Harris, Bertha

views updated

HARRIS, Bertha

Born 17 December 1937, Fayetteville, North Carolina

Daughter of John H. and Mary Z. Jones Harris; married Mr.Wyland, 1963 (ended 1964); children: one daughter

Bertha Harris, born and raised in North Carolina, moved to New York City in 1959, immediately after completing a B.A. degree in English at the Women's College of the University of North Carolina. In New York, she worked for about five years at essentially clerical jobs and explored the city, finding a particular fascination with the Metropolitan Opera. When her marriage disbanded in 1964, she supported herself and her daughter by proofreading, editing, and ghostwriting. During this time, Harris also began and finished her first novel, which she used as the thesis for an M.F.A. degree in writing when she returned to the University of North Carolina in 1967. Harris taught literature at East Carolina University and at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte, where she was also acting head of the Creative Writing Sequence from 1970 to 1973. After she returned to New York in 1973, she coordinated Women's Studies at the College of Staten Island of the City University of New York. She also served as a part-time editor for Daughters, Inc., a women's press located in Houston, Texas.

Harris's first novel, Catching Saradove (1969), is a brilliant portrayal of what it is like to be young, a woman, and lacking direction. The book begins with Saradove Racepath, who is raising a child by herself on the Lower East Side of New York City. Succeeding chapters move between Saradove's memories of a childhood with lower-class parents in the South and a confused, almost desperate, young adulthood in New York. Following a nonlinear pattern of time, Harris emphasizes the workings of Saradove's mind, reflecting the frailties of the human psyche. Events in the main character's life correspond closely to those of the author's, giving the plot an autobiographical quality. Harris's characterization of Saradove is, however, much more than a fictionalized self-portrait. From Saradove's isolation through the moment in which she realizes her capacity for self-actualization, Harris encompasses both the despair and the hope of the world.

In her second novel, Confessions of Cherubino (1972), Harris tracks an elusive love through the lives of her characters while satirizing the American South with a warm humor. Cherubino is the embodiment of romantic love and is found throughout the book but is especially focused in the characters of Ellen and Margaret. These two young women find themselves enwrapped in the innocent aura of infatuation and eventually, through their struggles, experience what is perhaps love's perfection. Harris is able to examine love as a romantic myth while simultaneously showing it as a very real force effecting significant changes.

Her third novel, Lover (1976), is an experiment of sorts, in that Harris gives fact and fiction an equal validity. At the beginning of each chapter, she places anecdotes about women saints, some of which she fabricated and others she found in a hagiography. Unique to Lover is Harris's constant changing of perspectives. Moving from first-to third-person narrative, Harris gives a whole (and more objective) view of the women in her book. With them, Harris dips into the subconscious world and then moves back out to express the reality that remains forever changed, once integrated with the archetypal essence from the subconscious.

Harris is an artist with words; her fiction gives a patterned depth to something that was once shallow and flat. Her emphasis on the lives of women is probably related to her involvement with the women's movement, in which she became active in 1972. Soon after, she began to apply movement principles and ideology to the study of literature and to her own writing. Harris has written several essays exploring literary history with a scholarly precision. As certainly as her fiction guides one through the realm of an evocative imagination, her essays unveil to the logical mind ideas of philosophical originality, and both essays and novels prove themselves to be part of the freshly broken ground of feminist theory.

The 1980s and 1990s were a quiet time for Harris in terms of publishing. She wrote a biographical piece, Gertrude Stein (1996), as part of the Lives of Notable Gay Men & Lesbians series. The work, however, is no longer in print. Similarly, none of Harris' earlier novels are currently in print, with the exception of Lover. This book, certainly her best known, was republished in 1993 with a new lengthy introduction by Harris criticizing Daughters, Inc., the original publishers, and provides much in-depth information about the book. The author herself notes in the Amazon.com web page for Lover some of the cultural context of the early 1970s when the novel was written.

Harris' works lack widespread appeal, but many appreciate her storytelling and writing skills. She is without a doubt better known within the homosexual community than among the general public.