Audre Lorde (February 18, 1934 - November 17, 1992) was a Black American poet, writer, feminist, womanist, and civil rights activist. Born in Gambia or Senegal, West Africa, she was seized by slave traders at age seven and transported to Boston aboard a slave ship called The Phillis. As a key participant in the Black cultural Harlem Renaissance movement, she worked alongside other prominent writers such as Langston Hughes and Countee Cullen. Poems by African-American poets, including Gwendolyn Brooks, Kwame Dawes, Rita Dove, Langston Hughes, Tyehimba Jess, Kevin Young, and more. In 1988, her autobiography, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, won the American Book Award. Born to West Indian immigrant parents in New York City, Lorde published her first poem in Seventeen magazine while still in high school. It is a transformative piece of art that will leave you longing for more. The following books by black authors (in alphabetic order by title) were published in 2018 and fall under a wide range of genres. I loved poetry … but this body is, a blessing. Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784), an American slave educated by her owner. Kara's Talk presents the idea that black women are allowed to be complex and continue to prove their complexity with poetry. Born into a free Black American family in Wilmington, Delaware, Shadd Cary’s father wrote for the abolitionist newspaper the Liberator and helped escaped enslaved Black Americans secure passage to Canada on the Underground Railroad. The proper word a chick's voice. While still a student at Oberlin, Graham’s 1932 musical drama Tom Tom was widely acclaimed. After the enactment of the Fugitive Slave Act, she became the just the second Black American woman to earn a law degree, graduating from Howard University School of Law in 1883 at age 60. 3 of the Chicago Federal Theater Project where her plays Little Black Sambo and Swing Mikado were wildly popular. Her book of poetry, Teaching My Mother How To Give Birth, is an absolute must-read. With brutal honesty and emotion, Shange tells the story of each woman’s struggle to survive the double subjugation of sexism and racism in a white-dominated America. In 1842, she fled to the North, first to Philadelphia, then to New York City where she gained her freedom and became active in the abolitionist movement organized by Frederick Douglass. First known African-American (and slave) to compose a work of literature: Lucy Terry with her poem "Bars Fight", composed in 1746 and first published in 1855 in Josiah Holland's "History of Western Massachusetts 1760. Vancouver-based Chantal Gibson is a artist, poet and educator. Though it has been praised as a classic novel, it has also been banned by several schools due to its graphic details. Du Bois. Her father appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in its famous Hansberry v. Lee decision declared racially restrictive housing covenants illegal. She was awarded the Sillerman First Book Prize for her poetry collection, The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony. Du Bois. In naming her play, Hansberry borrowed from a line in the poem “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred? By the time she turned 17, her poems were being published regularly in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper dedicated to Chicago’s Black community. Longley, Robert. Determined to regain her strength and self-identity, she adopted her African name: Ntozake, “she who comes with her own things” and Shange, “who walks like a lion.”. Through her involvement with the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement of the 1920s, Dunbar-Nelson rose to prominence as an activist writer. With a run of 530 performances, it was the first Broadway play written by a Black American woman. They're listed alphabetically. In 1886, Parsons gained fame for her nationwide speaking tour to raise money for the legal defense of her husband Albert who had been sentenced to death for his alleged involvement in the Haymarket Square Riot and Bombing in which a Chicago policeman was killed. Her second novel, Song of Solomon, tells the story of a Black man’s search for self-identity in the face of racism. Portrait of American journalist, teacher, playwright, and poet Angelina Weld Grimke (1880 - 1958). For her works and her influence on many other writers, Hurston is considered one of the most important female writers of the 20th century. The plan is to read a poetry collection each week, which means I have to read 52 collections this year—a daunting challenge. Charlotte Forten Grimké (August 17, 1837 - July 23, 1914) was a Black American abolitionist, author, poet, and educator, best known for her journals describing her privileged childhood and her involvement with the antislavery movement. If a picture paints a thousand words, then this collection of poems paints at least a few hundred pictures. The book has been self-described as an exploration of “self, joy, blackness, gender, matters of the heart, the experience of the Disaspora, spirituality and most of all how we survive.” It is heartfelt. Shirley Graham Du Bois (November 11, 1896 - March 27, 1977) was a Black American writer, playwright, and civil rights activist. Born in Camden County, New Jersey, Fauset grew up in Philadelphia and attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls. Born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks moved with her family to Chicago when she was young. When the family moved to a white neighborhood in 1938, they were attacked by neighbors, leaving only after being ordered to do so by a court. Her term for this strategy, “Lifting as we climb,” became the motto of the National Association of Colored Women (NACW), the group she helped found in 1896. In 1910, she helped co-found the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP). It acts as a letter to her future daughter—a guide for navigating the world as a black, Muslim woman. The voices of black female poets have resounded in America for more than 250 years. Her work is hopeful and positive, for those looking to give themselves some much needed love and comfort. Definitely check out her incredible work. Ideas about race and equality, love and death have been clearly heard from the slave girl Phillis Wheatley to the Harlem Renaissance figure Jessie Redmon Fauset, to the strong voices of the black women poets of the 20th and 21st centuries: Maya Angelou, Gwendolyn Brooks and Nikki Giovanni. In 1918, she enrolled in Radcliffe College majoring in Comparative Literature and English. Despite receiving no formal education, Stewart became the first American woman known to have spoken before a mixed audience of Black and White men and women, as well as the first American woman to speak publicly on women’s rights and the abolition of slavery. Bonner enjoyed her greatest literary success during the 1930s as a prolific short story writer. If you have not heard about Nayyirah Waheed you absolutely must look her up. Instagram poets, or "instapoets" as they are sometimes called, have been making big waves in the world of contemporary poetry. It is honest and relatable. Born to a free Black family in Hartford, Connecticut in 1803, she lost both of her parents at age three and was sent to live in the home of a white minister and his wife. she lays her hands on the pulse of the thing. Only a Black woman can give us the words we need to weave gold and silver threads into the tapestry of our lives. Born in 1753, she was brought to New England from West Africa as a slave when she was nearly 8 years old. “Every man has a right to express his opinion,” she wrote. Taking over as literary editor of The Crisis in 1919, Fauset introduced several previously unknown Black writers such as Langston Hughes and Claude McKay to a national audience. In the technological era in which we currently live, Waheed has made herself one of the most famous Instagram poets. In 1853, Shadd Cary founded The Provincial Freemen, a weekly newspaper for Black Americans, especially escaped enslaved people. Kind and critical—but not too critical for the young—they nursed us along until our books were born.”. Imperative. I used, to hate not being 115 anymore. Kean Collection/Archive Photos/Getty Images. don't say stolen. Jessie Redmon Fauset (April 27, 1882 - April 30, 1961) was a Black American editor, poet, and novelist. Educated at a Quaker school in Pennsylvania, she later moved to Canada where she started a school for Black Americans in Windsor, Ontario. by djoyner. Harper. Phillis Wheatley (c. 1753 - December 5, 1784) was the first published African American poet and one of the most widely read poets in pre-19th century America. After Union troops occupied parts of the coastal Carolinas in 1861, she taught newly emancipated Black Americans on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. Her neighborhood was called “Dynamite Hill” due to the number of homes bombed by the Ku Klux Klan. Black British Female Authors you should read. Bates’ work for school integration brought her national fame. Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American poet to publish a book. sometimes better in the full face of the sun. Her name by then a household word in the colonies, Wheatley’s achievements catalyzed the antislavery movement. The women you'll find in this collection are not necessarily the best women poets or the most literary, but ones whose poems have tended to be studied and/or remembered. I loved poetry in high school. Using her skills as an investigative reporter, she exposed the often-brutal injustices suffered by Black Americans in the South during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Not the kind that follows structures carried down from 17th century England to Euro-centric American classrooms. “The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe,” she wrote. K.Y. Apr 1, 2020 - Explore Mary May's board "african american poets/authors", followed by 563 people on Pinterest. The niece of abolitionist and poet Charlotte Forten Grimké, she graduated from the Boston Normal School of Gymnastics—a school dedicated to the advancement of women—in 1902 and later attended summer classes at Harvard University while teaching English in Washington, D.C. The Iowa Writers Workshop-alum is known as much for her poetry collections (the most famous being 2007’s Dance Dance Revolution, a recipient of the Barnard Women Poets Prize) as her reviews and political writings appearing in outlets such as the Guardian and the New York Times. Her love for books and writing bloomed in the shop and at age 21, she wrote her first volume of poetry. In 1852, Shadd Cary wrote articles encouraging other Black Americans to seek freedom in Canada. Adapted into a popular movie by Steven Spielberg, the book tells the story of a 14-year-old Black girl in rural Georgia whose children are given away by her sexually-abusive father, also the father of her children, who is also the father of the children. After graduation, she worked as a school teacher. After several towns refused to accept a woman minister, she held prayer meetings in private homes in Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, and Canada. Waheed described Daley-Ward's work as “a symphony of breaking and mending. I Guess By Now I Thought I'd Be Done With Shame. In 1929, the Krigwa Players formed the Negro Experimental Theater. Robinson’s first published work is a searing work of art. She has received numerous fellowships and her poetry has appeared in several journals. Marita Bonner (June 16, 1898 - December 6, 1971) was a Black American writer, playwright, and essayist associated with the Black cultural Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s. Published in Toronto, the Provincial Freemen’s slogan was “Devoted to antislavery, temperance and general literature.” During 1855 and 1856, she traveled across the United States delivering stirring anti-slavery speeches demanding total racial integration and equal justice for Black people. I recently rediscovered my passion for the genre, and in doing so I also discovered several incredible Black women who are absolutely killing the poetry game. As a result, his poetry focuses on the suffering of black people. After the Civil War, Shadd Cary worked alongside Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton in the women's suffrage movement. As one of the writers involved in the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s, Grimké’s writings were included in the group’s anthologies The New Negro, Caroling Dusk, and Negro Poets and Their Poems. Born Lola Shirley Graham in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1896, she studied music composition at the Sorbonne in Paris, France, from 1926 to 1931, when she entered Oberlin College as an advanced student, earning a B.A. the thickness is real. Yrsa Daley-Ward is another poet you can follow on Instagram. Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 - May 14, 1966) was a Black American poet, playwright, and significant part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement. In 2004, she became a professor at Berea College, a tuition-free, liberal arts college in Kentucky. Published during the early 1900s, her poems, short stories, and newspaper columns took on complex issues including the effects of racism on Black family life, work, and sexuality. In 1773, she became the first Black person, and only the second woman, to publish a book of poetry in America, when her Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral was published. Stewart’s writings reveal her deeply held concern for the plight of Black Americans. See more ideas about african american poets, african american, american poets. I am a scar, a report from the frontlines, a talisman, a resurrection. Du Bois in forming the Krigwa Players, a troupe of Black actors performing plays by Black playwrights. Her Obie Award-winning 1975 play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, combines poetry, song, and dance to tell the stories of seven women, identified only by their color. Future well-known Black playwrights including Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Imamu Amiri Baraka credited Anderson for opening the doors to their careers. Elle has penned multiple poetry collections including, Words of a Wanderer, Love in My Language, and most recently, Neon Soul—a collective infusion of poetry and prose. I liked the outlandish — the edgy kind of poetry. Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-women-writers-3528288 (accessed February 23, 2021). In her later life, Wells worked for urban reform and racial equality in the growing city of Chicago. Her father, a janitor, and her mother, a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist, supported her passion for writing. Presented in 1931, her play Climbing Jacob's Ladder, about a Black man being lynched while people prayed for him, led to Broadway roles for many of the actors. Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, to sharecropping farmers. In her books such as Talking Back: Thinking Feminist, Thinking Black (1989), Black Looks: Race and Representation (1992), and Where We Stand: Class Matters (2000), hooks conveys her belief that a woman’s true sense of value is determined by a combination of her race, political beliefs, and economic worth to society. 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