Jane J. Phillips (born April 2, 1944), known as J. J. Phillips,Alan Govenar
"Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale"
in ''Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues'', Chicago Review Press, 2010, p. 156. is an African-American poet, novelist and civil rights activist. Her best known work is the novel ''Mojo Hand'', first published in 1966, the story of a light-skinned upper-class young woman from San Francisco, California, who after hearing a record by bluesman Blacksnake Brown seeks him out and becomes embroiled in an ultimately tragic relationship with him.

Biography

J. J. Phillips grew up in Los Angeles, California, in a progressive African-American family; her mother was a school teacher for 60 years, her father was

Pasadena Pasadena ( ) is a city in Los Angeles County, California, northeast of downtown Los Angeles. It is the most populous city and the primary cultural center of the San Gabriel Valley. Old Pasadena is the city's original commercial district. Its ...

's first African-American attorney and real-estate developer. Phillips has said: "My immediate family was assimilated,

atheist Atheism, in the broadest sense, is an absence of belief in the existence of deities. Less broadly, atheism is a rejection of the belief that any deities exist. In an even narrower sense, atheism is specifically the position that there no ...

, and were for all intents and purposes indistinguishable from Caucasians in visage and speech." Phillips studied at

Immaculate Heart College Immaculate Heart College was a private, Catholic college located in Los Angeles, California. The college offered various courses including art and religious education studies. By June 1906, six young women had become the first graduates of the ...

, where as a freshman in 1962 she became interested in black roots music and travelled to Raleigh, North Carolina, to join the civil rights movement. She worked on a

National Student Association The United States National Student Association (NSA) was a confederation of college and university student governments that was in operation from 1947 to 1978. Founding and early years The NSA was founded at a conference at the University of Wisc ...

voter-registration campaign and later joined a Congress of Racial Equality-sit-in at a Howard Johnson's restaurant, where she was arrested, spending 30 days in the county jail before returning to California. After reading '' The Country Blues'' by

Samuel Charters Samuel Barclay Charters IV (August 1, 1929 – March 18, 2015) was an American music historian, writer, record producer, musician, and poet. He was a widely published author on the subjects of blues and jazz. He also wrote fiction. Overview Cha ...

, she listened to the music of Lightnin' Hopkins and determined to meet him, going with a roommate to

Houston, Texas Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...

, to hear him play. She was expelled from Immaculate Heart College in January 1963,Govenar, 2010, p. 159. and has recalled: "I was extremely distraught. I wanted to be in school, but clearly the nuns didn't want me there. And soon after that I cam up with the idea to write a book that combined my fascination with Lightnin' with my abiding interest in herpetology, especially the blacksnake, which became the first name of the blues singer in ''Mojo Hand''." That debut novel, published in 1966, and reprinted 20 years later as ''Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale'' (with restored Orphic references that were cut by the original publisher), has been characterised as a "blues lament in literary form". The '' Los Angeles Times'' reviewer wrote in 1986: "''Mojo Hand'' anticipates the lessons of much recent black women's fiction--here, the women hold things together, often literally tying random moments of humor and beauty into an at least tolerable daily tapestry. Phillips' novel is true to its African and Greek antecedents, showing the uncanny links between musical, mystical and sexual intoxication. The moral ambiguities of these ties have rarely been so economically, knowingly, or eloquently portrayed as here."James A. Snead
"Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale by J. J. Phillips"
(review), ''Los Angeles Times'', April 20, 1986. An extract from ''Mojo Hand'' was included in

Margaret Busby Margaret Yvonne Busby, , Hon. FRSL (born 1944), also known as Nana Akua Ackon, is a Ghanaian-born publisher, editor, writer and broadcaster, resident in the UK. She was Britain's youngest and first black female book publisherJazzmine Breary"Let' ...

's anthology ''

Daughters of Africa ''Daughters of Africa: An International Anthology of Words and Writings by Women of African Descent from the Ancient Egyptian to the Present'' is a compilation of orature and literature by more than 200 women from Africa and the African diaspora, ...

'', published in the 1990s. In 2015, the novel was described by Nat Hentoff as the "most neglected book I know of".

Influences

Phillips was interviewed by Alan Govenar for his 2010 book ''Lightnin' Hopkins: His Life and Blues'', in which he discusses the fallacy that ''Mojo Hand'' is "thinly disguised autobiography" based on her affair with Lightnin' Hopkins. In speaking about the origins of ''Mojo Hand'', and setting out to tell "a story of one person's journey from a non-racialized state to the racialized real world", as was happening to her, Phillips said:

"I realized that the perfect vehicle for effecting this was my own bluesy Orphic quest, which I developed after I had seen Marcel Camus's classic film '' Black Orpheus'' several times, and which led me to Lightnin'. The movie is a version of the story of Orpheus and Eurydice set in the black ''favelas'' of Rio during Mardi Gras. Classical mythology and herpetology were two things I'd been keenly interested in for as long as I can remember. In addition, I'd come under the influence of the
existentialists Existentialism ( ) is a form of philosophical inquiry that explores the problem of human existence and centers on human thinking, feeling, and acting. Existentialist thinkers frequently explore issues related to the meaning, purpose, and value ...
and outlaw writers, such as Henry Miller, Genet, Sartre, as well as Richard Wright, and I was irresistibly drawn to the idea of the anti-hero and the bad boy in literature and life."

Her poem "Brautigan's Brains" was inspired by an experience she had when working in the manuscript division of

Bancroft Library The Bancroft Library in the center of the campus of the University of California, Berkeley, is the university's primary special-collections library. It was acquired from its founder, Hubert Howe Bancroft, in 1905, with the proviso that it retai ...

at the University of California, Berkeley, rough-sorting the papers of

Richard Brautigan Richard Gary Brautigan (January 30, 1935 – c. September 16, 1984) was an American novelist, poet, and short story writer. A prolific writer, he wrote throughout his life and published ten novels, two collections of short stories, and four bo ...

— which the library had acquired after his suicide — only to realize that she was handling the actual pages on which Brautigan had blown out his brains.

Family papers

J. J. Phillips' papers are held at Emory University."J.J. Phillips Family Papers, 1900-2001"
Emory Libraries.

Awards

* 2008 American Book Award, Lifetime Achievement

Works

* Revised as ''Mojo Hand: An Orphic Tale'' (City Miner Books, 1985; Serpent's Tail, 1987; New York Review Books, 2025). * Poems * "Nigga in the Woodpile", in ''KONCH'', Vol. 1, No. 2, pp. 32–34 (Spring, 1990). ** Revised and published online in ''Konch'' (2008). Corrected and republished with an accompanying essay as ''Nigga in the Woodpile: A Rant'' (Serendipity Books, 2008). * "Brautigan’s Brains" (2002). Later published online in ''Exquisite Corpse.'' * "Lines Gleaned from the ŠÀ.ZI.GA", ''Exquisite Corpse.'' * "Three Poems to the Eternal Beloved", ''Exquisite Corpse.'' * "Throat Song: A Threnody for Ibrahim Qashoush", ''Exquisite Corpse.'' Other * Editor and introduction to '' The Before Columbus Foundation Poetry Anthology: Selections from the American Book Awards, 1980-1990'' (W. W. Norton & Company, 1992, ).

References

External links

J.J. Phillips
at Goodreads
Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives, and Rare Book Library
Emory University
J.J. Phillips family papers, 1900-2001
{{DEFAULTSORT:Phillips, J. J. 1944 births Living people 20th-century African-American people 20th-century African-American women 21st-century African-American people 21st-century African-American women African-American poets African-American women writers American anthologists American Book Award winners American poets American women poets Poets from Los Angeles Women anthologists