african american authors

Provides the historical background of the most-studied novels, plays, poems, speeches and short stories. Entries examine both the historical setting of the literary work and the historical events taking place at the time the work was written.

Contains biographical and critical essays on the work of important African American writers.

A new breathtaking poetry collection on hope, heart, and heritage from the most prominent Black poets and writers of our time, edited by Why Fathers Cry at Night author Kwame Alexander. This comprehensive and vibrant poetry anthology contains work from well-loved poets such as Claudia Rankine, Ross Gay, Jericho Brown, Warsan Shire, Amanda Gorman, Terrance Hayes, and Alice Walker. Kwame Alexander curates a collection of anthems for our time, at turns tender and piercing, and deeply inspiring throughout.

A collection of stories, comics, and poems about the power of joy and the wonders of Black boyhood.

"A . . . compendium of James Baldwin's . . . nonfiction work, calling on us 'to end the racial nightmare, and achieve our country'"--Provided by publisher.

"A vibrant collection of personal and lyric essays in conversation with archival objects of Black history and memory"--Provided by publisher.

"[Tells] the dramatic story of Phillis Wheatley, an African-American poet who refused to marry a man she had never met and return with him to Africa as a missionary. She was enslaved in Africa as a child and transported to Boston, where she was sold to an evangelical family. Agreeing to the proposed marriage--arranged by Congregationalist minister Samuel Hopkins--would have echoed the social mores of the time, particularly those for enslaved black women. However, due to her prodigious talents as a poet, Wheatley won her freedom a year prior to Hopkins' arrangement, allowing her to take her future into her own hands"--OCLC.

"National Book Award winner Nikky Finney's fifth collection of light house poems, prosaic hot beds, and personal artifacts, copper coins a new world matrix for American poetry, one that articulates the witness chair and punctuates the occasion of the lyric into a new language of "docu-poetry.""--.

"A biography in verse and prose of science fiction visionary Octavia Butler"--Provided by publisher.