Annotated Manuscript of "Nora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess" by Cheryl A. Wall

Nora Holt
Cheryl A. Wall
Black Music Composers
Black Singers
Harlem Renaissance
Lena James
Lena James Douglas
Lena James Holt
Nora Ray
Nora Holt Ray

This is the manuscript of Cheryl A. Wall's article about Nora Holt (born Lena Douglas). Wall, a Black feminist scholar, wrote extensively about Black arts and culture during the Harlem Renaissance. In her work on Holt, she emphasizes her star power and glamor—the sway she held over her audience. Holt is an icon to Wall, part of a pantheon of great Harlem Renaissance artists, who symbolized much more than herself. Wall emphasizes Holt's individuality in the face of a hostile world. The names Holt gave herself were a form of liberating self-expression that allowed her to transgress societal expectations and disrupt norms.

Wall's article uncovered new or dormant details about Holt. Yet this annotated draft reveals that there was even more that ended up on the cutting room floor. Several of the anecdotes that Wall ultimately cuts are colorful and intriguing—but the limitation of the archive is that any narrative constructed from it is inherently picking and choosing from an already incomplete and biased pool of records.

The final published version of the article can be accessed here: https://doi.org/10.11647/OBP.0153.08

Cheryl A. Wall

Subgroup: Series 8. Subject Files by Subject's Name, 1973 - 2018
Container: Box 23, Folder 1
Description: Holt, Nora; includes correspondence, papers by others, and "Nora Holt: New Negro Composer and Jazz Age Goddess" by Wall
Date: 2017

Cheryl A. Wall Papers, Pembroke Archives, Brown University

2017

Donated to the Feminist Theory Papers by Camara Epps in 2020.
Curatorial work and processing provided by the Pembroke Center for Teaching and Research on Women on behalf of the Black Feminist Theory Project and Feminist Theory Archive, Brown University Library.

All researchers seeking to publish materials from the collections of the John Hay Library are requested to complete a Notice of Intent to Publish, prior to reproducing, quoting, or otherwise publishing any portion or extract from this collection. Although Brown University has physical ownership of the collection and the materials contained therein, it does not claim literary rights. It is up to the researcher to determine the owners of the literary rights and to obtain any necessary permissions from them.

[no text]

Text

English

Manuscript

https://www.riamco.org/render?eadid=US-RPB-ms.2020.006&view=inventory

[no text]

[Excerpt]
In these early years, Holt changed names even more often than she changed husbands: Lena James, Lena James Douglas, Lena James Holt, Nora Ray, and Nora Holt Ray are a few of the appellations by which she was known. She was eager to try on and shed new identities, in part because they allowed her to inhabit roles that would have otherwise been incompatible. Holt
reveled in the confusion she left in her wake.

Quoting from a letter she had received from Gertrude Stein, she wrote to their mutual friend Carl Van Vechten: ‘Carl has been writing me about a Nora Ray. You write me Nora Holt. Well, ‘Rose is a Rose ——’

Manuscript