especially African American literature, and presented and published both scholarship and short fiction, she is currently writing both fiction and nonfiction.
Also during her tenure at the University, she succumbed to renal failure and spent six years (1998-2004) on kidney dialysis. Teaching full-time during this ordeal, she collected information for DUCK SUMMER, her most recent work, which describes her experiences with ESRD. An equally important motivation for DUCK is to educate the public about renal decline and failure, dialysis, and the urgency of organ donation.
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Meet Angelene
Angelene J. Hall, Writer
Angelene J. Hall spent the first twelve years of her life as the daughter of sharecroppers. Migrating from one tenant farm to another–each socially, economically and geographically signified as, “one of the places across the railroad tracks and down the hill,” her parents taught her to follow her heart as long as she used her head.
A fifth grader in one of the county’s segregated elementary schools, she began writing–sketches of the family’s farm experiences, the rituals of their small colored Primitive Baptist Church, and the dusky eight-block town, divided racially by a Robert E. Lee monument. In later years, she noted that as a girl, fresh off the farm, she saw herself as a “colored” phoenix rising from the ashes of sharecropping.
By the time she was twelve and in the eighth grade, she had found a covetous satisfaction in creative writing. She wrote the play her eighth-grade class presented upon their graduation from elementary to high school. When her parents left sharecropping for a small town in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, she sketched paragraphs about the newness of the transition—the shriek of tires against pavement, the lacquered scent of untrampled wood in their new small-framed house, the unfamiliar joy in the absence of a landowner’s withered face at the back door, and eventually a grim awareness of the likeness of town and country in a place unready for change.
Yet, she changed. Sharpening her focus on academic achievement, she carved out a comparable sense of self and established a clearly defined purpose. During college and graduate school, Angelene, of necessity, broadened her writing scope beyond fiction and paid particular attention to scholarly work.
Notwithstanding the demands of the academic profession, she frequently returned to her long held aspiration for creative writing, in which she is now fully engaged.
From a sharecropper’s daughter to a Bachelor’s from Bennett College in Greensboro, to a Master’s from the University of Cincinnati, to a PhD from Union Institute and Graduate School, she is now Professor Emerita, University of Cincinnati. Having taught courses in black creative expression, including especially African American literature, and presented and published both scholarship and short fiction, she is currently writing both fiction and nonfiction.
Also during her tenure at the University, she succumbed to renal failure and spent six years (1998-2004) on kidney dialysis. Teaching full-time during this ordeal, she collected information for DUCK SUMMER, her most recent work, which describes her experiences with ESRD. An equally important motivation for DUCK is to educate the public about renal decline and failure, dialysis, and the urgency of organ donation.