african american authors

Contains alphabetically arranged entries that provide career biographies of thirty-four African-American writers active between the Harlem Renaissance and 1940; each with a list of principal works and a bibliography.

Relates the author's personal narrative of the time she spent in Ghana with other African American expatriates.

Poet Maya Angelou chronicles her early life, focusing on her childhood in 1930s rural Arkansas, including her rape at the age of five, her subsequent years of muteness, and the strength she gained from her grandmother and Mrs. Bertha Flowers, a respected African-American woman in her town.

Author Walter Dean Myers describes his childhood in Harlem in the 1940s and 1950s, discussing his loving stepmother, his problems in school, his reasons for leaving home, and his beginnings as a writer.

Examines the life and work of the successful novelist, who became the first African-American to win the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1993.

Biography of twentieth-century African-American author James Baldwin, discussing his childhood in Harlem, his years in Paris, and his return to the United States in 1957 to take part in the Civil Rights struggle.

Discusses the life and work of the well-known author of award-winning young adult literature who grew up in Harlem as a foster child and struggled with his identity as an African American writer.

Presents a biography of Zora Neale Hurston, chronicling her childhood and detailing the influences that shaped her career as an author. Examines how Hurston worked through the poverty that followed her much of her life and charts the rise in the popularity of her books that followed her death. Includes black-and-white photographs.

Continues Angelou's autobiography, I know why the caged bird sings. As the book begins, she is in her teens and has given birth to a son.

Text and accompanying photographs discuss the life and work of the noted African-American writer.