A conversation with Toi Derricotte
—By Melissa Beattie-Moss
To step into Toi Derricotte's sun-drenched living room in Pittsburgh is to understand her passion for poetry: Floor-to-ceiling bookshelves wrap around the room, housing her impressive library. Books and literary journals are piled invitingly on the coffee table. The written word has pride of place here.
And well it should. Derricotte has been professor of English at the University of Pittsburgh since 1991, and is the author of four books of poems and an award-winning memoir, The Black Notebooks. A contributor to the recent poetry anthology published by Penn State Press, titled Common Wealth: Contemporary Poets on Pennsylvania, Derricotte's work has been called "raw, honest and provocative," particularly in its examination of her central subjects—the complexities of race, class, gender and identity.
Derricotte is a native of Detroit, Michigan who has lived in many different places, and the concepts of "home" and "community" reverberate through her life and work. One of her proudest accomplishments is co-founding the non-profit literary organization Cave Canem, which she calls "a home and safe haven for black poets." Committed to the discovery and cultivation of new voices in African American poetry, Cave Canem sponsors a poetry prize, publishes an annual anthology, and holds summer workshops and retreats, most recently held at the University of Pittsburgh at Greensburg.
Derricotte speaks openly, in her writing and her classrooms, of her eye-opening experiences as a light-skinned African American woman who has been able to "pass" as white throughout her life. When she asked a professor in g raduate school why they weren't reading any African American authors, Derricotte recalls, "He said, 'We don't go down that low.' Because I don't look black, he didn't know he was saying this to a black person."
It was a privilege to sit with Derricotte on a sunny afternoon, surrounded by her books, and listen to her stories of self-discovery, pain, pride, and survival.