Profiles the founder of the "New Town" movement and discusses the development of British new towns, the Radburn Idea, Greenbelt Towns, and the American new towns such as Reston and Columbia.
Margaret Walker (1915-1998) began her writing career as a poet in the late 1930s. But she was cast into the limelight in 1966 when her novel Jubilee was published to wide critical and commercial acclaim. In interviews ranging from 1972 to 1996, Conversations with Margaret Walker captures Walker's voice as she discusses an incredibly wide range of interests. The same erudition, wit, and love of language on display in Jubilee comes through in conversations, as well as her sense of moral authority--imbued by a resonant Christian humanism--and her attention to historical detail. In a long 1972 conversation with fellow poet Nikki Giovanni, Walker argues about the tribulations and triumphs of motherhood, the presence of black women in literature, and race relations in American culture from 1900 to the present. With Marcia Greenlee in 1977, she talks extensively about her family's history and her love of botany. In several of the interviews, her friendship with Richard Wright rises to the forefront. Even in her interviews with Claudia Tate and John Griffin Jones, in which the interviewers try to direct the conversations toward the mechanics and thought processes behind Walker's writing, the talks often sweep into broader issues of African American culture, family history, and the past's influence on the present. This collection amply shows that Margaret Walker was a writer who considered her work to be deeply influenced by the culture around her. She viewed her writing as part of her larger life and not separate or distanced from her existence. Bracingly direct, witty, and oddly charming, the writer in Conversations with Margaret Walker is complicated, passionate, forceful, and piercingly intelligent.
From her conversation with James Baldwin, an interview that first aired on the television program Soul!, later published as A Dialogue. Also included is an excerpt from A Poetic Equation, her lengthy talk with the poet Margaret Walker. In this exchange of ideas and opinions with Walker a young poet new to the literary world assumes the role of spokesperson for a generation.
A Study Guide for Nikki Giovanni's "Knoxville, Tennesee," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
A Study Guide for Margaret Walker's "Lineage," excerpted from Gale's acclaimed Poetry for Students. This concise study guide includes plot summary; character analysis; author biography; study questions; historical context; suggestions for further reading; and much more. For any literature project, trust Poetry for Students for all of your research needs.
Representing an international gathering of scholars, Fields Watered with Blood constitutes the first critical assessment of the full scope of Margaret Walker’s literary career. As they discuss Walker’s work, including the landmark poetry collection For My People and the novel Jubilee, the contributors reveal the complex interplay of concerns and themes in Walker’s writing: folklore and prophecy, place and space, history and politics, gender and race. In addition, the contributors remark on how Walker’s emphases on spirituality and on dignity in her daily life make themselves felt in her writings and show how Walker’s accomplishments as a scholar, teacher, activist, mother, and family elder influenced what and how she wrote. A brief biography, an interview with literary critic Claudia Tate, a chronology of major events in Walker’s life, and a selected bibliography round out this collection, which will do much to further our understanding of the writer whom poet Nikki Giovanni once called “the most famous person nobody knows.”
From the creation of the first black fraternity at Cornell in 1906 to the present day, a fascinating history of America's nine black fraternities and sororities explores the roles of these organizations in shaping generations of African-American leaders. Reissue.
The most complete and affordable single-volume reference of African American culture available today, this almanac is a unique and valuable resource devoted to illustrating and demystifying the moving, difficult, and often lost history of black life in America. Celebrating centuries of achievements, the African American Almanac: 400 Years of Triumph, Courage, and Excellence provides insights on the influence, inspiration, and impact of African Americans on U.S. society and culture. A legacy of pride, struggle, and triumph is presented through a fascinating mix of biographies—including 750 influential figures—little-known or misunderstood historical facts, enlightening essays on significant legislation and movements, and 445 rare photographs and illustrations. Covering politics, education, religion, business, science, medicine, the military, sports, literature, music, dance, theater, art, film, and television, chapters address the important events and social and cultural changes that affected African Americans over the centuries, followed by biographical profiles of hundreds of key figures, including Muhammad Ali, Maya Angelou, Josephine Baker, Amiri Baraka, Daisy Bates, George Washington Carver, Ray Charles, Bessie Coleman, Gary Davis, Frederick Douglass, W. E. B. Du Bois, Michael Eric Dyson, Duke Ellington, Medgar Evers, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Eric H. Holder Jr., Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, LeBron James, Mae C. Jemison, Martin Luther King Jr., Queen Latifah, Jacob Lawrence, Kevin Liles, Thurgood Marshall, Walter Mosley, Elijah Muhammad, Barack Obama, Gordon Parks, Rosa Parks, Richard Pryor, Condoleezza Rice, Smokey Robinson, Wilma Rudolph, Betty Shabazz, Tavis Smiley, Clarence Thomas, Sojourner Truth, Harriet Ross Tubman, C. Delores Tucker, Usher, Denmark Vesey, Alice Walker, Booker T. Washington, Kanye West, Reggie White, Serena Williams, Oprah Winfrey, and Malcolm X. Explore a wealth of milestones, inspiration, challenges met, and lasting respect! The African American Almanac’s helpful bibliography and extensive index add to its usefulness.
Emerging from a matrix of Old Left, black nationalist, and bohemian ideologies and institutions, African American artists and intellectuals in the 1960s coalesced to form the Black Arts Movement, the cultural wing of the Black Power Movement. In this comprehensive analysis, James Smethurst examines the formation of the Black Arts Movement and demonstrates how it deeply influenced the production and reception of literature and art in the United States through its negotiations of the ideological climate of the Cold War, decolonization, and the civil rights movement. Taking a regional approach, Smethurst examines local expressions of the nascent Black Arts Movement, a movement distinctive in its geographical reach and diversity, while always keeping the frame of the larger movement in view. The Black Arts Movement, he argues, fundamentally changed American attitudes about the relationship between popular culture and "high" art and dramatically transformed the landscape of public funding for the arts.
   This first comprehensive collection of Margaret Walker's autobiographical and literary essays has been acclaimed as "a powerful social history and as a serious study of black American literature."- Kirkus Review In the title essay, Walker recounts the search for family and social history from which she wrote her carefully researched novel of the Civil War. The autobiographical essays reflect on her work and her life as an artist, as African-American, and a woman, while the literary essays examine the writings of such giants as Richard Wright, W.E.B. DuBois, Phyllis Wheatley, Georgia Douglas Johnson, and others. "Spanning a half-century (1943to 1988), these brilliant, intimate writings capture the flavor of the times and powerfully convey the social and literary thoughts that distinguishes Walker as one of the intellectual beacons of her generation."- Booklist