Jacqueline Woodson, one of today's finest writers, tells the moving story of her childhood in mesmerizing verse. Raised in South Carolina and New York, Woodson always felt halfway home in each place. In vivid poems, she shares what it was like to grow up as an African American in the 1960s and 1970s, living with the remnants of Jim Crow and her growing awareness of the Civil Rights movement. Touching and powerful, each poem is both accessible and emotionally charged, each line a glimpse into a child’s soul as she searches for her place in the world. Woodson’s eloquent poetry also reflects the joy of finding her voice through writing stories, despite the fact that she struggled with reading as a child. Her love of stories inspired her and stayed with her, creating the first sparks of the gifted writer she was to become. girldreaming
June Jordan was born on July 9, 1936, in Harlem, New York, to Mildred and Granville Jordan, Jamaican natives. During her life, she became one of the most prolific, important, and influential African American writers of her time. Before her death from breast cancer in 2002, Jordan published more than 27 books, including Some of Us Did Not Die, Solider: A Poet's Childhood, Poetry for the People: Finding a Voice through Verse, Haruko Love Poems, and Naming Our Destiny. Her work Civil Wars, a collection of letters and essays, addressed such topics as violence, homosexuality, race, and black feminism. Working in many genres and touching on many themes and issues, Jordan was a powerful force in American literature. This biography reveals the woman, the writer, the poet, the activist, the leader, and the educator in all her complexity. Working in many genres and touching on many themes and issues, June Jordan was a powerful force in American literature. This biography reveals the woman, the writer, the speaker, the poet, the activist, the leader, and the educator in all her complexity. June Jordan was born on July 9, 1936, in Harlem, New York, to Mildred and Granville Jordan, Jamaican natives. During her life, she became one of the most prolific, important, and influential African American writers of her time. Before her death from breast cancer in 2002, Jordan published more than 27 books, including Some of Us Did Not Die, Solider: A Poet's Childhood, Poetry for the People: Finding a Voice through Verse, Haruko Love Poems, and Naming Our Destiny. Her work Civil Wars, a collection of letters and essays, addressed such topics as violence, homosexuality, race, and black feminism. Kinloch offers a life and letters of this prolific writer, delving into both her biography and her contributions as a writer and activist. This approach unveils the power of language in Jordan's poems, essays, speeches, books—and ultimately in her own life—as she challenged political systems of injustice, racism, and sexism. Kinloch examines questions surrounding the pain of writing, the anger of oppression, and the struggle of African American women to assert their voices. Attention is paid to the ways in which Jordan's life informed her writings her perspectives, and her contributions to the global landscape of class, race, and gender issues. The writer's major works are explored in detail, as Kinloch weaves discussions of her life into critical considerations of her writings. Ultimately, this portrait illustrates the ways in which Jordan's career represented her dedication to making words work; her ability to rally and revolutionize the spirit of people invested in decolonization, love, and freedom; and her responsiveness to the world in which she lived. [Valerie_Kinloch]_June_Jordan_Her_Life_and_Letter_bookos-z1.org_
Writing and composing with honesty and humanism, Lucille Clifton is known for her themes of the body, family, community, politics, womanhood, and the spirit. While much of her work deals with the African American experience, she does not limit herself to that perspective, addressing topics common to all women, to all people. This timely and important biography will give readers a glimpse into the life and work of this important and revered African American poet, writer, and educator, exploring themes that run throughout her writing, as well as the personal obstacles she faced and overcame. Lucille Clifton was born in Depew, New York, in 1936. Today, she is one of the most important and revered African American poets, writers, and educators in the nation. In addition to several works of poetry, she has written more than 15 children's books. Her work has been nominated for three Pulitzer Prizes and two National Book Awards, one of which she won for Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems 1988-2000 in 2000. In 1999, she was appointed and remains a Chancellor of the American Academy of Poets, one of the most prestigious honors in American letters. Among her best known works is the poem miss rosie, anthologized many times over and a standard part of high school curriculums. She has won an Emmy award, a Lannan Literary Award, two fellowships from the National Endowmant for the the Arts, and many other prestigious awards. Writing and composing with honesty and humanism, Clifton is known for her themes of the body, family, community, politics, womanhood, and the spirit. While much of her work deals with the African American experience, she does not limit herself to that perspective, addressing topics common to all women, to all people. This biography covers Clifton's life and work, addressing themes that run throughout her writing as well as the personal obstacles she faced and overcame, including her own faultering health. This timely and important biography will give readers a glimpse into the life of one of America's most important, influential, and enduring writers. [Mary_Jane_Lupton]_Lucille_Clifton_Her_Life_and_L_bookos-z1.org_
In the underground labyrinths of New York City's subway system, beneath the third rail of a long forgotten line, Saul Williams discovered scrolls of aged yellowish-brown paper rolled tightly into a can of spray paint. His quest to decipher this mystical ancient text resulted in a primal understanding of the power hip-hop has to teach us about ourselves and the universe around us. Now, for the first time, Saul Williams shares with the world the wonder revealed to him by the Dead Emcee Scrolls. I have paraded as a poet for years now. In the proc ess of parading I may have actually become one, but that's another story, another book. This book is a book that I have been waiting to finish since 1995. This is the book that finished me. The story I am about to tell may sound fantastic. It may anger some of you who have followed my work. You may feel that you have come to know me over the years, and in some cases you have, but in others...well, this is a confession. saul williams - the dead emcee scrolls the lost teachings of hip-hop
James Weldon Johnson is the editor of The Book of American Negro Poetry. Johnson compiled this work because it was his belief that a group of people is not known for their greatness until their art and literature is known. Johnson believed that the status of the American Negro would be improved by making their literature known to the general public. The following is a list of poets included in this collection. Paul Dunbar, James, Campbell, James Corrothers, Daniel Davis, William Moore, W E DuBois, George McClellan, William Braithwaite, George Margetson, James Johnson, John Holloway, Leslie Hill, Ray Dandridge, Edward Jones, FentonJohnson, R Nathaniel Dett, Georgia Johnson, Claude McKay, Joseph Cotter Jr., Roscoe Jamison, Jessie Fauset, Anne Spencer, Alex Rogers, Alice Dunbar-Nelson, Charles Johnson, Otto Bohanan, Theodore Shackleford, Lucian Watkins, Benjamin Brawley, and Joshua Jones Jr. [James_Weldon_Johnson]_The_Book_of_American_Negro__bookos-z1.org_
The New Red Negro surveys African-American poetry from the onset of the Depression to the early days of the Cold War. It considers the relationship between the thematic and formal choices of African-American poets and organized ideology from the proletarian early 1930s to the neo-modernist late 1940s. This study examines poetry by writers across the spectrum: canonical, less well-known, and virtually unknown. The ideology of the Communist Left as particularly expressed through cultural institutions of the literary Left significantly influenced the shape of African-American poetry in the 1930s and 40s, as well as the content. One result of this engagement of African-American writers with the organized Left was a pronounced tendency to regard the re-created folk or street voice as the authentic voice--and subject--of African-American poetry. Furthermore, a masculinist rhetoric was crucial to the re-creation of this folk voice. This unstable yoking of cultural nationalism, integrationism, and internationalism within a construct of class struggle helped to shape a new relationship of African-American poetry to vernacular African-American culture. This relationship included the representation of African-American working class and rural folk life and its cultural products ostensibly from the mass perspective. It also included the dissemination of urban forms of African-American popular culture, often resulting in mixed media high- low hybrids. [James_Edward_Smethurst]_The_New_Red_Negro_The_Li_bookos-z1.org_
