A dazzling new collection by the former Poet Laureate of the United States. In these brilliant poems, Rita Dove treats us to a panoply of human endeavor, shot through with the electrifying jazz of her lyric elegance. From the opening sequence, "Cameos", to the civil rights struggle of the final sequence, she explores the intersection of individual fate and history.
A biography of the African American woman and Civil Rights worker, whose refusal to give up her seat on a bus led to a boycott, which lasted more than a year in Montgomery, Alabama.
Finalist for the 2016 National Book Award Finalist for the 2017 NAACP Image Award Three decades of powerful lyric poetry from a virtuoso of the English language in one unabridged volume. Rita Dove’s Collected Poems 1974–2004 showcases the wide-ranging diversity that earned her a Pulitzer Prize, the position of U.S. poet laureate, a National Humanities Medal, and a National Medal of Art. Gathering thirty years and seven books, this volume compiles Dove’s fresh reflections on adolescence in The Yellow House on the Corner and her irreverent musings in Museum. She sets the moving love story of Thomas and Beulah against the backdrop of war, industrialization, and the civil right struggles. The multifaceted gems of Grace Notes, the exquisite reinvention of Greek myth in the sonnets of Mother Love, the troubling rapids of recent history in On the Bus with Rosa Parks, and the homage to America’s kaleidoscopic cultural heritage in American Smooth all celebrate Dove’s mastery of narrative context with lyrical finesse. With the “precise, singing lines” for which the Washington Post praised her, Dove “has created fresh configurations of the traditional and the experimental” (Poetry magazine).
A new collection by the Pulitzer Prize-winning former poet laureate celebrates America's cultural heritage with pieces about such topics as World War I's African-American jazz band, a Harlem girl's examination of adult flirting behaviors, and the first African-American Oscar winner. Reprint.
Moment of Truth When Rosa Parks was growing up in Montgomery, Alabama, she hated the unfair rules that black people had to live by -- like drinking out of special water fountains and riding in the back of the bus. Years later, Rosa Parks changed the lives of African American in Montgomery -- and all across America -- with one courageous act. On a December evening in 1955, Rosa Parks refused to give up her bus seat to a white passenger. She was arrested and put in jail. But Rosa Parks fought back, along with many other African Americans. After a long struggle, their heroic efforts launched the modern Civil Rights Movement. How could one quiet, gentle woman have started it all? This is her story.
Now in paperback - an important moment in history is presented in a cumulative format, accessible to the youngest readers. In 1955, a young woman named Rosa Parks took a big step for civil rights when she refused to give up her seat on a bus for a white passenger. The bus driver told her to move. Jim Crow laws told her to move. But Rosa Parks stayed where she was, and a chain of events was set into motion that would eventually change the course of American history. Fifty years later, The Bus Ride That Changed History retraces that chain of events—introducing the civil rights movement, one idea at a time. Take a ride through history in this unique retelling of what happened when one brave woman refused to stand up so that a white passenger could sit down.
Fifty years after she made history by refusing to give up her seat on a bus, Rosa Parks at last gets the major biography she deserves. The eminent historian Douglas Brinkley follows this thoughtful and devout woman from her childhood in Jim Crow Alabama through her early involvement in the NAACP to her epochal moment of courage and her afterlife as a beloved (and resented) icon of the civil rights movement. Well researched and written with sympathy and keen insight, the result is a moving, revelatory portrait of an American heroine and her tumultuous times.
"In Nikky Finney's Head Off & Split the beauty of language soars and saves us even as we skirt the raw edge of terror. And something rare and precious is restored, a light, a circling movement of the spirit. This is poetry to give thanks for."---Meena Alexander, author of Quickly Changing River --
A collection of poems expresses both the disappointments and awakenings of everyday life, and the acts of subtle heroism that can have resounding effects
