Adelaide M Cromwell

The first novel by Dorothy West--author of The Wedding and the youngest writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance--was one of only a handful to be published by black women during the 1940s. The Living Is Easy tells the story of Cleo Judson, daughter of Southern sharecroppers, determined to integrate into Boston's black elite. Married to the "Black Banana King" Bart Judson, Cleo maneuvers her three sisters and their children--but not their husbands--into living with her, attempting to recreate her original family in a Bostonian mansion. Written in elegant and piercing prose, The Living Is Easy is a classic of American literature by a groundbreaking African American woman writer whose work deserves widespread and enduring recognition.

First published in 2004. This version of the life of Adelaide Smith Casely Hayford is largely autobiographical but, while one can honestly express feelings and describe important events in the course of one’s own life time, others can better see the setting in which one lived and how one’s life impacted on and was affected by others. This book looks at life in Settler country of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Freetown and as a former British colony.