| Description |
xxiv, 244 pages ; 23 cm |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references. |
| Contents |
Foreword: Our first stories / Nikki Giovanni ; Introduction: Reading matters / Stephanie Stokes Oliver -- The peril, 1800-1900. Suspected of having a book / Frederick Douglass ; Nine years deprived of a sheet of paper / Solomon Northrup ; A whole race begins to read / Booker T. Washington ; Negro in literature and art / W.E.B. Du Bois -- The power, 1900-1968. Books and things / Zora Neale Hurston ; Poetry is practical / Langston Hughes ; Business of the writer / James Baldwin ; Turning point / Malcolm X ; Lessons in living / Maya Angelou ; Morehouse College / Martin Luther King Jr. ; Site of memory / Toni Morrison ; Where are the people of color in children's books? / Walter Dean Myers ; Reading for revolution / Stokely Carmichael [Kwame Ture] ; Twenty-one / Alice Walker ; A temporary library in a small place / Jamaica Kincaid ; What is an African American classic? / Henry Louis Gates Jr. ; New Black scribe / Terry McMillan -- The pleasure, 1968-2017. MFA vs. POC / Junot Díaz ; Create dangerously / Edwidge Danticat ; How to write / Colson Whitehead ; From Jamaica to Minnesota to myself / Marlon James ; I once was Miss America / Roxane Gay ; Mecca / Ta-Nehisi Coates ; Danger of the single story / Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie -- Bonus feature. What books mean to me / President Barack Obama ; an interview with Michiko Kakutani. |
| Summary |
Spanning 250 years, a collection highlights the hard-won literary progress of black people in America, who were once forbidden by law to learn how to read, with essays from Frederick Douglass, Solomon Northup, Booker T. Washington, Maya Angelou and many more. |
| Subject(S) |
American essays -- African American authors.
|
|
Essays.
|
| Added Name(S) |
Oliver, Stephanie Stokes, editor.
|
|
Giovanni, Nikki.
|
| ISBN |
9781501154287 (hardcover) |
|
1501154281 (hardcover) |
|
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