[by C. Liegh McInnis] Before I can discuss how “For My People” speaks to people today, I must begin by discussing the manner in which Dr. Alexander began her writing career by providing her readers with a literary manifesto, which shows that Dr. Alexander understood poetry to be an engagement of critical thinking through which societal ills can be resolved through creative approaches. With “I […]
Image via Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center. 2015 marks the 100th anniversary of Margaret Walker‘s birth. To celebrate the life of this remarkable author, Jackson State University’s Margaret Walker Center is sponsoring This is My Century: 100 Years of Margaret Walker, 1915-2015, a year of programming devoted to Walker’s work. HBW invites its readers to submit blog posts and/or longer […]
[by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.] Crafting a biography of Richard Wright places special demands on a biographer. Wright was a genius, a man who embodied profound intelligence and creative vision, but Mississippi in the early twentieth century wasn’t the place for nurturing his kind of genius. Gertrude Stein seems to have appreciated the irony that blooms when a native daughter and a native son share […]