Zora Neale Hurston is recognized as an important writer of the Harlem Renaissance, an era of unprecedented achievement in the black American art and literature, during the 1920s and early 1930s. Although, she influenced the writers such as Ralph Ellison, Toni Morrison,Gayl Jones, and Toni Cade Bambara, interest in her has only recently been revived after decades of neglect. The world has finally rediscovered Zora Neale Hurston. Her books are back in print, a new wave of African American women writers have claimed her as their literary ancestor, and today’s generation is eagerly exploring Eatonville and its citizens in the nation’s classrooms. Zora must be somewhere, riding high and having the last laugh.
The Embodiment of Poetry "Maya Angelou was born as Marguerite Annie Johnson in St. Louis, Missouri"("Maya Angelou Biography" 1). "Maya and her brother, Bailey, moved to Stamp, Arkansas, to live with their grandmother after their parents divorced." "While living in Stamps, she faced racial discrimination that was the legally enforced way of life in the South, but she also absorbed the deep religious faith and old fashioned courtesy of traditional African American life." "Her brother, Bailey was unable to pronounce her name as a young child so he called her "My" as in "My sister." "After a few years, he started calling her "Maya" when he read about the Maya Indians."
Walker is also one of the most affected and deprived African American women in that situation and in that period as she was one of the beginner poet contributor. Walker holds the position to support feminism that represents for all disadvantaged African Americans women ancestors. Walker shows her position in supporting feminism by giving a power to the voiceless mother Mr. Johnson to express the situation in her own understanding and way of expression. The narrator gives authority of narrating for the mother, for a female who didn’t have any place in the established development to influence the society towards freedom and equality. Walker gives Mama the power to lead, to control and use her own preferred
The Betrayal of Heritage Alice Walker was born in Eatonton, Georgia on February 9th 1944. On her journey to success she worked as a social worker, teacher and thereafter she became a lecturer. She was also part and parcel of the Civil Right Movement in Mississippi during the 1960’s. Apart from being a reputable poet and writer, Walker also won herself a Pulitzer award for fiction on account of her 1982 novel “The Color Purple”. “Everyday use” is a short story found in Walker’s (1973) collection “In love and in Trouble”.
Harriet’s mother, Roxanna Foote, was born in 1775 whose grandfather was General Andrew Ward who served in the Revolutionary War. She ran a boardinghouse and taught children there until her sudden death from tuberculosis in September 1816. Harriet was only 5 when she died and didn’t get to know much about her mother. Harriet had 7 other siblings: Catharine, Mary, William, Edward, George, Henry, and Charles. Soon after her mother died, Harriet’s father, Lyman, remarried to Harriet Porter and had 4 children: Frederick, Isabella, Thomas, and James.
The Help by Katheryn Stocket emphasizes the great role of writing and literature in expressing people's struggle. The main character Skeeter always dreams of being a writer. She is greatly concerned with the case of the black maids in 1960s Jackson, Mississippi. However, she never told her mother about this "Sure, I dreamed of having football dates, but my real dream was that one day I would write something that people would actually read." Katheryn Stocket, The Help, P.59 Stockett aims to fight racism and discrimination against black maids and generally the black people by writing this novel.
Like Kennedy, she turned away from classical realism and used her poetry to create theater, giving birth to verse plays written in a very visual language. But in contrast to Kennedy’s plays, Sanchez’s plays were written in consonance with the aesthetic pursued by the artists of the Black Arts movement, as reflected in her one-woman monologue Sister Son/ji (1969). Presented in a surrealistic style, the play shows a fifty-five-year-old woman’s struggle that stands as a metaphor for that of African Americans throughout history in the US and is, according to Elizabeth Brown-Guillory, “one of the most significant portrayals of the Black Power Movement of the 1960s.”9 Moreover, Sanchez also uses the stage to address black men and ask them to respect black women, as presented in The Bronx Is Next (1968).
Some aspects of history should stay hidden. In the Southern Gothic novel, To Kill a Mockingbird, by Harper Lee, it tells a story of southern culture and values through a young girl’s perspective of growing up in the 1930s in Alabama. The Southern Gothic genre is supposed to resemble the southern culture, but have a bit of a creepier element to it. Throughout this time period, Lee illustrates the struggles and hardships, as well as victories and overcoming obstacles for the people. She also writes of very realistic problems many faced in the 1930s such as money problems, discrimination, growing up, learning the truth, and judging.
“Caged Bird” written by Maya Angelou in 1968 announces to the world her frustration of racial inequality and the longing for freedom. She seeks to create sentiment in the reader toward the caged bird plight, and draw compassion for the imprisoned creature. (Davis) Angelou was born as “Marguerite Annie Johnson on April 4, 1928 in St Louis, Missouri”. “Caged Bird” was first published in the collection Shaker, Why Don’t You Sing? 1983.
A graduate of Mexico City College, Dr. Schwartz holds a Ph.D. from Washington State University. His article, "An Integrated Free School in Civil War Florida," which also concerns the career of Dr. Esther Hill Hawks, appeared in The Florida Historical Quarterly. A physician, a northerner, a teacher, a school administrator, a suffragist, and an abolitionist, Esther Hill Hawks was the antithesis of Southern womanhood. And those very differences lead