South Side Venus: The Legacy of Margaret Burroughs

Cain (Down from Moonshine) delivers on the promise of this profound biography’s subtitle by lauding the intentionally crafted legacy of Margaret Burroughs (1915–2010), a Chicago artist, activist, and community organizer. Activism through art (whether making, teaching, or supporting) was her cause; Burroughs was also an African-American and antiracist activist, writer, teacher, founder and director of the DuSable Museum, cat lady, feminist, wife and mother, loyal friend (of Paul Robeson and Gwendolyn Brooks, to name two), and mentor (of, for example, Haki Madhubuti, who wrote the foreword). On a sweltering day several years before Burroughs’ death, Cain walked with Burroughs through the South Side of Chicago, listening keenly to the matriarch’s tales, witnessing many grateful greetings, and photographing Burroughs according to her direction. That walk forms the spine of this account of a person who “was raised with a notion that she had something to say and something to give” and archived her own life, believing it important to build up records of black history. This is a hagiographic but inspiring account of a force of nature. (Oct.)