A strong supporter of prison reform, Davis took up the cause of three Black inmates. in English literature from Stanford University in 1973, an M.A. Alice Walker, 2005, at opening of Broadway version of The Color Purple. A frank portrayal of the brutality of slavery and the sexual abuse suffered by enslaved Black women at the hands of their white enslavers. DTugui. After graduation, she worked as a school teacher. In 1961, they immigrated to Ghana where they gained citizenship. Fotosearch / Archive Photos / Getty Images. Phillis Wheatley (1753 - 1784), an American slave educated by her owner. being a woman is a. Landan Osman poetry has been published in several notable literary magazines. Born to free Black parents in Philadelphia in 1837, Charlotte Forten’s wealthy family was part of Philadelphia’s elite Black community. Shortly after earning B.A. "27 Black American Women Writers You Should Know." Only a Black woman can know what has been denied other Black women. After studying philosophy at the University of Frankfurt in West Germany, Davis studied at the University of California, San Diego, before getting a Ph.D. from the Humboldt University of Berlin in East Germany. With a run of 530 performances, it was the first Broadway play written by a Black American woman. Terrell’s passion for activism arose in 1892 after an old friend was lynched by a mob of whites in Memphis simply because his business competed with theirs. If anything, you might walk away more whole--a transformed human being who understands that they need self-love, self-care and that they are not alone. African American women writers have helped bring the Black woman's experience to life for millions of readers. The proper word a chick's voice. “The meeting at Haymarket square was a peaceable meeting.”. K.Y. 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.”. By the time she turned 17, her poems were being published regularly in the Chicago Defender, a newspaper dedicated to Chicago’s Black community. After completing high school at Morgan College, Hurston earned an associate’s degree from Howard University and a BA in anthropology from Barnard College in 1928. She was awarded the Sillerman First Book Prize for her poetry collection, The Kitchen Dweller’s Testimony. Her second novel, Song of Solomon, tells the story of a Black man’s search for self-identity in the face of racism. Du Bois, whom she married in 1951. Georgia Douglas Johnson (September 10, 1880 - May 14, 1966) was a Black American poet, playwright, and significant part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement. Not traditional poetry. 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. Her uncle, an outspoken abolitionist and Black literacy advocate founded the Watkins Academy for Negro Youth in 1820. Yrsa Daley-Ward is another poet you can follow on Instagram. Now a free 39-year-old Black woman, Elizabeth traveled and preached. In the early 1900s, Grimké launched her writing career with short stories and poetry expressing her concerns about the devastating effects of racism on Black people in America. I mourned sore like a dove and chattered forth my sorrow, moaning in the corners of the field, and under the fences.”. In 1993, became the first Black American woman to be awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature for Beloved. At age 68, Brooks became the first Black woman to be appointed as poetry consultant to the Library of Congress, the position now known as Poet Laureate of the United States. Poets (from left to right) Rita Dove, Gwendolyn Brooks, Kevin Young, Tyehimba Jess, and Langston Hughes Is that why the little kisses are not enough? 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. She was fired as an assistant professor of philosophy at the University of California, Los Angeles for her membership in the Communist Party. After Union troops occupied parts of the coastal Carolinas in 1861, she taught newly emancipated Black Americans on the Sea Islands of South Carolina. She is currently working on her second book, Water. While still a student at Oberlin, Graham’s 1932 musical drama Tom Tom was widely acclaimed. From 1926 to 1932, she wrote a weekly column, “Homely Philosophy,” that appeared in several Black American publications. Her work has appeared in publications such as, The Stockholm Review of Literature and The Rising Phoenix Review and has even participated in a TEDX Talk. In 1910, Johnson and her husband to Washington, D.C. After the death of her husband in 1925, Johnson supported her two sons by working at the U.S. Department of Labor while writing poetry, short stories, and plays in her spare time. Alice Walker was born in 1944 in Eatonton, Georgia, to sharecropping farmers. 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. After returning to her family for a few years, she was sold twice, finally to a Presbyterian minister who freed her from enslavement in 1805. She received a B.A. the thickness is real. 20 Black women authors with 2019 book releases you need on your shelves. In 1996 the Academy of American Poets dubbed April National Poetry Month to celebrate the richness of American poetry. Daisy Lee Bates, president of the Arkansas chapter of the NAACP, with Black students barred from the Little Rock Central High School, 1957. After moving from Texas to Chicago in 1873, Lucy wrote frequently for Albert’s pro-labor newspaper, The Alarm. Born in Boston, Massachusetts, Bonner attended Brookline High School where she wrote for the student newspaper, the Sagamore. Published in 1977, the novel brought Morrison fame, winning the coveted National Book Critics Circle Award. don't say stolen. At age 29, Lorraine Hansberry became the youngest American to win a New York Critics’ Circle award. 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. I used, to hate not being 115 anymore. As an honors graduate of Oberlin College and the daughter of one of the South’s first Black millionaires, Terrell was part of the growing Black upper class who used their social influence to fight for racial equality. Toni Morrison (February 18, 1931 - August 5, 2019) was an American novelist and college professor noted for her understanding and skill in relating the Black female experience through her writing. It was there, with the Civil War looming, that she decided to devote her writing skills to the antislavery effort. The voices of black female poets have resounded in America for more than 250 years. She has received numerous fellowships and her poetry has appeared in several journals. Vancouver-based Chantal Gibson is a artist, poet and educator. I liked Allen Ginsberg more than I will ever like Emily Dickinson. In 1892, Wells became co-owner of the activist Memphis Free Speech newspaper. https://www.thoughtco.com/african-american-women-writers-3528288 Dawn M. Baskerville. (2021, February 16). One of the world's most well-known African-American poets, her work includes poetry anthologies, poetry recordings, and nonfiction essays, and covers topics ranging from race and social issues to children's literature. 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. 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. Born Paulette Linda Williams to upper-middle-class Black parents in Trenton, New Jersey, Shange’s family moved to the racially segregated city of St. Louis, Missouri when she was eight. Future well-known Black playwrights including Langston Hughes, Lorraine Hansberry, and Imamu Amiri Baraka credited Anderson for opening the doors to their careers. Gwendolyn Brooks (June 7, 1917 - December 3, 2000) was a widely read and much-honored poet and author who became the first Black American to win a Pulitzer Prize. Born an enslaved person near Waco, Texas, Parsons’ involvement in the labor movement began following her marriage to radical white Republican newspaper editor Albert R. Parsons. Now get in your car and drive to the nearest bookstore, and for the less actively inclined, go to Amazon and start supporting these incredibly talented poets. In her very first book, Ain’t I A Woman, hooks revealed the basis of her Black feminist theory when she wrote, “A devaluation of black womanhood occurred as a result of the sexual exploitation of black women during slavery that has not altered in the course of hundreds of years.”. Born in Camden County, New Jersey, Fauset grew up in Philadelphia and attended the Philadelphia High School for Girls. "27 Black American Women Writers You Should Know." I Guess By Now I Thought I'd Be Done With Shame. from Howard University in 1953, and an M.A. She has also participated in TEDXNew York. Born in Topeka, Kansas, Brooks moved with her family to Chicago when she was young. Gwendolyn Brooks, 1967, 50th birthday party. With the support of William Still—father of the Underground Railroad—Harper’s poem Eliza Harris and other works were published in abolitionist newspapers including the Liberator and Frederick Douglass’ North Star. In naming her play, Hansberry borrowed from a line in the poem “Harlem,” by Langston Hughes: “What happens to a dream deferred? In 1861, she published her autobiography, Incidents in the Life of a Slave Girl. In 1957, she joined the lesbian and LGBTQ civil rights organization, the Daughters of Bilitis as a writer for their magazine, The Ladder. In New York, she wrote for Paul Robeson’s activist Black newspaper, Freedom, from 1950 to 1953. 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. The only child of her free Black American parents, Frances Harper was born on September 24, 1825, in Baltimore, Maryland. She earned a B.A. Elizabeth’s father, a devoted member of the Methodist Society, exposed her to religion while reading to his children from the Bible. After several towns refused to accept a woman minister, she held prayer meetings in private homes in Virginia, Maryland, Michigan, and Canada. but this body is, a blessing. Ida Bell Wells-Barnett (July 16, 1862 - March 25, 1931), known for most of her career as Ida B. Through her involvement with the Harlem Renaissance artistic movement of the 1920s, Dunbar-Nelson rose to prominence as an activist writer. 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. Shire’s poetry also appeared in Beyonce’s visual Lemonade album last year. After tragically becoming orphaned at age three, she was raised by her aunt and uncle, Henrietta and William Watkins. From 1957 to 1964, she taught at Howard. I liked the outlandish — the edgy kind of poetry. If you have not heard about Nayyirah Waheed you absolutely must look her up. “On reaching the farm, I found the overseer was displeased at me … He tied me with a rope, and gave me some stripes (administered a whipping) of which I carried the marks for weeks. April was is in full swing last month and the air is filled with poetry and spring. In 1916, Johnson published her first poems in the NAACP’s magazine Crisis. On the following paragraphs, you'll meet novelists, poets, journalists, playwrights, essayists, social commentators, and feminist theorists. She began writing poetry at the age of thirteen and is recognized as the country's first notable African-American poet. Along with helping to bring the WPA’s Federal Theater to Harlem, the Negro Experimental Theater inspired similar Black theater groups across the United States. And I preferred Audre Lorde to Shakespeare. Ijeoma Umebinyuo has been hailed one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s greatest contemporary poets. In 1854, she moved to Salem, Massachusetts, where she attended a private academy for young women as the only Black student in a class of 200. and Nejima. Zora Neale Hurston (January 15, 1891 - January 28, 1960) was a famous Black writer and anthropologist whose novels, short stories, and plays portrayed the struggles of Black Americans in the South. 196 Views. The poems are bridges to our divinity, sensuality and uniqueness. The masthead of weekly abolitionist newspaper The Liberator, 1850. Kara's Talk presents the idea that black women are allowed to be complex and continue to prove their complexity with poetry. Black British Female Authors you should read. I say scourge. Hansberry attended the University of Wisconsin in Madison majoring in writing, but withdrew after two years and moved to New York City. Seeing the right to vote as essential to lifting-up both Black women and the entire Black race, Terrell wrote and spoke tirelessly for women’s suffrage. The burning of the offices of The Memphis Free Speech by an angry mob launched her career as an anti-lynching crusader and pioneering investigative journalist. Her critically acclaimed 1987 novel Beloved, is based on the tragic true story of a runaway enslaved woman who chooses to kill her infant daughter to save her from a life of enslavement. Carl Van Vechten, Courtesy Library of Congress. After settling in Little Rock, Arkansas, in 1914, she started the Arkansas State Press, one of the few Black American newspapers dedicated to the Civil Rights Movement. 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. In his autobiography The Big Sea, Langston Hughes wrote of her, “Jessie Fauset at The Crisis, Charles Johnson at Opportunity, and Alain Locke in Washington were the three people who midwifed the so-called New Negro literature into being. As a key figure in the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1920s, Fauset’s writing vividly portrayed Black American life and history. Learning at age eight that no one was prosecuted for her mother's murder and that the police had largely ignored the case, Bates vowed to dedicate her life to ending racial injustice. I loved poetry … A self-described “black-lesbian feminist mother lover poet,” Lorde’s work exposed and condemned the social wrongs of racism, sexism, classism, and homophobia. Luckily, there are some great collections coming out in 2019. An outspoken feminist, Walker created the term womanist to refer to “A Black feminist or feminist of color” in 1983. I hope these five poems strengthen your spirit as you read, for they are masterpieces crafted with love, magic, whispers and sighs. Her most recent work, bone, has left many dazzled and stunned its riveting and emotional lyricism. Upile Chisala self-published her first work, soft magic. In her writings, Shadd Cary urged Black Americans to “do more and talk less” about the atrocities of slavery and their need for justice. I thought I was done stuffing fists in my mouth to mute the sound. Not the kind of poetry that feels dictated and uncreative. Not the kind that follows structures carried down from 17th century England to Euro-centric American classrooms. Shortly after their wedding, W.E.B. 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. At age 87, she moved to Philadelphia. In 1918, she enrolled in Radcliffe College majoring in Comparative Literature and English. “The degradation, the wrongs, the vices, that grow out of slavery, are more than I can describe,” she wrote. Wells, was a Black journalist, activist, teacher, and early civil rights leader who fought to end racism, sexism, and violence. I am a scar, a report from the frontlines, a talisman, a resurrection. Her poetry is beautiful and aching and raw. 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. 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. Does it dry up like a raisin in the sun?” Opening on March 11, 1959, at New York’s Ethel Barrymore Theatre, the A Raisin in the Sun was an instant success. If a picture paints a thousand words, then this collection of poems paints at least a few hundred pictures. Born in Notasulga, Alabama on January 15, 1891, both of Hurston’s parents had been enslaved. - Sappho ( c. 630 – c. 570 BC) Poetry, like so many art forms, has a way of expressing the inexpressible and exposing human nature through musical rhythms, vivid imagery, and powerful metaphors. Since 1983, hooks has published dozen of books while teaching at four major universities. You will not be disappointed. Smile with all of your teeth, even the rotting ones. Don't say forgotten, passed over. In 1835, Jacobs escaped, hiding for the next seven years in a tiny crawlspace in the roof of her grandmother’s house. From The Auction of enslaved people by Frances E.W. and gives wide air to the epic realities of women.”. Her father appealed to the U.S. Supreme Court, which in its famous Hansberry v. Lee decision declared racially restrictive housing covenants illegal. 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. A few were nearly forgotten and then resurrected in the 1960s-1980s as gender studies uncovered their work and contributions again. She decided then to write under her pen name, the name of her grandmother. In 1929, the Krigwa Players formed the Negro Experimental Theater. is an intimate compilation of poetry and prose. 10 Black Female Poets You Need To Check Out These Black Women Are Poeticising What It Means To Be A Black Woman. Old Elizabeth (1766 - 1866) was born an enslaved person in Maryland in 1766. A rough place on the chin of complacency.”. Maria Stewart (1803 - December 17, 1879) was a free-born Black American teacher, journalist, lecturer, abolitionist, and civil rights activist. Du Bois in forming the Krigwa Players, a troupe of Black actors performing plays by Black playwrights. 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. It is a transformative piece of art that will leave you longing for more. On December 21, 1886, one of her most powerful speeches, “I am an anarchist” was published in the Kansas City Journal. 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. November 23, 2018. Born in New Orleans, Louisiana, to mixed-race parents, her Black, White, Indigenous, and Creole heritage endowed her with the deep understanding of race, gender, and ethnicity she expressed in her writing. 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. Yusef Komunyakaa. It acts as a letter to her future daughter—a guide for navigating the world as a black, Muslim woman. Alice Walker (born February 9, 1944) is an American poet, essayist, novelist, and social activist, who focuses on the issues of racism, gender bias, classism, and sexual oppression. Phillis Wheatley was the first African-American poet to publish a book. Written by Editorial Team 03/02/2020 Performed by an all-Black cast, Rachel portrays a young Black American woman living in the North during the early 1900s, who vows never to bring children into a land ruined by racism. With the success of her essay, Bonner was invited to join a circle of Washington, D.C. writers who met regularly at poet and composer Georgia Douglass Johnson’s “S Street Salon.” Over the next five years, she wrote a popular series of short stories published in Crisis and the National Urban League’s Opportunity magazine. Stewart’s writings reveal her deeply held concern for the plight of Black Americans. She was educated at Rust University’s high school for formerly enslaved persons, and later at Fisk University. Her father, a janitor, and her mother, a schoolteacher and classically trained pianist, supported her passion for writing. Possibly the first Black female student to attend Cornell University, she graduated with a BA in classical languages in 1905. After graduating from Radcliffe, Bonner taught at Bluefield State University in Bluefield, West Virginia, and later at all-Black Armstrong High School in Washington, D.C. Toni Morrison was born in Lorain, Ohio, to a family with a deep appreciation for Black culture and history. In 1988, her autobiography, The Long Shadow of Little Rock, won the American Book Award. Zora Neale Hurston, photo portrait by Carl Van Vechten. While she joined with Ida B. Wells-Barnett in her anti-lynching campaigns, Terrell’s writing expressed her belief that, rather than depend on whites or the government, Blacks themselves could best help end racial discrimination by lifting themselves through education, work, and community activism. Summer time is the perfect time to get reading. At her humble Washington, D.C. rowhouse, which became known as the “S Street Salon,” Johnson hosted regular meetings of writers of the Harlem Renaissance, such as Countee Cullen and W.E.B DuBois. When she was charged with conspiracy to murder, Davis went into hiding and was listed as one the FBI’s “Most Wanted.” Captured and jailed for over a year before being acquitted in 1972. After losing her parents to the yellow fever epidemic of 1878, she and her siblings moved to Memphis, Tennessee, where she taught school to keep her family together. 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. Yolande Cornelia "Nikki" Giovanni Jr. (born June 7, 1943) is an American poet, writer, commentator, activist, and educator. Harriet Jacobs (1813 - March 7, 1897) was a formerly enslaved Black American author and activist. Academic Books by and about Black Women – 2019 edition; Academic Books by and About Black Women – 2018 Edition; ... Arts and Entertainment Black Women Poets You Should Get to Know. Du Bois. In 2014, she founded the bell hooks Institute. 1856, she taught at Howard Black, Muslim woman child of her were. United States and Canada 1961 ) was a peaceable meeting. ” she has received fellowships. After two years and moved to New England from West Africa as a school teacher and to..., have been making big waves in the Harlem Renaissance been making big waves in the Black. 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