Alice Walker Alice is known for novelist, poet, short story writer, literary critic, children’s fiction writer, editor, and educator. A prominent figure of contemporary African American literature and an avid civil right activist and feminist, Alice Walker is a versatile and prolific writer who won the Pulitzer Prize and the American Book Award for her best-selling, best-known novel, “The Color Purple”. Like many of her fictional characters, Alice Walker was the daughter of black sharecroppers from the rural South; she was the eighth child of a sharecropping farmer and his hard-working wife. The poems in Walker’s first book, “Once”, written in 1968, reflected her burgeoning commitment to the civil rights movement and the acute depression she had suffered during her college years. Writing poetry, she later remarked, was a way to celebrate each day with the knowledge that she had not committed suicide.
The title Caged Bird was taken from the poem Sympathy written by Sir Lawrence Dunbar, a black male poet writing in the 1800. Out of her seven autobiographies, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings is probably Angelou’s most popular and critically acclaimed volume. The American Library Association repeatedly included Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings on its lists of the most frequently challenged books during the 1980’s and 1990’s. People for the American Way reported it as the ninth-most challenged book in American public schools. The autobiography is now frequently read as a complement to non fictional works that delve into the subject of racism.
Maya Angelou added to the Literary Canon Maya Angelou is an editor, performer, singer, filmmaker, dancer, educator, but one thing she does best is writing. Angelou, born April 4, 1928, has had many influences throughout her lifetime. She has been influenced by her hardships, writers, religion, and the African American community. Maya Angelou should be included in the literary canon because she is best known for her autobiographies, which involved her childhood and her early life experiences. Her autobiographies influenced many African Americans and specifically women.
Angelou's poems celebrate black people, men and women; at the same time, they bear witness to the trials of black people in this country. Implicitly or directly, whites are called to account, yet Angelou's poetry, steeped though it is in the languages and cultures of black America, does not exclude whites (Stark). Quite the reverse: the poems are generous in their directness, and in the humor Angelou finds alongside her outrage and pain, in their dynamic embrace of life (Cookson). They are truly celebratory pieces of poetic works she has created. She prefers strong,
Have you ever heard of Zora Neale Hurston? Zora Hurston was an American folklorist and author during the time of the Harlem Renaissance. Hurston is a successful American author because of her life, success as a writer, and contributions to literature and American society. Hurston was the fifth of eight children of John Hurston and Lucy Ann Hurston. Her father was a Baptist preacher, tenant farmer, and carpenter, and her mother was a schoolteacher (Wikipedia).
English 2312 September 22, 2011 Realism 1865 – 1890 Realism was a literary movement in America, which spanned from 1865 to 1890. Grace Kings “The Little Convent Girl” is a great example of realism in literature. Kings writing and most writings of the realism movement were merely a political movement. This gave readers an opportunity to feel the hardships that the black citizens of America endured. This work gives a great view of life in America after the Civil War, when our country was under reconstruction and was going thru a significant part of our history.
Hurston found herself being passed from relative to relative, while working as a nanny and a housekeeper. When Zora was in her teen years she became a wardrobe girl in a Gilbert and Sullivan repertory company touring the South. A novelist, folklorist, and anthropologist, Hurston was the prototypical authority on b lack culture from the Harlem Renaissance. In this artistic movement of the 1920’s black artists moved from traditional dialectical works and imitation of white writers to explore their own culture and affirm pride in their race. Zora pursued this objective by combining literature with anthropology.
He was born in 1807 and was nationally known poet/writer by the 1850’s. Henry’s father was a lawyer and his mother was a supporter of Zilpah Longfellow. Longfellow was a student at Bowdoin College where he graduated in 1825. He then got married to Mary Potter who died in 1835. He then taught at Cambridge University.
Another famous figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Langston Hughes. Hughes was a poet/playwright/novelist, who defined the era of the Harlem Renaissance with his essay, “The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain” (Hughes 6). A prominent female figure of the Harlem Renaissance was Zora Neale Hurston. Hurston was a writer and poet who was most known for her famous novel, Their Eyes Were Watching God. During the Harlem Renaissance, the famous jazz musician, Duke Ellington was able to find his place in the era.
Narrated by a British woman, who later flees during a revolt continues to tell of the account she has received first hand of how the prince and his wife were separated by slavery but yet, were brought back together as a result of it. Because of its sympathetic light towards Africans in slavery, the book was described as "Oroonoko is the first humanitarian novel in English. "( Cross) by Wilbur L. Cross in 1899. Cross also respects the short story’s writer Aphra Behn on his opposition of slavery. Although the book is primarily about slavery, it is also linked to kingship which was highly popular at the time of its release, as Othello was the only other massively popular novel, and also the theme of race.