SOURCE: Hull, Akasha (Gloria). “Channeling the Ancestral Muse: Lucille Clifton and Dolores Kendrick.” In Feminist Measures: Soundings in Poetry and Theory, edited by Lynn Keller and Cristanne Miller, pp. 96-116. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1994.

In the following essay, Hull explores the spiritual connection to African-American female ancestors in the poetry of Clifton and Dolores Kendrick.

Narrative One

One afternoon in 1975, Lucille Clifton and her two eldest daughters—then sixteen and fourteen years old—were sitting idly at home while the four younger children napped. After rejecting an outing to the movies, they pulled down the Ouija board from the closet where they stored the family games. It was a casual item that they had played with before and gotten only “foolishness.” Rica said that she would record the message; Lucille and Sidney put their hands on the board. When it began moving—faster than it ever...