Marshall, Paule: Brown Girl, Brownstones; Feminist Press, 1981. A trade paperback in Very Good+ condition. SIGNED by the author., Fiction . Previous owners inscription.
Marshall, Paule with an afterword by Mary Helen Washington: Brown Girl, Brownstones SIGNED; The Feminist Press c. 1959, 1981, Reprint; 2nd printing of the Feminist Press edition SIGNED by the author. The volume itself is undistinguished, being in generally Good - condition: the spine is square and the binding is solid. Reading creases along spine, quite a bit of general rubbing and shelfwear to the wraps General Fiction
___________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________
Paule Marshall (April 9, 1929 – August 12, 2019) was an American writer, best known for her 1959 debut novel Brown Girl, Brownstones. In 1992, at the age of 63, Marshall was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship grant.
Life and career
Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York,[1] to Adriana Viola Clement Burke and Sam Burke on April 9, 1929.[2] Marshall's father had migrated from the Caribbean island of Barbados to New York in 1919 and, during her childhood, deserted the family to join a quasi-religious cult, leaving his wife to raise their children by herself.[3] Marshall wrote about how her career was inspired by observing her mother's relationship to language: "It served as therapy, the cheapest kind available to my mother and her friends. It restored them to a sense of themselves and reaffirmed their self-worth. Through language they were able to overcome the humiliations of the work day. Confronted by a world they could not encompass, they took refuge in language."[4] Smitten with the poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, Marshall changed her given name from Pauline to Paule (with a silent e) when she was 12 or 13 years old.[5]
She attended Bushwick High School and subsequently enrolled in Hunter College, City University of New York, with plans of becoming a social worker. She took ill during college and took a year off, during which time she decided to major in English Literature,[6] eventually earning her Bachelor of Arts degree at Brooklyn College in 1953 and her master's degree at Hunter College in 1955.[7][8] After graduating from college, Marshall wrote for Our World, the acclaimed nationally distributed magazine edited for African-American readers, which she credited with teaching her discipline in writing and eventually aiding her in writing her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones.[9] In 1950 she married psychologist Kenneth Marshall; they divorced in 1963. In the 1970s she married Nourry Menard, a Haitian businessman.[10]
Early in her career, she wrote poetry, but later returned to prose, her debut novel being published in 1959. Brown Girl, Brownstones tells the story of Selina Boyce, a girl growing up in a small black immigrant community.[7] Selina is caught between her mother, who wants to conform to the ideals of her new home and make the American dream come true, and her father, who longs to go back to Barbados.[7] The dominant themes in the novel – travel, migration, psychic fracture and striving for wholeness – are important structuring elements in her later works as well.[7]
She received a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1961 and in the same year published Soul Clap Hands and Sing, a collection of four novellas that won her the National Institute of Arts Award.[10] In 1965, she was chosen by Langston Hughes to accompany him on a State Department-sponsored world tour, on which they both read their work, which was a boon to her career.[11] She subsequently published the novels The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969), which the New York Times Book Review called "one of the four or five most impressive novels ever written by a black American",[12] and Praisesong for the Widow (1983), the latter winning the Before Columbus Foundation American Book Award in 1984.[13] In 2021, the book was reissued by McSweeney's, as part of their "Of the Diaspora" series highlighting important works in Black literature, with an introduction by Opal Palmer Adisa.
Marshall taught at Virginia Commonwealth University, the University of California, Berkeley, the Iowa Writers' Workshop, and Yale University, before holding the Helen Gould Sheppard Chair of Literature and Culture at New York University.[14] In 1993 she received an honorary L.H.D. from Bates College. She lived in Richmond, Virginia.
She was a MacArthur Fellow and a winner of the Dos Passos Prize for Literature. She was designated as a Literary Lion by the New York Public Library in 1994.
Marshall was inducted into the Celebrity Path at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden in 2001.
Her memoir, Triangular Road, was published in 2009.[15]
In 2010, Paule Marshall won a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Anisfield-Wolf Book Awards.[16] She died in Richmond, Virginia on August 12, 2019, having had dementia in her later years.[17] A biography by Mary Helen Washington, to be published by Yale University Press, is in preparation.[18]
Works
Library resources about
Paule Marshall
Resources in your library
Resources in other libraries
By Paule Marshall
Online books
Resources in your library
Resources in other libraries
Brown Girl, Brownstones (Random House, 1959; The Feminist Press, 1981)
Soul Clap Hands and Sing (four short novels; Atheneum, 1961)
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (Harcourt, 1969)
Reena and Other Stories (The Feminist Press at CUNY, 1983)
Praisesong for the Widow (Putnam, 1983) (Reissued 2021, McSweeney's; hardcover ISBN 978-1-952-11904-0), with an introduction by Opal Palmer Adisa.)
Merle: A Novella, and Other Stories (Virago Press, 1985)
Daughters (Atheneum, 1991)
The Fisher King: A Novel (2001)
Triangular Road: A Memoir (Basic Civitas Books, 2009)
Quote
"I realise that it is fashionable now to dismiss the traditional novel as something of an anachronism, but to me it is still a vital form. Not only does it allow for the kind of full-blown, richly detailed writing that I love… but it permits me to operate on many levels and to explore both the inner state of my characters as well as the worlds beyond them."[19]
Brown Girl, Brownstones is the debut novel by the internationally recognized writer Paule Marshall, first published in 1959, and dramatized by CBS Television Workshop in 1960.[1] The story is about Barbadian immigrants in Brooklyn, New York. The book gained further recognition after it was reprinted in 1981 by the Feminist Press.[2]
Synopsis
Book 1. A Long Day and a Long Night
Ten-year-old Selina Boyce lives in a brownstone in Brooklyn with her Barbadian immigrant family: her mother Silla, father Deighton, and sister Ina. Silla is a strict, no-nonsense woman whose goal is to save enough money to purchase the brownstone they are leasing. Deighton is lackadaisical, impulsive, and he frequently cheats on his wife. His dreams of returning to Barbados and his frivolousness are a source of tension between Silla and him. Deighton inherits a piece of land; Silla wants him to sell it so they can buy the brownstone, but Deighton has fantasies about moving back and building an extravagant house. Suggie Skeete, Miss Mary, and Miss Thompson are a few other characters who appear sporadically; Selina goes to them for companionship and advice.
Book 2. Pastorale
Book 2 opens with a brief description of Deighton and Silla's drawn-out argument over selling the piece of land, and Selina imagining herself as one of the sleeping children who lived in the brownstone before the Boyces. Selina starts to think about womanhood and growing up. She goes to the park with her friend Beryl, where they have an argument about how babies are born: c-section or vaginal birth. Beryl confides to Selina that she has started menstruating. Selina is confused and somewhat repulsed by the idea, as she believes it will never happen to her. In reality, Selina feels left out and confused by puberty.
Book 3. The War
World War II is in progress at the start of the third book; this section spans a few years, beginning when Selina is around eleven and ends when she is fifteen. Book 3 is titled "The War" partially in reference to the war, but also in reference to the continuing argument between Silla and Deighton about his piece of land. A group of a few other Bajan women visits Silla in her kitchen while she makes Barbadian cuisine to sell. She vents her frustrations about the land, but she comes with a plan that will get it taken care of. Selina overhears, and Silla threatens to punish her if she tells her father.
Selina searches for someone she can tell about Silla's plans because she wants to protect her father. Deighton, still jobless, begins to devote his time to studying the trumpet. He believes that music will be his next get-rich-quick scheme. Selina tells him about the conversation Silla had with the other Bajan women and her plans to somehow sell the land, but reassures him that it's probably nothing to worry about. She fights with her sister, feeling ignored and unloved. Ina says that no one will ever like her because of her bold and brash personality.
Selina tells Miss Thompson about her fight and her concerns about her mother's plans. Miss Thompson, being a maternal and nurturing person, tries to help by distracting her. She fixes Selina's hair in curls, then Selina heads to her mother's work with the intention of confronting her about her plans to sell the land behind Deighton's back. Silla chastises her for travelling to the part of town by herself at night.
Silla reveals that she has successfully sold Deighton's land for nine hundred dollars. Over the course of a year, Silla forged letters to Deighton's sister and granted his sister the power of attorney to sell the land. Deighton seems to be resigned to this fact, and agrees to take out the money the following day. He is gone the entire day, which raises Silla's suspicions. Deighton comes home with an abundance of frivolous and extravagant gifts. Silla mourns the loss of the money that could have gotten them the brownstone.
The community attends the wedding of ’Gatha Steed’s daughter, which turns out to be an extravagant celebration. Deighton shows up to the reception, but it is clear that everyone know what he’s done, and he is essentially excommunicated. He severely injures his arm while incorrectly using machinery at a factory job, then begins to follow a cultist religion lead by a man called Father Peace. Deighton he demands to be called "Brother Boyce", and he renounces his family to be with other followers of Father Peace. Silla calls the authorities to have him deported back to Barbados. The family receives news that Deighton either jumped or fell off the ship that was on its way to Barbados, and he drowned.
Book 4. Selina
Since her father's death, Selina's grief has removed her even further from the community. She attends a party hosted by her childhood friend, Beryl, where Selina learns about the Association. She realizes that her peers are all conforming to their parents’ wishes rather than deciding their futures for themselves. Selina begins college. Silla owns the brownstone, and she works to get rid of Miss Mary and Suggie. Miss Mary passes away, and Silla is able to evict Suggie on the grounds that her promiscuous behavior seems suspiciously like prostitution. Selina loses two of the people she's closest to in a short span. Convinced Silla's doing it on purpose, she becomes even angrier and more reclusive.
Miss Thompson reveals to Selina how she got the sore on her leg. It was the result of a racist attack while she was in the South, where a man injured her with a shovel. She also encourages her to attend an Association meeting so she can re-connect with her "people" and her culture a bit more and stop feeling so alienated. Selina begrudgingly agrees to go, but she tells the group they are money-hungry, narrow-minded, etc. and their concerns are petty compared to what they have to face in the white world.
Selina meets Clive, a melancholy artist about ten years her senior. He initially seems to share a lot of Selina's personal values, and they begin a secret relationship. Selina joins her school dance team, discovering she has natural talent and enjoys it. Silla finds out about Clive, but Selina lies and says they are just friends. Silla warns Selina about him, saying that he is not the sort of person she should hang around with.
Selina decides to rejoin the Association under the pretense of wanting the scholarship they are offering. She plans to take the money and use it to run away with Clive. Selina dances a sola in a recital and has a racist encounter with one of the other dancer's mother afterwards. Selina goes straight to Clive's, and realizes that he never meant to go away with her. Selina leaves her copy of the key to his apartment and returns home to cry herself to sleep.
Selina wins the Association scholarship, but she declines the award. In private, she tells her mother she never stopped seeing Clive and what she had planned to do with the money. Selina plans to leave school and go to Barbados alone. The novel ends with Selina walking alone and tossing one of the silver bangles she has had since she was a baby towards a set of brownstones that are being torn down for a city project.
Reviews
"Remarkable for its colorful characters, the cadence of its dialogue and its evocation of a still-lingering past." — New York Times Book Review[3]
"Marshall brings to her characters ... an instinctive understanding, a generosity and free humor that combine to form a style remarkable for its courage, its color, and its natural control." — The New Yorker[3]
"An unforgettable novel written with pride and anger, with rebellion and tears." — New York Herald Tribune[3]
Criticism
Trudier Harris in her essay "No Outlet for the Blues: Silla Boyce’s Plight in Brown Girl, Brownstones"[4] highlights the opposing ideals of Selina's mother and father, and the effect of their ideas on their daughter Selina. Harris writes: "Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones presents a clash of cultures not only for the young protagonist Selina Boyce, who is torn between her father's love for Barbados and her mother's desire to succeed to the American Dream, but also for Silla Boyce, who has similar conflicts. This strong, bitter, frustrated, disappointed, loving, vindictive woman, who keeps striving in the face of all disappointments, is perhaps one of the most complex black women characters in contemporary American literature".[5] By the end of the novel, however, the author concludes that Silla is unable to change sufficiently to escape her blues: “She has grown in her knowledge of herself and of the actions of the people with whom she identifies, but she has not grown to the point of accepting the changes which should be dictated by such knowledge. She continues to give up something of her humanity by her refusal to change, and that perfect control of one's destiny, that inability to give oneself up to the release of music or of love, is what insures that her state of the blues will never find an outlet".[6]
The tension between the themes of individualism and ethnicity are explored in Martin Japtok's essay "Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones: Reconciling Ethnicity and Individualism",[7] which concludes: "The simultaneous assertion of ethnicity and individualism must thus be accomplished through a constructionist conceptualization of ethnicity that allows one to see ethnic solidarity as an original response to an Old World environment that still has validity in the New World, though maybe not the same urgency. […] Selina accepts ethnic communalism while pursuing an individualist agenda, creating a new conceptualization of ethnicity in the process".[8]
Gavin Jones begins his essay "'The Sea Ain’ Got No Back Door': The Problems of Black Consciousness in Paule Marshall's Brown Girl, Brownstones"[9] by quoting Marshall saying that unlike Ralph Ellison’s protagonist in Invisible Man, her own mother and friends "'suffered a triple invisibility, being black, female, and foreigners'".[10] The essay goes on to explore this complex triple-identity. Jones concludes: "Marshall's novel is a radical expression of how the black self, when it exists at the intersections of ethnicity, nationhood, and gender, has its wholeness challenged by alternative and frequently conflicting definitions. Just as the sea in Brown Girl contains contradictory multitudes—it is the sea of female creativity, diasporic consciousness, and African history, yet also the sea of colonial exploitation, industrial decay, and obliteration of the black past—Marshall’s novel as a whole proposes a sense of selfhood which, like a prism, contains many faces, each one refracting at an acute angle of difference".[11]
The MacArthur Fellows Program, also known as the MacArthur Fellowship and commonly but unofficially known as the "Genius Grant", is a prize awarded annually by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation typically to between 20 and 30 individuals, working in any field, who have shown "extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction" and are citizens or residents of the United States.[1]
According to the foundation's website, "the fellowship is not a reward for past accomplishment, but rather an investment in a person's originality, insight, and potential," but it also says such potential is "based on a track record of significant accomplishments." The current prize is $800,000 paid over five years in quarterly installments. Previously it was $625,000. This figure was increased from $500,000 in 2013 with the release of a review[2] of the MacArthur Fellows Program. Since 1981, 1,111 people have been named MacArthur Fellows,[3] ranging in age from 18 to 82.[4] The award has been called "one of the most significant awards that is truly 'no strings attached'".[5]
The program does not accept applications. Anonymous and confidential nominations are invited by the foundation and reviewed by an anonymous and confidential selection committee of about a dozen people. The committee reviews all nominees and recommends recipients to the president and board of directors. Most new fellows first learn of their nomination and award upon receiving a congratulatory phone call. MacArthur Fellow Jim Collins described this experience in an editorial column of The New York Times.[6]
Cecilia Conrad is the managing director leading the MacArthur Fellows Program.[7]
Recipients
Since the inaugural class of 1981, the program has awarded 1,111 fellowships. Alumni of Harvard University account for 175 fellowships, followed by the alumni of Yale University (93), University of California, Berkeley (75), Princeton University (68), and Columbia University (54). The following ten universities have the most alumni fellows.[3]
Institution Fellows (1981-2022)[3]
Harvard 175
Yale 93
Berkeley 75
Princeton 68
Columbia 54
MIT 48
Stanford 40
Chicago 39
Cornell 37
Oxford (UK) 35
1981
Robert Penn Warren
A. R. Ammons, poet
Joseph Brodsky, poet
John Cairns, molecular biologist
Gregory V. Chudnovsky, mathematician
Joel E. Cohen, population biologist
Robert Coles, child psychiatrist
Richard Critchfield, essayist
Shelly Errington, cultural anthropologist
Howard Gardner, psychologist
Henry Louis Gates Jr., literary critic
John Gaventa, sociologist
Michael Ghiselin, evolutionary biologist
Stephen Jay Gould, paleontologist
Ian Graham, archaeologist
David Hawkins, philosopher
John P. Holdren, arms control and energy analyst
Ada Louise Huxtable, architectural critic and historian
John Imbrie, climatologist
Robert Kates, geographer
Raphael Carl Lee, surgeon
Elma Lewis, arts educator
Cormac McCarthy, writer
Barbara McClintock, geneticist
James Alan McPherson, short story writer and essayist
Roy P. Mottahedeh, historian
Richard C. Mulligan, molecular biologist
Douglas D. Osheroff, physicist
Elaine H. Pagels, historian of religion
David Pingree, historian of science
Paul G. Richards, seismologist
Robert Root-Bernstein, biologist and historian of science
Richard Rorty, philosopher
Lawrence Rosen, attorney and anthropologist
Carl Emil Schorske, intellectual historian
Leslie Marmon Silko, writer
Joseph Hooton Taylor Jr., astrophysicist
Derek Walcott, poet and playwright
Robert Penn Warren, poet, novelist, and literary critic
Stephen Wolfram, computer scientist and physicist[8]
Michael Woodford, economist
George Zweig, physicist and neurobiologist[9]
1982
Frank Wilczek
Fouad Ajami, political scientist
Charles A. Bigelow, type designer
Peter Robert Lamont Brown, historian
Robert Darnton, European historian
Persi Diaconis, statistician
William Gaddis, novelist
Ved Mehta, writer
Bob Moses, educator and philosopher
Richard A. Muller, geologist and astrophysicist
Conlon Nancarrow, composer
Alfonso Ortiz, cultural anthropologist
Francesca Rochberg, Assyriologist and historian of science
Charles Sabel, political scientist and legal scholar
Ralph Shapey, composer and conductor
Michael Silverstein, linguist
Randolph Whitfield Jr., ophthalmologist
Frank Wilczek, physicist
Frederick Wiseman, documentary filmmaker
Edward Witten, physicist, creator of the M-Theory[10]
1983
John Sayles
R. Stephen Berry, physical chemist
Seweryn Bialer, political scientist
William C. Clark, ecologist and environmental policy analyst
Philip D. Curtin, historian of Africa
William H. Durham, biological anthropologist
Bradley Efron, statistician
David L. Felten, neuroscientist
Randall W. Forsberg, political scientist and arms control strategist
Alexander L. George, political scientist
Shelomo Dov Goitein, medieval historian
Mott T. Greene, historian of science
James E. Gunn, astronomer
Ramón A. Gutiérrez, historian
John J. Hopfield, physicist and biologist
Béla Julesz, psychologist
William Kennedy, novelist
Leszek Kołakowski, historian of philosophy and religion
Sylvia A. Law, human rights lawyer
Brad Leithauser, poet and writer
Lawrence W. Levine, historian
Ralph Manheim, translator
Robert K. Merton, historian and sociologist of science
Walter F. Morris Jr., cultural preservationist
Charles S. Peskin, mathematician and physiologist
A.K. Ramanujan, poet, translator, and literary scholar
Alice M. Rivlin, economist and policy analyst
Julia Robinson, mathematician
John Sayles, filmmaker and writer
Richard M. Schoen, mathematician
Peter Sellars, theater and opera director
Karen K. Uhlenbeck, mathematician[11]
Adrian Wilson, book designer, printer, and book historian
Irene J. Winter, art historian and archaeologist
Mark S. Wrighton, chemist[12]
1984
Michael H. Freedman
George W. Archibald, ornithologist
Shelly Bernstein, pediatric hematologist
Peter J. Bickel, statistician
Ernesto J. Cortes Jr., community organizer
William Drayton, public service innovator
Sidney Drell, physicist and arms policy analyst
Mitchell J. Feigenbaum, mathematical physicist
Michael H. Freedman, mathematician
Curtis G. Hames, family physician
Robert Hass, poet, critic, and translator
Shirley Heath, linguistic anthropologist
J. Bryan Hehir, religion and foreign policy scholar
Bette Howland, writer and literary critic
Bill Irwin, clown, writer, and performance artist
Robert Irwin, light and space artist
Ruth Prawer Jhabvala, novelist and screenwriter
Fritz John, mathematician
Galway Kinnell, poet
Henry Kraus, labor and art historian
Paul Oskar Kristeller, intellectual historian and philosopher
Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, educator
Heather Lechtman, materials scientist and archaeologist
Michael Lerner, public health leader[13]
Andrew W. Lewis, medieval historian
Arnold J. Mandell, neuroscientist and psychiatrist
Peter Mathews, archaeologist and epigrapher
Matthew Meselson, geneticist and arms control analyst
David R. Nelson, physicist
Beaumont Newhall, historian of photography
Roger S. Payne, zoologist and conservationist
Michael Piore, economist
Edward V. Roberts, disability rights leader
Judith N. Shklar, political philosopher
Charles Simic, poet, translator, and essayist
Elliot Sperling, Tibetan studies scholar
David Stuart, linguist and epigrapher
Frank Sulloway, psychologist (child birth-order research)
John E. Toews, intellectual historian
Alar Toomre, astronomer and mathematician
James Turrell, light sculptor
Amos Tversky, cognitive scientist
Bret Wallach, geographer
Jay Weiss, psychologist
Arthur Winfree, physiologist and mathematician
J. Kirk Varnedoe, art historian
Carl R. Woese, molecular biologist[14]
Billie Young, community development leader[15]
1985
Marian Wright Edelman
Joan Abrahamson, community development leader
John Ashbery, poet
John F. Benton, medieval historian
Harold Bloom, literary critic
Valery Chalidze, physicist and human rights organizer
William Cronon, environmental historian
Merce Cunningham, choreographer
Jared Diamond, environmental historian and geographer
Marian Wright Edelman, Children's Defense Fund founder
Morton Halperin, political scientist
Robert M. Hayes, lawyer and human rights leader
Edwin Hutchins, cognitive scientist
Sam Maloof, professional woodworker and furniture maker
Andrew McGuire, trauma prevention specialist
Patrick Noonan, conservationist
George Oster, mathematical biologist
Thomas G. Palaima, classicist
Peter Raven, botanist
Jane S. Richardson, biochemist
Gregory Schopen, historian of religion
Franklin Stahl, geneticist
J. Richard Steffy, nautical archaeologist
Ellen Stewart, theater director
Paul Taylor, choreographer, dance company founder
Shing-Tung Yau, mathematician[16]
1986
Jack Horner
Paul Adams, neurobiologist
Milton Babbitt, composer and music theorist
Christopher Beckwith, philologist
Richard Benson, photographer
Lester R. Brown, agricultural economist
Caroline Bynum, medieval historian
William A. Christian, historian of religion
Nancy Farriss, historian
Benedict Gross, mathematician
Daryl Hine, poet and translator
John Robert Horner, paleobiologist
Thomas C. Joe, social policy analyst
David Keightley, historian and sinologist
Albert J. Libchaber, physicist
David C. Page, molecular geneticist
George Perle, composer and music theorist
James Randi, magician
David Rudovsky, civil rights lawyer
Robert Shapley, neurophysiologist
Leo Steinberg, art historian
Richard P. Turco, atmospheric scientist
Thomas Whiteside, journalist
Allan C. Wilson, biochemist
Jay Wright, poet and playwright
Charles Wuorinen, composer[17]
1987
Robert Sapolsky
Walter Abish, writer
Robert Axelrod, political scientist
Robert F. Coleman, mathematician
Douglas Crase, poet
Daniel Friedan, physicist
David Gross, physicist
Ira Herskowitz, molecular geneticist
Irving Howe, literary and social critic
Wesley Charles Jacobs Jr., rural planner
Peter Jeffery, musicologist
Horace Freeland Judson, historian of science
Stuart Alan Kauffman, evolutionary biologist
Richard Kenney, poet
Eric Lander, geneticist and mathematician
Michael Malin, geologist and planetary scientist
Deborah W. Meier, education reform leader
Arnaldo Dante Momigliano, historian
David Mumford, mathematician
Tina Rosenberg, journalist
David Rumelhart, cognitive scientist and psychologist
Robert Morris Sapolsky, neuroendocrinologist and primatologist
Meyer Schapiro, art historian
John H. Schwarz, physicist
Jon Seger, evolutionary ecologist
Stephen Shenker, physicist
David Dean Shulman, historian of religion
Muriel S. Snowden, community organizer
Mark Strand, poet and writer
May Swenson, poet
Huỳnh Sanh Thông, translator and editor
William Julius Wilson, sociologist
Richard Wrangham, primate ethologist[18]
1988
Max Roach
Charles Archambeau, geophysicist
Michael Baxandall, art historian
Ruth Behar, cultural anthropologist
Ran Blake, composer and pianist
Charles Burnett, filmmaker
Philip James DeVries, insect biologist
Andre Dubus, writer
Helen T. Edwards, physicist
Jon H. Else, documentary filmmaker
John G. Fleagle, primatologist and paleontologist
Cornell H. Fleischer, Middle Eastern historian
Getatchew Haile, philologist and linguist
Raymond Jeanloz, geophysicist
Marvin Philip Kahl, zoologist
Naomi Pierce, biologist
Thomas Pynchon, novelist
Stephen J. Pyne, environmental historian
Max Roach, drummer and jazz composer
Hipolito (Paul) Roldan, community developer
Anna Curtenius Roosevelt, archaeologist
David Alan Rosenberg, military historian
Susan Irene Rotroff, archaeologist
Bruce Schwartz, figurative sculptor and puppeteer
Robert Shaw, physicist
Jonathan Spence, historian
Noel M. Swerdlow, historian of science
Gary A. Tomlinson, musicologist
Alan Walker, paleontologist
Eddie N. Williams,[19] policy analyst and civil rights leader
Rita P. Wright, archaeologist
Garth Youngberg, agriculturalist[20]
1989
Errol Morris
Anthony Amsterdam, attorney and legal scholar
Byllye Avery, women's healthcare leader
Alvin Bronstein, human rights lawyer
Leo Buss, evolutionary biologist
Jay Cantor, writer
George Davis, environmental policy analyst
Allen Grossman, poet
John Harbison, composer and conductor
Keith Hefner, journalist and educator
Ralf Hotchkiss, rehabilitation engineer
John Rice Irwin, curator and cultural preservationist
Daniel Janzen, ecologist
Bernice Johnson Reagon, music historian, composer, and vocalist
Aaron Lansky, cultural preservationist
Jennifer Moody, archaeologist and anthropologist
Errol Morris, filmmaker
Vivian Paley, educator and writer
Richard Powers, novelist
Martin Puryear, sculptor
Theodore Rosengarten, historian
Margaret W. Rossiter, historian of science
George Russell, composer and music theorist
Pam Solo, arms control analyst
Ellendea Proffer Teasley, translator and publisher
Claire Van Vliet, book artist
Baldemar Velasquez, farm labor leader
Bill Viola, video artist
Eliot Wigginton, educator
Patricia Wright, primatologist[21]
1990
Paul Ehrlich
John Christian Bailar, biostatistician
Martha Clarke, theater director
Jacques d'Amboise, dance educator
Guy Davenport, writer, critic, and translator
Lisa Delpit, education reform leader
John Eaton, composer
Paul R. Ehrlich, population biologist
Charlotte Erickson, historian
Lee Friedlander, photographer
Margaret Geller, astrophysicist
Jorie Graham, poet
Patricia Hampl, writer
John Hollander, poet and literary critic
Thomas Cleveland Holt, social and cultural historian
David Kazhdan, mathematician
Calvin King, land and farm development specialist
M. A. R. Koehl, marine biologist
Nancy Kopell, mathematician
Michael Moschen, performance artist
Gary Nabhan, ethnobotanist
Sherry Ortner, anthropologist
Otis Pitts, community development leader
Yvonne Rainer, filmmaker and choreographer
Michael Schudson, sociologist
Rebecca J. Scott, historian
Marc Shell, scholar
Susan Sontag, writer and cultural critic
Richard Stallman, Free Software Foundation founder, copyleft concept inventor
Guy Tudor, conservationist
Maria Varela, community development leader
Gregory Vlastos, classicist and philosopher
Kent Whealy, preservationist
Eric Wolf, anthropologist
Sidney Wolfe, physician
Robert Woodson, community development leader
José Zalaquett, human rights lawyer[22]
1991
Taylor Branch
Jacqueline Barton, biophysical chemist
Paul Berman, journalist
James Blinn, computer animator
Taylor Branch, social historian
Trisha Brown, choreographer
Mari Jo Buhle, American historian
Patricia Churchland, (neuro)philosopher
David Donoho, statistician
Steven Feld, anthropologist
Alice Fulton, poet
Guillermo Gómez-Peña, writer and artist
Jerzy Grotowski, theater director
David Hammons, artist
Sophia Bracy Harris, child care leader
Lewis Hyde, writer
Ali Akbar Khan, musician
Sergiu Klainerman, mathematician
Martin Kreitman, geneticist
Harlan Lane, psychologist and linguist
William Linder, community development leader
Patricia Locke, tribal rights leader
Mark Morris, choreographer and dancer
Marcel Ophüls, documentary filmmaker
Arnold Rampersad, biographer and literary critic
Gunther Schuller, composer, conductor, jazz historian
Joel Schwartz, epidemiologist
Cecil Taylor, jazz pianist and composer
Julie Taymor, theater director
David Werner, health care leader
James Westphal, engineer and scientist
Eleanor Wilner, poet[23]
1992
Stephen Schneider
Janet Benshoof, human rights lawyer
Robert Blackburn, printmaker
Unita Blackwell, civil rights leader
Lorna Bourg, rural development leader
Stanley Cavell, philosopher
Amy Clampitt, poet
Ingrid Daubechies, mathematician
Wendy Ewald, photographer
Irving Feldman, poet
Barbara Fields, historian
Robert Hall, journalist
Ann Ellis Hanson, historian
John Henry Holland, computer scientist
Wes Jackson, agronomist
Evelyn Keller, historian and philosopher of science
Steve Lacy, saxophonist and composer
Suzanne Lebsock, social historian
Sharon Long, plant biologist
Norman Manea, writer
Paule Marshall, writer
Michael Massing, journalist
Robert McCabe, educator
Susan Meiselas, photojournalist
Amalia Mesa-Bains, artist and cultural critic
Stephen Schneider, climatologist
Joanna Scott, writer
John T. Scott, artist
John Terborgh, conservation biologist
Twyla Tharp, dancer and choreographer
Philip Treisman, mathematics educator
Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, historian
Geerat J. Vermeij, evolutionary biologist
Günter Wagner, developmental biologist[24]
1993
Amory Lovins
Nancy Cartwright, philosopher
Demetrios Christodoulou, mathematician and physicist
Maria Crawford, geologist
Stanley Crouch, jazz critic and writer
Nora England, anthropological linguist
Paul Farmer, medical anthropologist
Victoria Foe, developmental biologist
Ernest Gaines, writer
Pedro Greer, physician
Thom Gunn, poet and literary critic
Ann Hamilton, artist
Sokoni Karanja, child and family development specialist
Ann Lauterbach, poet and literary critic
Stephen Lee, chemist
Carol Levine, AIDS policy specialist
Amory Lovins, physicist and energy analyst
Jane Lubchenco, marine biologist
Ruth Lubic, nurse and midwife
Jim Powell, poet, translator, and literary critic
Margie Profet, evolutionary biologist
Thomas Scanlon, philosopher
Aaron Shirley, health care leader
William Siemering, journalist and radio producer
Ellen Silbergeld, toxicologist
Leonard van der Kuijp, philologist and historian
Frank von Hippel, arms control and energy analyst
John Edgar Wideman, writer
Heather Williams, biologist and ornithologist
Marion Williams, gospel music performer
Robert H. Williams, physicist and energy analyst
Henry T. Wright, archaeologist and anthropologist[25]
1994
Ornette Coleman
Robert Adams, photographer
Jeraldyne Blunden, choreographer
Anthony Braxton, avant-garde composer and musician
Rogers Brubaker, sociologist
Ornette Coleman, jazz performer and composer
Israel Gelfand, mathematician
Faye Ginsburg, anthropologist
Heidi Hartmann, economist
Bill T. Jones, dancer and choreographer
Peter E. Kenmore, agricultural entomologist
Joseph E. Marshall, educator
Carolyn McKecuen, economic development leader
Donella Meadows, writer
Arthur Mitchell, company director and choreographer
Hugo Morales, radio producer
Janine Pease, educator
Willie Reale, theater arts educator
Adrienne Rich, poet and writer
Sam-Ang Sam, musician and cultural preservationist
Jack Wisdom, physicist[26]
1995
Octavia Butler
Allison Anders, filmmaker
Jed Z. Buchwald, historian
Octavia E. Butler, science fiction novelist
Sandra Cisneros, writer and poet
Sandy Close, journalist
Frederick C. Cuny, disaster relief specialist
Sharon Emerson, biologist
Richard Foreman, theater director
Alma Guillermoprieto, journalist
Virginia Hamilton, writer
Donald Hopkins, physician
Susan W. Kieffer, geologist
Elizabeth LeCompte, theater director
Patricia Nelson Limerick, historian
Michael Marletta, chemist
Pamela Matson, ecologist
Susan McClary, musicologist
Meredith Monk, vocalist, composer, director
Rosalind P. Petchesky, political scientist
Joel Rogers, political scientist
Cindy Sherman, photographer
Bryan Stevenson, human rights lawyer
Nicholas Strausfeld, neurobiologist
Richard White, historian[27]
1996
Anna Deavere Smith
James Roger Prior Angel, astronomer
Joaquin Avila, voting rights advocate
Allan Bérubé, historian
Barbara Block, marine biologist
Joan Breton Connelly, classical archaeologist
Thomas Daniel, biologist
Martin Daniel Eakes, economic development strategist
Rebecca Goldstein, writer
Robert Greenstein, public policy analyst
Richard Howard, poet, translator, and literary critic
John Jesurun, playwright
Richard Lenski, biologist
Louis Massiah, documentary filmmaker
Vonnie McLoyd, developmental psychologist
Thylias Moss, poet and writer
Eiko Otake and Koma Otake, dancers, choreographers
Nathan Seiberg, physicist
Anna Deavere Smith, playwright, journalist, actress
Dorothy Stoneman, educator
Bill Strickland, art educator[28]
1997
David Foster Wallace
Luis Alfaro, writer and performance artist
Lee Breuer, playwright
Vija Celmins, artist
Eric Charnov, evolutionary biologist
Elouise P. Cobell, banker
Peter Galison, historian
Mark Harrington, AIDS researcher
Eva Harris, molecular biologist
Michael Kremer, economist
Russell Lande, biologist
Kerry James Marshall, artist
Nancy A. Moran, evolutionary biologist and ecologist
Han Ong, playwright
Kathleen Ross, educator
Pamela Samuelson, copyright scholar and activist
Susan Stewart, literary scholar and poet
Elizabeth Streb, dancer and choreographer
Trimpin, sound sculptor
Loïc Wacquant, sociologist
Kara Walker, artist
David Foster Wallace, author and journalist
Andrew Wiles, mathematician
Brackette Williams, anthropologist[29]
1998
Tim Berners-Lee
Janine Antoni, artist
Ida Applebroog, artist
Ellen Barry, attorney and human rights activist
Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the World Wide Web
Linda Bierds, poet
Bernadette Brooten, historian
John Carlstrom, astrophysicist
Mike Davis, historian
Nancy Folbre, economist
Avner Greif, economist
Kun-Liang Guan, biochemist
Gary Hill, artist
Edward Hirsch, poet, essayist
Ayesha Jalal, historian
Charles R. Johnson, writer
Leah Krubitzer, neuroscientist
Stewart Kwoh, human rights activist
Charles Lewis, journalist
William W. McDonald, rancher and conservationist
Peter N. Miller, historian
Don Mitchell, cultural geographer
Rebecca Nelson, plant pathologist
Elinor Ochs, linguistic anthropologist
Ishmael Reed, poet, essayist, novelist
Benjamin D. Santer, atmospheric scientist
Karl Sims, computer scientist and artist
Dorothy Thomas, human rights activist
Leonard Zeskind, human rights activist
Mary Zimmerman, playwright[30]
1999
Alison Des Forges
Jillian Banfield, geologist
Carolyn Bertozzi, chemist
Xu Bing, artist and printmaker
Bruce G. Blair, policy analyst
John Bonifaz, election lawyer and voting rights leader
Shawn Carlson, science educator
Mark Danner, journalist
Alison L. Des Forges, human rights activist
Elizabeth Diller, architect
Saul Friedländer, historian
Jennifer Gordon, lawyer
David Hillis, biologist
Sara Horowitz, lawyer
Jacqueline Jones, historian
Laura L. Kiessling, biochemist
Leslie Kurke, classicist
David Levering Lewis, biographer and historian
Juan Maldacena, physicist
Gay J. McDougall, human rights lawyer
Campbell McGrath, poet
Denny Moore, anthropological linguist
Elizabeth Murray, artist
Pepón Osorio, artist
Ricardo Scofidio, architect
Peter Shor, computer scientist
Eva Silverstein, physicist
Wilma Subra, scientist
Ken Vandermark, saxophonist, composer
Naomi Wallace, playwright
Jeffrey Weeks, mathematician
Fred Wilson, artist
Ofelia Zepeda, linguist[31]
2000
Cecilia Muñoz
Susan E. Alcock, archaeologist
K. Christopher Beard, paleontologist
Lucy Blake, conservationist
Anne Carson, poet
Peter J. Hayes, energy policy activist
David Isay, radio producer
Alfredo Jaar, photographer
Ben Katchor, graphic novelist
Hideo Mabuchi, physicist
Susan Marshall, choreographer
Samuel Mockbee, architect
Cecilia Muñoz, civil rights policy analyst
Margaret Murnane, optical physicist
Laura Otis, literary scholar and historian of science
Lucia M. Perillo, poet
Matthew Rabin, economist
Carl Safina, marine conservationist
Daniel P. Schrag, geochemist
Susan E. Sygall, civil rights leader
Gina G. Turrigiano, neuroscientist
Gary Urton, anthropologist
Patricia J. Williams, legal scholar
Deborah Willis, historian of photography and photographer
Erik Winfree, computer and materials scientist
Horng-Tzer Yau, mathematician[32]
2001
Lene Hau
Andrea Barrett, writer
Christopher Chyba, astrobiologist
Michael Dickinson, fly biologist, bioengineer
Rosanne Haggerty, housing and community development leader
Lene Hau, physicist
Dave Hickey, art critic
Stephen Hough, pianist and composer
Kay Redfield Jamison, psychologist
Sandra Lanham, pilot and conservationist
Iñigo Manglano-Ovalle, artist
Cynthia Moss, natural historian
Aihwa Ong, anthropologist
Dirk Obbink, classicist and papyrologist
Norman R. Pace, biochemist
Suzan-Lori Parks, playwright
Brooks Pate, physical chemist
Xiao Qiang, human rights leader
Geraldine Seydoux, molecular biologist
Bright Sheng, composer
David Spergel, astrophysicist
Jean Strouse, biographer
Julie Su, human rights lawyer
David Wilson, museum founder[33]
2002
Colson Whitehead
Danielle Allen, classicist and political scientist
Bonnie Bassler, molecular biologist
Ann M. Blair, intellectual historian
Katherine Boo, journalist
Paul Ginsparg, physicist
David B. Goldstein, energy conservation specialist
Karen Hesse, writer
Janine Jagger, epidemiologist
Daniel Jurafsky, computer scientist and linguist
Toba Khedoori, artist
Liz Lerman, choreographer
George E. Lewis, trombonist
Liza Lou, artist
Edgar Meyer, bassist and composer
Jack Miles, writer and Biblical scholar
Erik Mueggler, anthropologist and ethnographer
Sendhil Mullainathan, economist
Stanley Nelson, documentary filmmaker
Lee Ann Newsom, paleoethnobotanist
Daniela L. Rus, computer scientist
Charles C. Steidel, astronomer
Brian Tucker, seismologist
Camilo José Vergara, photographer
Paul Wennberg, atmospheric chemist
Colson Whitehead, writer[34]
2003
Jim Yong Kim
Guillermo Algaze, archaeologist
Jim Collins, biomedical engineer
Lydia Davis, writer and translator
Erik Demaine, theoretical computer scientist
Corinne Dufka, human rights researcher
Peter Gleick, conservation analyst
Osvaldo Golijov, composer
Deborah Jin, physicist
Angela Johnson, writer
Tom Joyce, blacksmith
Sarah H. Kagan, gerontological nurse
Ned Kahn, artist and science exhibit designer
Jim Yong Kim, public health physician
Nawal M. Nour, obstetrician and gynecologist
Loren H. Rieseberg, botanist
Amy Rosenzweig, biochemist
Pedro A. Sanchez, agronomist
Lateefah Simon, women's development leader
Peter Sís, illustrator
Sarah Sze, sculptor
Eve Troutt Powell, historian
Anders Winroth, historian
Daisy Youngblood, ceramic artist
Xiaowei Zhuang, biophysicist[35]
2004
C. D. Wright
Angela Belcher, materials scientist and engineer
Gretchen Berland, physician and filmmaker
James Carpenter, artist
Joseph DeRisi, biologist
Katherine Gottlieb, health care leader
David Green, technology transfer innovator
Aleksandar Hemon, writer
Heather Hurst, archaeological illustrator
Edward P. Jones, writer
John Kamm, human rights activist
Daphne Koller, computer scientist
Naomi Leonard, engineer
Tommie Lindsey, school debate coach
Rueben Martinez, businessman and activist
Maria Mavroudi, historian
Vamsi Mootha, physician and computational biologist
Judy Pfaff, sculptor
Aminah Robinson, artist
Reginald Robinson, pianist and composer
Cheryl Rogowski, farmer
Amy Smith, inventor and mechanical engineer
Julie Theriot, microbiologist
C. D. Wright, poet[36]
2005
Jonathan Lethem
Marin Alsop, symphony conductor
Ted Ames, fisherman, conservationist, marine biologist
Terry Belanger, rare book preservationist
Edet Belzberg, documentary filmmaker
Majora Carter, urban revitalization strategist
Lu Chen, neuroscientist
Michael Cohen, pharmacist
Joseph Curtin, violinmaker
Aaron Dworkin, music educator
Teresita Fernández, sculptor
Claire Gmachl, quantum cascade laser engineer
Sue Goldie, physician and researcher
Steven Goodman, conservation biologist
Pehr Harbury, biochemist
Nicole King, molecular biologist
Jon Kleinberg, computer scientist
Jonathan Lethem, novelist
Michael Manga, geophysicist
Todd Martinez, theoretical chemist
Julie Mehretu, painter
Kevin M. Murphy, economist
Olufunmilayo Olopade, clinician and researcher
Fazal Sheikh, photographer
Emily Thompson, aural historian
Michael Walsh, vehicle emissions specialist[37]
2006
Regina Carter
David Carroll, naturalist author and illustrator
Regina Carter, jazz violinist
Kenneth C. Catania, neurobiologist
Lisa Curran, tropical forester
Kevin Eggan, biologist
Jim Fruchterman, technologist, CEO of Benetech
Atul Gawande, surgeon and author
Linda Griffith, bioengineer
Victoria Hale, CEO of OneWorld Health
Adrian Nicole LeBlanc, journalist and author
David Macaulay, author and illustrator
Josiah McElheny, sculptor
D. Holmes Morton, physician
John A. Rich, physician
Jennifer Richeson, social psychologist
Sarah Ruhl, playwright
George Saunders, short story writer
Anna Schuleit, commemorative artist
Shahzia Sikander, painter
Terence Tao, mathematician
Claire J. Tomlin, aviation engineer
Luis von Ahn, computer scientist
Edith Widder, deep-sea explorer
Matias Zaldarriaga, cosmologist
John Zorn, composer and musician[38]
2007
Shen Wei
Deborah Bial, education strategist
Peter Cole, translator, poet, publisher
Lisa Cooper, public health physician
Ruth DeFries, environmental geographer
Mercedes Doretti, forensic anthropologist
Stuart Dybek, short story writer
Marc Edwards, water quality engineer
Michael Elowitz, molecular biologist
Saul Griffith, inventor
Sven Haakanson, Alutiiq curator, anthropologist, preservationist
Corey Harris, blues musician
Cheryl Hayashi, spider silk biologist
My Hang V. Huynh, chemist
Claire Kremen, conservation biologist
Whitfield Lovell, painter and installation artist
Yoky Matsuoka, neuroroboticist
Lynn Nottage, playwright
Mark Roth, biomedical scientist
Paul Rothemund, nanotechnologist
Jay Rubenstein, medieval historian
Jonathan Shay, clinical psychiatrist and classicist
Joan Snyder, painter
Dawn Upshaw, vocalist
Shen Wei, choreographer[39]
2008
Regina Benjamin
Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, novelist
Will Allen, urban farmer
Regina Benjamin, rural family doctor
Kirsten Bomblies, evolutionary plant geneticist
Tara Donovan, artist
Andrea Ghez, astrophysicist
Stephen D. Houston, anthropologist
Mary Jackson, weaver and sculptor
Leila Josefowicz, violinist
Alexei Kitaev, physicist
Walter Kitundu, instrument maker and composer
Susan Mango, developmental biologist
Diane E. Meier, geriatrician
David R. Montgomery, geomorphologist
John Ochsendorf, engineer and architectural historian
Peter Pronovost, critical care physician
Adam Riess, astrophysicist
Alex Ross, music critic
Wafaa El-Sadr, infectious disease specialist
Nancy Siraisi, historian of medicine
Marin Soljačić, optical physicist
Sally Temple, neuroscientist
Jennifer Tipton, stage lighting designer
Rachel Wilson, experimental neurobiologist
Miguel Zenón, saxophonist and composer[40]
2009
Esther Duflo
Lynsey Addario, photojournalist
Maneesh Agrawala, computer vision technologist
Timothy Barrett, papermaker
Mark Bradford, mixed media artist
Edwidge Danticat, novelist
Rackstraw Downes, painter
Esther Duflo, economist
Deborah Eisenberg, short story writer
Lin He, molecular biologist
Peter Huybers, climate scientist
James Longley, filmmaker
L. Mahadevan, applied mathematician
Heather McHugh, poet
Jerry Mitchell, investigative reporter
Rebecca Onie, health services innovator
Richard Prum, ornithologist
John A. Rogers, applied physicist
Elyn Saks, mental health lawyer
Jill Seaman, infectious disease physician
Beth Shapiro, evolutionary biologist
Daniel Sigman, biogeochemist
Mary Tinetti, geriatric physician
Camille Utterback, digital artist
Theodore Zoli, bridge engineer[41]
2010
Annette Gordon Reed
Amir Abo-Shaeer, physics teacher
Jessie Little Doe Baird, Wampanoag language preservation and revival
Kelly Benoit-Bird, marine biologist
Nicholas Benson, stone carver
Drew Berry, biomedical animator
Carlos D. Bustamante, population geneticist
Matthew Carter, type designer
David Cromer, theater director and actor
John Dabiri, biophysicist
Shannon Lee Dawdy, anthropologist
Annette Gordon-Reed, American historian
Yiyun Li, fiction writer
Michal Lipson, optical physicist
Nergis Mavalvala, quantum astrophysicist
Jason Moran, jazz pianist and composer
Carol Padden, sign language linguist
Jorge Pardo, installation artist
Sebastian Ruth, violist, violinist, and music educator
Emmanuel Saez, economist
David Simon, author, screenwriter, and producer
Dawn Song, computer security specialist
Marla Spivak, entomologist
Elizabeth Turk, sculptor[42]
2011
Shwetak Patel
Jad Abumrad, radio host and producer
Marie-Therese Connolly, elder rights lawyer
Roland Fryer, economist
Jeanne Gang, architect
Elodie Ghedin, parasitologist and virologist
Markus Greiner, condensed matter physicist
Kevin Guskiewicz, sports medicine researcher
Peter Hessler, long-form journalist
Tiya Miles, public historian
Matthew Nock, clinical psychologist
Francisco Núñez, choral conductor and composer
Sarah Otto, evolutionary geneticist
Shwetak Patel, sensor technologist and computer scientist
Dafnis Prieto, jazz percussionist and composer
Kay Ryan, poet
Melanie Sanford, organometallic chemist
William Seeley, neuropathologist
Jacob Soll, European historian
A. E. Stallings, poet and translator
Ubaldo Vitali, conservator and silversmith
Alisa Weilerstein, cellist
Yukiko Yamashita, developmental biologist[43]
2012
Junot Díaz
Natalia Almada, documentary filmmaker
Uta Barth, photographer
Claire Chase, arts entrepreneur and flautist
Raj Chetty, economist
Maria Chudnovsky, mathematician
Eric Coleman, geriatrician
Junot Díaz, fiction writer
David Finkel, journalist
Olivier Guyon, optical physicist and astronomer
Elissa Hallem, neurobiologist
An-My Lê, photographer
Sarkis Mazmanian, medical microbiologist
Dinaw Mengestu, writer
Maurice Lim Miller, social services innovator
Dylan C. Penningroth, historian
Terry Plank, geochemist
Laura Poitras, documentary filmmaker
Nancy Rabalais, marine ecologist
Benoît Rolland, stringed-instrument bow maker
Daniel Spielman, computer scientist
Melody Swartz, bioengineer
Chris Thile, mandolinist and composer
Benjamin Warf, neurosurgeon[44]
2013
Tarell McCraney
Kyle Abraham, choreographer and dancer
Donald Antrim, writer
Phil Baran, organic chemist
C. Kevin Boyce, paleobotanist
Jeffrey Brenner, primary care physician
Colin Camerer, behavioral economist
Jeremy Denk, pianist and writer
Angela Duckworth, research psychologist
Craig Fennie, materials scientist
Robin Fleming, medieval historian
Carl Haber, audio preservationist
Vijay Iyer, jazz pianist and composer
Dina Katabi, computer scientist
Julie Livingston, public health historian and anthropologist
David Lobell, agricultural ecologist
Tarell Alvin McCraney, playwright
Susan Murphy, statistician
Sheila Nirenberg, neuroscientist
Alexei Ratmansky, choreographer
Ana Maria Rey, atomic physicist
Karen Russell, fiction writer
Sara Seager, astrophysicist
Margaret Stock, immigration lawyer
Carrie Mae Weems, photographer and video artist[45]
2014
Alison Bechdel
Danielle Bassett, physicist
Alison Bechdel, cartoonist and graphic memoirist
Mary L. Bonauto, civil rights lawyer
Tami Bond, environmental engineer
Steve Coleman, jazz composer and saxophonist
Sarah Deer, legal scholar and advocate
Jennifer Eberhardt, social psychologist
Craig Gentry, computer scientist
Terrance Hayes, poet
John Henneberger, housing advocate
Mark Hersam, materials scientist
Samuel D. Hunter, playwright
Pamela O. Long, historian of science and technology
Rick Lowe, public artist
Jacob Lurie, mathematician
Khaled Mattawa, translator and poet
Joshua Oppenheimer, documentary filmmaker
Ai-jen Poo, labor organizer
Jonathan Rapping, criminal lawyer
Tara Zahra, historian of modern Europe
Yitang Zhang, mathematician[46]
2015
Ta-Nehisi Coates
Patrick Awuah, education entrepreneur
Kartik Chandran, environmental engineer[47]
Ta-Nehisi Coates, journalist and memoirist
Gary Cohen, environmental health advocate
Matthew Desmond, sociologist
William Dichtel, chemist
Michelle Dorrance, tap dancer and choreographer
Nicole Eisenman, painter
LaToya Ruby Frazier, photographer and video artist
Ben Lerner, writer
Mimi Lien, set designer[48]
Lin-Manuel Miranda, playwright, songwriter, and performer
Dimitri Nakassis, classicist
John Novembre, computational biologist
Christopher Ré, computer scientist
Marina Rustow, historian[49]
Juan Salgado, Chicago-based community leader
Beth Stevens, neuroscientist
Lorenz Studer, stem-cell biologist
Alex Truesdell, designer[50]
Basil Twist, puppeteer
Ellen Bryant Voigt, poet
Heidi Williams, economist
Peidong Yang, inorganic chemist[51]
2016
Claudia Rankine
Ahilan Arulanantham, human rights lawyer
Daryl Baldwin, linguist and cultural preservationist
Anne Basting, theater artist and educator
Vincent Fecteau, sculptor
Branden Jacobs-Jenkins, playwright
Kellie Jones, art historian and curator
Subhash Khot, theoretical computer scientist
Josh Kun, cultural historian
Maggie Nelson, writer
Dianne Newman, microbiologist
Victoria Orphan, geobiologist
Manu Prakash, physical biologist and inventor
José A. Quiñonez, financial services innovator
Claudia Rankine, poet
Lauren Redniss, artist and writer
Mary Reid Kelley, video artist
Rebecca Richards-Kortum, bioengineer
Joyce J. Scott, jewelry maker and sculptor
Sarah Stillman, long-form journalist
Bill Thies, computer scientist
Julia Wolfe, composer
Gene Luen Yang, graphic novelist
Jin-Quan Yu, synthetic chemist[52]
2017
Jesmyn Ward
Njideka Akunyili Crosby, painter
Sunil Amrith, historian
Greg Asbed, human rights strategist
Annie Baker, playwright
Regina Barzilay, computer scientist
Dawoud Bey, photographer
Emmanuel Candès, mathematician and statistician
Jason De León, anthropologist
Rhiannon Giddens, musician
Nikole Hannah-Jones, journalist
Cristina Jiménez Moreta, activist
Taylor Mac, performance artist
Rami Nashashibi, community leader
Viet Thanh Nguyen, writer
Kate Orff, landscape architect
Trevor Paglen, artist
Betsy Levy Paluck, psychologist
Derek Peterson, historian
Damon Rich, designer and urban planner
Stefan Savage, computer scientist
Yuval Sharon, opera director
Tyshawn Sorey, composer
Gabriel Victora, immunologist
Jesmyn Ward, writer[53]
2018
Doris Tsao
Matthew Aucoin, composer and conductor
Julie Ault, artist and curator
William J. Barber II, pastor
Clifford Brangwynne, biophysical engineer
Natalie Diaz, poet
Livia S. Eberlin, chemist
Deborah Estrin, computer scientist
Amy Finkelstein, health economist
Gregg Gonsalves, global health advocate
Vijay Gupta, musician
Becca Heller, lawyer
Raj Jayadev, community organizer
Titus Kaphar, painter
John Keene, writer
Kelly Link, writer
Dominique Morisseau, playwright
Okwui Okpokwasili, choreographer
Kristina Olson, psychologist
Lisa Parks, media scholar
Rebecca Sandefur, legal scholar
Allan Sly, mathematician
Sarah T. Stewart-Mukhopadhyay, geologist
Wu Tsang, filmmaker and performance artist
Doris Tsao, neuroscientist
Ken Ward Jr., investigative journalist[54]
2019
Lynda Barry
Elizabeth S. Anderson, philosopher
sujatha baliga, attorney[55]
Lynda Barry, cartoonist
Mel Chin, artist
Danielle Citron, legal scholar
Lisa Daugaard, criminal justice reformer
Annie Dorsen, theater artist
Andrea Dutton, paleoclimatologist
Jeffrey Gibson, artist
Mary Halvorson, guitarist
Saidiya Hartman, literary scholar
Walter Hood, public artist
Stacy Jupiter, marine scientist
Zachary Lippman, plant biologist
Valeria Luiselli, writer
Kelly Lytle Hernández, historian
Sarah Michelson, choreographer
Jeffrey Alan Miller, literary scholar
Jerry X. Mitrovica, theoretical geophysicist
Emmanuel Pratt, urban designer
Cameron Rowland, artist
Vanessa Ruta, neuroscientist
Joshua Tenenbaum, cognitive scientist
Jenny Tung, evolutionary anthropologist
Ocean Vuong, writer
Emily Wilson, classicist and translator[56]
2020
Jacqueline Woodson
Isaiah Andrews, econometrician
Tressie McMillan Cottom, sociologist, writer and public scholar
Paul Dauenhauer, chemical engineer
Nels Elde, evolutionary geneticist
Damien Fair, cognitive neuroscientist
Larissa FastHorse, playwright
Catherine Coleman Flowers, environmental health advocate
Mary L. Gray, anthropologist and media scholar
N.K. Jemisin, speculative fiction writer
Ralph Lemon, artist
Polina V. Lishko, cellular and developmental biologist
Thomas Wilson Mitchell, property law scholar
Natalia Molina, American historian
Fred Moten, cultural theorist and poet
Cristina Rivera Garza, fiction writer
Cécile McLorin Salvant, singer and composer
Monika Schleier-Smith, experimental physicist
Mohammad R. Seyedsayamdost, biological chemist
Forrest Stuart, sociologist
Nanfu Wang, documentary filmmaker
Jacqueline Woodson, writer[57]
2021
Daniel Alarcón
Hanif Abdurraqib, music critic, essayist and poet
Daniel Alarcón, writer and radio producer
Marcella Alsan, physician–economist
Trevor Bedford, computational virologist
Reginald Dwayne Betts, poet and lawyer
Jordan Casteel, painter
Don Mee Choi, poet and translator
Ibrahim Cissé, cellular biophysicist
Nicole Fleetwood, art historian and curator
Cristina Ibarra, documentary filmmaker
Ibram X. Kendi, American historian and cultural critic
Daniel Lind-Ramos, sculptor and painter
Monica Muñoz Martinez, public historian
Desmond Meade, civil rights activist
Joshua Miele, adaptive technology designer
Michelle Monje, neurologist and neuro-oncologist
Safiya Noble, digital media scholar
J. Taylor Perron, geomorphologist
Alex Rivera, filmmaker and media artist
Lisa Schulte Moore, landscape ecologist
Jesse Shapiro, applied microeconomist
Jacqueline Stewart, cinema studies scholar and curator
Keeanga-Yamahtta Taylor, historian
Victor J. Torres, microbiologist
Jawole Willa Jo Zollar, choreographer and dance entrepreneur[58]
2022
Space Environmentalist and Astrodynamicist
Moriba Jah
Jennifer Carlson, sociologist
Paul Chan, artist
Yejin Choi, computer scientist
P. Gabrielle Foreman, historian and academic
Danna Freedman, chemist and academic
Martha Gonzalez, musician and academic
Sky Hopinka, artist and filmmaker
June Huh, mathematician
Moriba Jah, astrodynamicist
Jenna Jambeck, environmental engineer
Monica Kim, historian and academic
Robin Wall Kimmerer, botanist and writer
Priti Krishtel, lawyer
Joseph Drew Lanham, ornithologist
Kiese Laymon, writer
Reuben Jonathan Miller, sociologist and social worker
Ikue Mori, musician and composer
Steven Prohira, physicist
Tomeka Reid, cellist and composer
Loretta J. Ross, human rights advocate
Steven Ruggles, historical demographer
Tavares Strachan, interdisciplinary artist
Emily Wang, physician and researcher
Amanda Williams, artist and architect
Melanie Matchett Wood, mathematician
The distinctive contribution of the novelist Paule Marshall, who has died aged 90, was to express the interaction between Caribbean and African-American identities, drawing on her Barbadian background and life in her native New York. She wrote eight volumes of fiction, and in 1989 received the Dos Passos prize for American creative writers who have produced work in which is evident “an intense and original exploration of specifically American themes, an experimental approach to form, and an interest in a wide range of human experiences”.
The novel that received the most critical attention was Praisesong for the Widow (1983), which focused the themes of historical and personal development in the person of Avey Johnson, a middle-aged widow whose journey to a small Caribbean island enables her to begin questioning her repression of joy and affection in her struggle to acquire a white bourgeois-defined respectability. This book dramatised a continuing theme in Marshall’s fiction: the need to set aside materialistic and individualistic values in order to find spiritual and psychological fulfilment.
Marshall described herself as a “very slow, painstaking, fussy writer”, and would spend up to 10 years on the completion of a novel. An activist in the civil rights and anti-Vietnam movements of the 1960s, she felt a responsibility to write for the benefit of the community, revealing her readers to themselves truthfully and thus empowering them. However, she differentiated herself sharply from other black female writers, remarking in an 1982 interview that she felt it important to create “ordinary” protagonists who did not “go through all those terrible things that are supposed to happen to black people, to young black women”.
A female character created by Marshall, she said, “is not raped by her father, or her stepfather, or her mother’s boyfriend, she does not witness physical brutality between her mother and father, she is not, in other words, a social statistic”. Marshall thus dismissed in turn representations of black female experience by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison and Maya Angelou.
She was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn and grew up in a largely West Indian neighbourhood, the daughter of Ada (nee Clement) and Samuel Burke, who had emigrated separately to New York from Barbados just after the first world war. Her father worked in a mattress factory after arriving illegally in America as a stowaway from Cuba, but during Paule’s childhood abandoned the family to become a disciple and preacher for Father Divine’s religious movement; her mother worked as a maid for a wealthy white woman. At the age of nine, Paule spent a year with her grandmother in Barbados, a visit which influenced much of her later writing.
Her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), recorded in lyrical and expressive language the idioms and attitudes of New York’s Barbadian community, and particularly the group of women who would gather in her mother’s house after a hard day’s work. Marshall paid tribute in a later essay to these “poets of the kitchen”, saying: “They taught me my first lessons in the narrative art. They trained my ear. They set a standard of excellence. This is why the best of my work must be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the rich legacy of language and culture they so freely passed on to me in the wordshop of the kitchen.”
The novel portrays the conflicts within that community, and between the mother’s determination to save money and buy the family’s rented house and the father’s longing to return to the less restrictive society of Barbados. Marshall also drew on the rich legacy and culture of other writers, and as a child read Dickens, Thackeray and Fielding. Her discovery of the African-American poet Paul Laurence Dunbar inspired her to become a writer and to adapt her middle name to to give a pen-name of Paule (with a silent “e”).
The title of her collection of novellas, Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), in which all four stories focus on elderly and unhappy men who seek in vain to change, reveals her familiarity with Yeats (its title comes from a line of his poetry). Later she wrote of her admiration for Thomas Mann, and his ability to combine an individual story in the context of a community’s history.
Her ambition to emulate Mann is seen in The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969), claimed by one critic to be among “the four or five most impressive novels ever written by a black American”. Set on a fictional Caribbean island, the novel draws together characters and cultures from Africa, the US and the Caribbean, as well as China and India.
In the 1950s and 60s Marshall worked as a journalist and librarian. Following the success of her first two books she was selected by the poet Langston Hughes to accompany him on a tour of Europe in 1964. She taught creative writing and English literature at Virginia Commonwealth University, in Richmond, Virginia, as well as at Yale, Oxford, Columbia and Cornell universities, and was from 1997 Helen Gould Sheppard professor in literature and culture at New York University. She retired from teaching in 2009.
The Fisher King (2001), her last novel, set in the 1940s Brooklyn of her youth, won the Black Caucus of the American Library Association literary award. In 2009 she published a memoir, Triangular Road, based on a series of lectures delivered at Harvard and in the same year received a lifetime achievement award from the Anisfield-Wolf book awards.
She married Kenneth Marshall in 1950 and Nourry Menard in 1970; both marriages ended in divorce. She is survived by a son, Evan, from her first marriage, and a stepdaughter, Rosemond, from her second, and by two grandchildren.
Paule Marshall (Valenza Pauline Burke), author, born 9 April 1929; died 12 August 2019
Paule Marshall
Paule MarshallAKA Valenza Pauline Burke
Born: 9-Apr-1929
Birthplace: Brooklyn, NY
Gender: Female
Race or Ethnicity: Black
Sexual orientation: Straight
Occupation: Novelist
Nationality: United States
Executive summary: Brown Girl, Brownstones
Husband: Kenneth Marshall (m. 1957, div. 1963)
Son: Evan-Keith (b. 1958)
Husband: (Haitian businessman, m. 1970)
University: Brooklyn College (1953, cum laude)
University: Hunter College (grad studies, 1955)
Obama for America
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Guggenheim Fellowship
Author of books:
Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959, novel)
Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961, short stories)
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969, novel)
Reena and Other Stories (1983, short stories)
Praisesong for the Widow (1983, novel)
Daughters (1991, novel)
Valenza Pauline Burke, later known as Paule Marshall, was born on April 9, 1929, in Brooklyn, New York. She was the daughter of Ada and Samuel Burke, both emigrants from Barbados, and she grew up in a neighborhood with a significant number of other families from the West Indies. Although she went through a period of rejecting her West Indian heritage as a child, her writing was ultimately inspired by the conversations between her mother and other Bajan (Barbadian) women. In her essay From the Poets in the Kitchen, she explains how the women would use the English language as an instrument for narrative art, changing around the rhythm and accent to create a distinctive dialect.
When Marshall completed high school, she enrolled in Hunter College with plans of becoming a social worker. After a one-year absence from college due to illness, she decided, with the influence of some of her friends, to become an English Literature major instead. She enrolled in Brooklyn College and by 1954 had graduated cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa.
After college Marshall began to write feature stories for Our World, a small Black publication. During this time she was writing for herself at home. Her first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones, took shape over five years and was published in 1959. This book deals with the coming of age of a West Indian girl while simultaneously exploring the Black emigrant experience in America. Some of her later novels and short stories include Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961), Reena (1962), Some Get Wasted (1964), To Da-Duh: In Memorandum (1967), The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969), Praisesong for the Widow (1983), and Daughters (1991).
Marshall’s fiction is rooted in Black cultural history. Her novels place an emphasis on Black female characters and she used these characters to address contemporary feminist issues from an Afrocentric perspective. She challenged her readers to understand the political, social, and economic structures societies are built on. Through her literature, she highlighted the oppressive systems that are in place. She also challenged people of African descent to reinvent their own identities. In addition to being an author, Paule Marshall was also a professor of English and creative writing at Virginia Commonwealth University in Richmond. She received many awards in her career, including the Guggenheim Fellowship (1960), the American Book Award (1984), the Langston Hughes Medallion Award (1986), and the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Fellowship (1992).
Paule Marshall, who suffered from dementia, passed away on August 12, 2019, in Richmond, Virginia. She is survived by her son, Evan K. Marshall. She was 90 years old.
I grew up among poets. Nothing about them suggested that poetry was their calling. They were just a
group of ordinary housewives, my mother included --
the basement kitchen of the brownstone house where
my family lived was the usual gathering place. Once
inside the warm safety of its walls the women threw
off the drab coats and hats, seated themselves at the
large center table, drank their cups of tea or cocoa,
and talked while my sister and I sat at a smaller table
over in a corner doing our homework, they talkedendlessly, passionately, poetically and with impressive range. No subject was beyond them. When
people at readings and writers’ conferences asked
me who my major influences were, they are sometimes a little disappointed when I don’t immediately
name the usual literary giants. True, I am indebted
to those writers, white and black, whom I read during my formative years and still read for instruction
and pleasure. But they were preceded in my life by
another set of giants whom I always acknowledge
before all others; the group of women around the
table long ago-this is why the best of my work must
be attributed to them; it stands as testimony to the
rich legacy of language and culture they so freely
passed on to me in the wordshop of the kitchen.
— The Making of a Writer: From the Poets in
the Kitchen
Paule Marshall was born Valenza Pauline Burke in Brooklyn, New York, to Ada and Samuel Burke who
had recently emigrated from Barbados. Marshall first visited Barbados when she was nine years old, and
she recalls writing a series of poems after that visit which reflected her impressions (Denniston, Dorothy
H., xii). Marshall was raised in a close-knit West Indian community and gives credit to the women of that
community with being her most important teachers. There is a consistency of West Indian dialect and culture in Marshall’s writing. Her work confronts the conflicts that Caribbean-American immigrant families,
like her own, faced.
In 1950 Marshall married psychologist Kenneth Marshall. In 1953 Marshall graduated cum laude from
Brooklyn College, where she majored in English literature, and was then inducted into Phi Beta Kappa.
After graduating Marshall worked briefly as a librarian before working for Our World magazine, a popular 1950s African American magazine, where she was the only woman on staff. She gave birth to her son,
Evan-Keith Marshall, in 1959. In order to finish the novel she had begun writing and despite her husband’s
protests she hired a babysitter for her son. In 1959 her first novel Brown Girl, Brownstones was published, and her husband contributed the title. Brown Girl, Brownstones is about a young, first-generation
Caribbean-American girl growing up in an African-Caribbean community. As she struggles to find herself,
the community is desperately trying to differentiate themselves from this new environment to keep their
culture alive.
In 1960 Marshall received a Guggenheim Fellowship and in 1961 published Soul Clap Hands and Sing,
a collection of novellas for which she received the National Institute of Arts Award. Marshall divorced in
1963; seven years later she married Nourry Menard, a Haitian businessman. The Chosen Place, The Timeless People (1969) was deemed “the best novel to be written by an American Black woman, one of the two
important black novels of the 1960s, and one of the four or five most important novels ever written by a
Black-American” (Robinson).
Praisesong for the Widow (1983) established her reputation as a major writer. For this she received
the Columbus Foundation American Book Award. This novel was written in honor of her ancestors
and is dedicated to Marshall’s grandmother (To Da-Duh). Daughters (1991) was about a West Indian
woman in New York who returns home to assist her father’s re-election campaign. The character, like
most characters in Marshall’s fiction, has an epiphany after confronting her personal and cultural past.
In 1970, Paule Marshall taught at Yale and lectured at many other institutions.
She has received many awards and honors throughout her career, including an
American Book Award and a John Dos Passos Award of Literature. Marshall
published her seventh novel, The Fisher King, in October of 2000, “rich with
characters so textured that I’m plumping for a sequel” (Simmons). This novel
demonstrates the universality of Marshall’s characters, which is a prevalent
theme in her works.
Paule Marshall deals with several major themes that carry through most of her
works and reflect her own issues and obstacles in life. She feels as though her
work serves not only as a career but also as a means of healing for herself - a
vehicle through which she is able to work through issues and recurring themes
in her own person odyssey. These include the search for identity, which Marshall herself has struggled with, and is seen especially in Brown Girl, Brownstones. Also is the aforementioned universality of characters, as in The Fisher
King, which allows her readers to relate fully to the characters, regardless of the
past they bring into their reading of her novels. Another theme involves looking at ancestors and heritage to glean some kind of meaning in one’s present
life. “Marshall admits that as a child, she tried to deny her West Indian heritage”
(Denniston, Dorothy H., 9). Marshall works through this in her adult life by
creating Selina’s character in Brown Girl, Brownstones, who admits that she
had “long hated her [self] for her blackness” (p. 89). Additionally, her use of
language reflects her West Indian culture and her treatment of women as oral
translators of that culture.
Biography continued
3
Paule
Marshall
© 2009 Regents of the University of Minnesota. All rights reserved.
The University of Minnesota is an equal opportunity educator and employer.
“Her central point, however, concerns the sense of alienation and displacement which minority peoples experience. She suggests the need for reconciling cultural conflict through self-empowerment,
which becomes possible with responsible involvement with others” (Denniston, 54).
Paule Marshall uses words to weave a net around her own experiences in life and those of her ancestors who came before her, to catch and examine the big issues in life within the context of her own
Caribbean-American heritage
Works by the author
The Fisher King (2000).
Daughters (1991).
Reena and Other Stories (1983).
Praisesong for the Widow (1983).
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (Originally titled Ceremonies at the Guest-House)
(1969).
Soul Clap Hands and Sing (1961).
Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959).
Works about the author
DeLamotte, Eugenia C. Places of Silence, Journeys of Freedom (University of Pennsylvania
Press, 1998).
Denniston, Dorothy Hamer. The Fiction of Paule Marshall: Reconstructions of History, Culture,
and Gender (The University of Tennessee Press, 1995).
Hathaway, Heather. Caribbean Waves: Relocating Claude McKay and Paule Marshall (Indiana
University Press, 1999).
Melvin, Rahming. “Towards a Caribbean Mythology: The Function of Africa in Paule Marshall’s
The Chosen Place, the Timeless People” (Studies in the Literary Imagination, 1993).
Pettis, Joyce. Toward Wholeness in Paule Marshall’s Fiction (University Press of Virginia,
1995).
Schenck, Mary Jane. “Ceremonies of Reconciliation: Paule Marshall’s The Chosen Place, the
Timeless People” (MELUS, 1994).
Sascha, Tamor. “Merle of Bournehills” (Durham University Journal, 1982).
Paule Marshall, original name Valenza Pauline Burke, (born April 9, 1929, Brooklyn, New York, U.S.—died August 12, 2019, Richmond, Virginia), American novelist whose works emphasized a need for black Americans to reclaim their African heritage.
The Barbadian background of Burke’s parents informed all of her work. She spent 1938–39 in her parents’ home country and returned several times as a young adult. After graduating from Brooklyn College (1953), she worked briefly as a librarian before joining Our World, an African American magazine, where she worked from 1953 to 1956 as a food and fashion editor. She married Kenneth Marshall in 1957, divorcing six years later; she later remarried and divorced again. Her autobiographical first novel, Brown Girl, Brownstones (1959), tells of the American daughter of Barbadian parents who travels to their homeland as an adult. The book was critically acclaimed for its acute rendition of dialogue, gaining widespread recognition when it was reprinted in 1981.
Soul Clap Hands and Sing, a 1961 collection of four novellas, presents four aging men who come to terms with their earlier refusal to affirm lasting values. Marshall’s 1962 short story “Reena” was one of the first pieces of fiction to feature a college-educated, politically active black woman as its protagonist; it was frequently anthologized and also was included in her collection Reena and Other Stories (1983). The Chosen Place, the Timeless People (1969) is set on a fictional Caribbean island and concerns a philanthropic attempt to modernize an impoverished and oppressed society.
Marshall’s most eloquent statement of her belief in African Americans’ need to rediscover their heritage was Praisesong for the Widow, a highly regarded 1983 novel that established her reputation as a major writer. Its protagonist, Avatara (Avey) Johnson, a middle-class woman, undergoes a spiritual rebirth on the island of Grenada. Daughters (1991) concerns a West Indian woman in New York who returns home to assist her father’s reelection campaign. The protagonist, like those of Marshall’s other works, has an epiphany after confronting her personal and cultural past. The Fisher King (2000) is a cross-generational tale about a rift between two black Brooklyn families caused when a son and daughter become immersed in the 1940s New York jazz scene and then decamp to Paris together.
Marshall taught English as well, notably at Virginia Commonwealth University (1984–94) in Richmond and at New York University (1994–2007). She was named a MacArthur fellow in 1992. Her memoir Triangular Road (2009), adapted in part from lectures delivered at Harvard University in 2005, documents her early years as a writer and meditates on the slave trade.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Amy Tikkanen.
Stephen King
Table of Contents
Introduction
Fast Facts
Stephen (Edwin) King summary
Facts & Related Content
Quizzes
A Study of Writers
Famous Authors
49 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular Literature Quizzes
Novels and Novelists Quiz
Monsters, Ghouls, and Ghosts Quiz
Media
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Kingston, Maxine Hong
Maxine Hong Kingston
Chinese-American author
Rudolfo Anaya
Rudolfo Anaya
American author
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
American novelist
Joyce Carol Oates
Joyce Carol Oates
American author
See All
Home
Literature
Novels & Short Stories
Novelists A-K
Stephen King
American novelist
Also known as: Richard Bachmann, Stephen Edwin King
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: May 8, 2023 • Article History
Stephen King
Stephen King
See all media
Born: September 21, 1947 (age 75) Portland Maine
Awards And Honors: National Medal of Arts (2015) National Medal of Arts (2015) National Book Award (2003)
Notable Works: “11/22/63” “Carrie” “Cell” “Christine” “Cujo” “Dolores Claiborne” “Finders Keepers” “Firestarter” “It” “Lisey’s Story” “Misery” “Mr. Mercedes” “Needful Things” “Night Shift” “Sleeping Beauties” “The Dark Half” “The Dead Zone” “The Plant: Zenith Rising” “The Running Man” “The Shining” “The Stand” “The Tommyknockers” “UR”
Stephen King, in full Stephen Edwin King, (born September 21, 1947, Portland, Maine, U.S.), American novelist and short-story writer whose books are credited with reviving the genre of horror fiction in the late 20th century.
King graduated from the University of Maine in 1970 with a bachelor’s degree in English. While writing short stories, he supported himself by teaching and working as a janitor, among other jobs. His first published novel, Carrie, about a tormented teenage girl gifted with telekinetic powers, appeared in 1974 (films 1976 and 2013) and was an immediate popular success.
Jules Verne (1828-1905) prolific French author whose writings laid much of the foundation of modern science fiction.
Britannica Quiz
Famous Authors
Carrie was the first of many novels in which King blended horror, the macabre, fantasy, and science fiction. Among such works are ’Salem’s Lot (1975; TV miniseries 1979 and 2004); The Shining (1977; film 1980; TV miniseries 1997); The Stand (1978; TV miniseries 1994 and 2020–21); The Dead Zone (1979; film 1983; TV series 2002–07); Firestarter (1980; film 1984); Cujo (1981; film 1983); The Running Man (1982; film 1987); Christine (1983; film 1983); Thinner (1984; film 1996); It (1986; TV miniseries 1990; films 2017 and 2019); Misery (1987; film 1990); The Tommyknockers (1987; TV miniseries 1993); The Dark Half (1989; film 1993); Needful Things (1991; film 1993); Dolores Claiborne (1993; film 1995); Dreamcatcher (2001; film 2003); Cell (2006); Lisey’s Story (2006; TV miniseries 2021); Duma Key (2008); Under the Dome (2009; TV series 2013–15); 11/22/63 (2011; TV miniseries 2016); Joyland (2013); Doctor Sleep (2013; film 2019), a sequel to The Shining; Revival (2014); The Outsider (2018; TV miniseries 2020); The Institute (2019); and Later (2021).
King published several early novels, among them the The Running Man, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. After admitting to being Bachman, King released a collection of the first four Bachman novels, The Bachman Books (1985), under his own name; it also included his essay “Why I Was Bachman.” King later published The Regulators (1996) and Blaze (2007) under Bachman’s name.
King’s Mr. Mercedes (2014), Finders Keepers (2015), and End of Watch (2016) form a trilogy of hard-boiled crime novels centring on retired detective Bill Hodges. King also wrote a serial novel, The Dark Tower, whose first installment, The Gunslinger, appeared in 1982; an eighth volume was published in 2012. A film adaptation of the series was released in 2017.
Pennywise in the film It
Pennywise in the film It
In his books King explores almost every terror-producing theme imaginable, from vampires, rabid dogs, deranged killers, and a pyromaniac to ghosts, extrasensory perception and telekinesis, biological warfare, and even a malevolent automobile. In his later fiction, exemplified by Dolores Claiborne, King departed from the horror genre to provide sharply detailed psychological portraits of his protagonists, many of them women, who confront difficult and challenging circumstances. Though sometimes disparaged as undisciplined and inelegant, King’s books show him to be a talented storyteller who deploys realistic detail, forceful plotting, and an undoubted ability to involve and scare the reader. His work consistently addresses such themes as the potential for politics and technology to disrupt or even destroy an individual human life. Obsession, the forms it can assume and its power to wreck individuals, families, and whole communities, is a recurring theme in King’s fiction, driving the narratives of Christine, Misery, and Needful Things.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
By the early 1990s King’s books had sold more than 100 million copies worldwide, and his name had become synonymous with the genre of horror fiction. His short fiction has been collected in such volumes as Night Shift (1978), Nightmares and Dreamscapes (1993), Hearts in Atlantis (1999; film 2001), Just After Sunset (2008), and The Bazaar of Bad Dreams (2015). The story “Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption,” which was published in Different Seasons (1982), inspired the popular film The Shawshank Redemption (1994).
Numerous other TV and film adaptations have been made of King’s works, and they involved such notable directors as John Carpenter, David Cronenberg, Brian De Palma, Stanley Kubrick, and Rob Reiner. While King often had little participation in these projects, he wrote the TV miniseries The Shining (1997) and Lisey’s Story (2021). He also penned several motion-picture screenplays.
King explored both his own career and the craft of writing in On Writing (2000), a book he completed as he was recovering from severe injuries received after being struck by a car. He has also experimented with different forms of book distribution: The Plant: Zenith Rising was released in 2000 solely as an e-book, distributed via the Internet, with readers asked but not required to pay for it, and the novella UR was made available in 2009 only to users of the Kindle electronic reading device. The short story “Drunken Fireworks” was released in 2015 as an audiobook prior to its print publication.
King and his wife, Tabitha King, a writer, have a daughter, Naomi King, who is a Unitarian Universalist minister, and two sons, Joe Hill and Owen King, who are novelists. With Owen King he wrote Sleeping Beauties (2017), in which women become wrapped in cocoons when they fall asleep.
Stephen King received the National Book Foundation’s Medal for Distinguished Contribution to American Letters in 2003 and the National Medal of Arts in 2015.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by J.E. Luebering.
Maya Angelou
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Fast Facts
Maya Angelou summary
Facts & Related Content
Top Questions
What were Maya Angelou’s jobs?
Read Next
World Poetry Day
Quizzes
Authors of Classic Literature
Pop Culture Quiz
Who Said It? Quotations of Women in Literature Quiz
Classic Children’s Books Quiz
A Study of Poetry
Media
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Henry Rollins, 2010.
Henry Rollins
American singer and writer
Tyler Perry
Tyler Perry
American playwright, actor, screenwriter, producer, and director
Ossie Davis
Ossie Davis
American actor and playwright
Woody Allen
Woody Allen
American actor and director
See All
Home
Literature
Novels & Short Stories
Novelists A-K
Maya Angelou
American poet, memoirist, and actress
Also known as: Marguerite Annie Johnson
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: May 24, 2023 • Article History
Maya Angelou, 1996.
Maya Angelou
See all media
Born: April 4, 1928 Saint Louis Missouri
Died: May 28, 2014 (aged 86) Winston-Salem North Carolina
Awards And Honors: Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011) Grammy Award (2002) Grammy Award (1995) Grammy Award (1993) Grammy Award (2003): Best Spoken Word Album Grammy Award (1996): Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album Grammy Award (1994): Best Spoken Word or Non-Musical Album National Medal of Arts (2000) National Women's Hall of Fame (inducted 1928) Presidential Medal of Freedom (2011) Spingarn Medal (1994)
Notable Works: “Down in the Delta” “His Day Is Done” “I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings” “On the Pulse of Morning”
Notable Family Members: daughter of Bailey Johnson, Sr. daughter of Vivian Baxter married to Tosh Angelos married to Paul du Feu mother of Guy Johnson sister of Bailey Johnson, Jr.
Top Questions
Why is Maya Angelou important?
What is Maya Angelou best known for?
What were Maya Angelou’s jobs?
What awards did Maya Angelou win?
Maya Angelou, original name Marguerite Annie Johnson, (born April 4, 1928, St. Louis, Missouri, U.S.—died May 28, 2014, Winston-Salem, North Carolina), American poet, memoirist, and actress whose several volumes of autobiography explore the themes of economic, racial, and sexual oppression.
Although born in St. Louis, Angelou spent much of her childhood in the care of her paternal grandmother in rural Stamps, Arkansas. When she was not yet eight years old, she was raped by her mother’s boyfriend and told of it, after which he was murdered; the traumatic sequence of events left her almost completely mute for several years. This early life is the focus of her first autobiographical work, I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings (1969; TV movie 1979), which gained critical acclaim and a National Book Award nomination. Subsequent volumes of autobiography include Gather Together in My Name (1974), Singin’ and Swingin’ and Gettin’ Merry Like Christmas (1976), The Heart of a Woman (1981), All God’s Children Need Traveling Shoes (1986), A Song Flung Up to Heaven (2002), and Mom & Me & Mom (2013).
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) portrait by Carl Van Vecht April 3, 1938. Writer, folklorist and anthropologist celebrated African American culture of the rural South.
Britannica Quiz
Who Said It? Quotations of Women in Literature Quiz
In 1940 Angelou moved with her mother to San Francisco and worked intermittently as a cocktail waitress, a prostitute and madam, a cook, and a dancer. It was as a dancer that she assumed her professional name. Moving to New York City in the late 1950s, Angelou found encouragement for her literary talents at the Harlem Writers’ Guild. About the same time, Angelou landed a featured role in a State Department-sponsored production of George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess; with this troupe she toured 22 countries in Europe and Africa. She also studied dance with Martha Graham and Pearl Primus. In 1961 she performed in Jean Genet’s play The Blacks. That same year she was persuaded by a South African dissident to whom she was briefly married to move to Cairo, where she worked for the Arab Observer. She later moved to Ghana and worked on The African Review.
Roots
Roots
Angelou returned to California in 1966 and wrote Black, Blues, Black (aired 1968), a 10-part television series about the role of African culture in American life. As the writer of the movie drama Georgia, Georgia (1972), she became one of the first African American women to have a screenplay produced as a feature film. She also acted in such movies as Poetic Justice (1993) and How to Make an American Quilt (1995) and appeared in several television productions, including the miniseries Roots (1977). Angelou received a Tony Award nomination for her performance in Look Away (1973), despite the fact that the play closed on Broadway after only one performance. In 1998 she made her directorial debut with Down in the Delta (1998). The documentary Maya Angelou and Still I Rise (2016) depicts her life through interviews with Angelou and her intimates and admirers.
Angelou’s poetry, collected in such volumes as Just Give Me a Cool Drink of Water ’fore I Diiie (1971), And Still I Rise (1978), Now Sheba Sings the Song (1987), and I Shall Not Be Moved (1990), drew heavily on her personal history but employed the points of view of various personae. She also wrote a book of meditations, Wouldn’t Take Nothing for My Journey Now (1993), and children’s books that include My Painted House, My Friendly Chicken and Me (1994), Life Doesn’t Frighten Me (1998), and the Maya’s World series, which was published in 2004–05 and featured stories of children from various parts of the world. Angelou dispensed anecdote-laden advice to women in Letter to My Daughter (2008); her only biological child was male.
Angelou, Maya
Angelou, Maya
In 1981 Angelou, who was often referred to as “Dr. Angelou” despite her lack of a college education, became a professor of American studies at Wake Forest University, Winston-Salem, North Carolina. Among numerous honours was her invitation to compose and deliver a poem, “On the Pulse of Morning,” for the inauguration of U.S. Pres. Bill Clinton in 1993. She celebrated the 50th anniversary of the United Nations in the poem “A Brave and Startling Truth” (1995) and elegized Nelson Mandela in the poem “His Day Is Done” (2013), which was commissioned by the U.S. State Department and released in the wake of the South African leader’s death. In 2011 Angelou was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.
James Baldwin
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Pop Quiz!
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
Fast Facts
Facts & Related Content
Quotes
Read Next
9 American Countercultural Books
9 LGBTQ Writers You Should Read
Quizzes
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
American Civil Rights Movement Quiz
Media
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Additional Reading
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Stein, Gertrude
Gertrude Stein
American writer
Richard Wright
Richard Wright
American writer
Tennessee Williams
Tennessee Williams
American playwright
Gore Vidal
Gore Vidal
American writer
See All
Home
Literature
Novels & Short Stories
Novelists A-K
James Baldwin
American author
Also known as: James Arthur Baldwin
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: Apr 26, 2023 • Article History
James Baldwin
James Baldwin
See all media
Born: August 2, 1924 New York City New York
Died: December 1, 1987 (aged 63) France
Notable Works: “Another Country” “Blues for Mister Charlie” “Giovanni’s Room” “Go Tell It on the Mountain” “Going to Meet the Man” “If Beale Street Could Talk” “Just Above My Head” “Nobody Knows My Name” “Notes of a Native Son” “Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone” “The Fire Next Time” “The Price of the Ticket”
Role In: American civil rights movement
Top Questions
What is James Baldwin known for?
What was James Baldwin’s education?
What novels and plays did James Baldwin write?
Where did James Baldwin live?
James Baldwin, in full James Arthur Baldwin, (born August 2, 1924, New York, New York—died December 1, 1987, Saint-Paul, France), American essayist, novelist, and playwright whose eloquence and passion on the subject of race in America made him an important voice, particularly in the late 1950s and early 1960s, in the United States and, later, through much of western Europe.
The eldest of nine children, he grew up in poverty in the Black ghetto of Harlem in New York City. From age 14 to 16 he was active during out-of-school hours as a preacher in a small revivalist church, a period he wrote about in his semiautobiographical first and finest novel, Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953), and in his play about a woman evangelist, The Amen Corner (performed in New York City, 1965).
Martin Luther King, Jr. (center), with other civil rights supporters lock arms on as they lead the way along Constitution Avenue during the March on Washington, Washington, D.C., on August 28, 1963.
Britannica Quiz
Pop Quiz: 17 Things to Know About the American Civil Rights Movement
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
After graduation from high school, he began a restless period of ill-paid jobs, self-study, and literary apprenticeship in Greenwich Village, the bohemian quarter of New York City. He left in 1948 for Paris, where he lived for the next eight years. (In later years, from 1969, he became a self-styled “transatlantic commuter,” living alternatively in the south of France and in New York and New England.) His second novel, Giovanni’s Room (1956), deals with the white world and concerns an American in Paris torn between his love for a man and his love for a woman. Between the two novels came a collection of essays, Notes of a Native Son (1955).
In 1957 he returned to the United States and became an active participant in the civil rights struggle that swept the nation. His book of essays, Nobody Knows My Name (1961), explores Black-white relations in the United States. This theme also was central to his novel Another Country (1962), which examines sexual as well as racial issues.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Britannica essay on “Monuments of Hope.”)
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
The New Yorker magazine gave over almost all of its November 17, 1962, issue to a long article by Baldwin on the Black Muslim separatist movement and other aspects of the civil rights struggle. The article became a best seller in book form as The Fire Next Time (1963). His bitter play about racist oppression, Blues for Mister Charlie (“Mister Charlie” being a Black term for a white man), played on Broadway to mixed reviews in 1964.
Though Baldwin continued to write until his death—publishing works including Going to Meet the Man (1965), a collection of short stories; the novels Tell Me How Long the Train’s Been Gone (1968), If Beale Street Could Talk (1974), and Just Above My Head (1979); and The Price of the Ticket (1985), a collection of autobiographical writings—none of his later works achieved the popular and critical success of his early work.
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
This article was most recently revised and updated by Adam Augustyn.
Harper Lee
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Fast Facts
Facts & Related Content
Read Next
12 Novels Considered the “Greatest Book Ever Written”
Quizzes
American Writers Quiz
Media
Videos
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
American author
Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
American author
Alice Walker
Alice Walker
American writer
Norman Mailer
Norman Mailer
American author
See All
Home
Literature
Novels & Short Stories
Novelists L-Z
Harper Lee
American writer
Also known as: Nelle Harper Lee
Written by
Fact-checked by
Last Updated: Apr 24, 2023 • Article History
Harper Lee
Harper Lee
See all media
Born: April 28, 1926 Alabama
Died: February 19, 2016 (aged 89) Alabama
Awards And Honors: Pulitzer Prize Presidential Medal of Freedom (2007)
Notable Works: “Go Set a Watchman” “To Kill a Mockingbird”
Top Questions
Why is Harper Lee significant?
Where did Harper Lee go to school?
What did Harper Lee write?
What awards did Harper Lee win?
Harper Lee, in full Nelle Harper Lee, (born April 28, 1926, Monroeville, Alabama, U.S.—died February 19, 2016, Monroeville), American writer nationally acclaimed for her novel To Kill a Mockingbird (1960).
Harper Lee’s father was Amasa Coleman Lee, a lawyer who by all accounts resembled the hero of her novel in his sound citizenship and warmheartedness. The plot of To Kill a Mockingbird is based in part on his unsuccessful youthful defense of two African American men convicted of murder. Lee studied law at the University of Alabama (spending a summer as an exchange student at the University of Oxford), but she left for New York City without earning a degree. In New York she worked as an airline reservationist but soon received financial aid from friends that allowed her to write full-time. With the help of an editor, she transformed a series of short stories into To Kill a Mockingbird.
Zora Neale Hurston (1891-1960) portrait by Carl Van Vecht April 3, 1938. Writer, folklorist and anthropologist celebrated African American culture of the rural South.
Britannica Quiz
American Writers Quiz
The novel is told predominately from the perspective of a young girl, Jean Louise (“Scout”) Finch (who ages from six to nine years old during the course of the novel), the daughter of white lawyer Atticus Finch, and occasionally from the retrospective adult voice of Jean Louise. Scout and her brother, Jem, learn the principles of racial justice and open-mindedness from their father, whose just and compassionate acts include an unpopular defense of a Black man falsely accused of raping a white girl. They also develop the courage and the strength to follow their convictions in their acquaintance and eventual friendship with a recluse, “Boo” Radley, who has been demonized by the community. To Kill a Mockingbird received a Pulitzer Prize in 1961 and has sold more than 40 million copies worldwide. Criticism of its tendency to sermonize has been matched by praise of its insight and stylistic effectiveness. It became a memorable film in 1962. A Broadway play, adapted by Aaron Sorkin, appeared in 2018.
One character from the novel, Charles Baker (“Dill”) Harris, is based on Lee’s childhood friend and next door neighbour in Monroeville, Alabama, Truman Capote. When Capote traveled to Kansas in 1959 to cover the murders of the Clutter family for The New Yorker, Lee accompanied him as what he called his “assistant researchist.” She spent months with Capote interviewing townspeople, writing voluminous notes, sharing impressions, and later returning to Kansas for the trial of the accused—contributions Capote would later use in the composition of In Cold Blood. After the phenomenal success that followed the publication of To Kill a Mockingbird, some suspected that Capote was the actual author of Lee’s work, a rumour that was proven wrong when in 2006 a 1959 letter from Capote to his aunt was found, stating that he had read and liked the draft of To Kill a Mockingbird that Lee had shown him but making no mention of any role in writing it.
Go Set a Watchman
Go Set a Watchman
After a few years in New York, Lee divided her time between that city and her hometown, eventually settling back in Monroeville, Alabama. She also wrote a few short essays, including “Romance and High Adventure” (1983), devoted to Alabama history. Go Set a Watchman, written before To Kill a Mockingbird but essentially a sequel featuring Scout as a grown woman who returns to her childhood home in Alabama to visit her father, was released in 2015.
Lee was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2007.
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Laura Fine
The Editors of Encyclopaedia Britannica
Toni Morrison
Table of Contents
Introduction & Top Questions
Fast Facts
Toni Morrison summary
Facts & Related Content
Top Questions
Why is Toni Morrison important?
Read Next
12 Novels Considered the “Greatest Book Ever Written”
Quizzes
Classic Children’s Books Quiz
49 Questions from Britannica’s Most Popular Literature Quizzes
Who Said It? Writers and Musicians Quiz
Novels and Novelists Quiz
Media
Images
More
More Articles On This Topic
Additional Reading
Contributors
Article History
Related Biographies
Alice Walker
Alice Walker
American writer
Eudora Welty
Eudora Welty
American author
William Faulkner
William Faulkner
American author
John Steinbeck
John Steinbeck
American novelist
See All
Home
Literature
Novels & Short Stories
Novelists L-Z
Toni Morrison
American author
Also known as: Chloe Anthony Wofford
Written and fact-checked by
Last Updated: Article History
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
See all media
Born: February 18, 1931 Lorain Ohio
Died: August 5, 2019 (aged 88) New York City New York
Awards And Honors: Presidential Medal of Freedom (2012) Nobel Prize (1993) Pulitzer Prize (1988)
Notable Works: “The Book About Mean People” “A Mercy” “Beloved” “God Help the Child” “Home” “Jazz” “Love” “Paradise” “Playing in the Dark: Whiteness and the Literary Imagination” “Please, Louise” “Song of Solomon” “Sula” “The Bluest Eye” “The Source of Self-Regard: Selected Essays, Speeches, and Meditations” “What Moves at the Margin: Selected Nonfiction”
Movement / Style: Black Arts movement
Top Questions
What did Toni Morrison write?
Why is Toni Morrison important?
What awards did Toni Morrison win?
Toni Morrison, original name Chloe Anthony Wofford, (born February 18, 1931, Lorain, Ohio, U.S.—died August 5, 2019, Bronx, New York), American writer noted for her examination of Black experience (particularly Black female experience) within the Black community. She received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1993.
Morrison grew up in the American Midwest in a family that possessed an intense love of and appreciation for Black culture. Storytelling, songs, and folktales were a deeply formative part of her childhood. She attended Howard University (B.A., 1953) and Cornell University (M.A., 1955). After teaching at Texas Southern University for two years, she taught at Howard from 1957 to 1964. In 1965 Morrison became a fiction editor at Random House, where she worked for a number of years. In 1984 she began teaching writing at the State University of New York at Albany, which she left in 1989 to join the faculty of Princeton University; she retired in 2006.
Book Jacket of "The Very Hungry Caterpillar" by American children's author illustrator Eric Carle (born 1929)
Britannica Quiz
Classic Children’s Books Quiz
(Read W.E.B. Du Bois’ 1926 Britannica essay on African American literature.)
Toni Morrison
Toni Morrison
Morrison’s first book, The Bluest Eye (1970), is a novel of initiation concerning a victimized adolescent Black girl who is obsessed by white standards of beauty and longs to have blue eyes. In 1973 a second novel, Sula, was published; it examines (among other issues) the dynamics of friendship and the expectations for conformity within the community. Song of Solomon (1977) is told by a male narrator in search of his identity; its publication brought Morrison to national attention. Tar Baby (1981), set on a Caribbean island, explores conflicts of race, class, and sex.
The critically acclaimed Beloved (1987), which won a Pulitzer Prize for fiction, is based on the true story of a runaway slave who, at the point of recapture, kills her infant daughter in order to spare her a life of slavery. A film adaptation of the novel was released in 1998 and starred Oprah Winfrey. In addition, Morrison wrote the libretto for Margaret Garner (2005), an opera about the same story that inspired Beloved.
(Read Henry Louis Gates, Jr.’s Britannica essay on "Monuments of Hope.")
Get a Britannica Premium subscription and gain access to exclusive content.
Toni Morrison receiving the Nobel Prize
Toni Morrison receiving the Nobel Prize
In 1992 Morrison released Jazz, a story of violence and passion set in New York City’s Harlem during the 1920s. Subsequent novels were Paradise (1998), a richly detailed portrait of a Black utopian community in Oklahoma, and Love (2003), an intricate family story that reveals the myriad facets of love and its ostensible opposite. A Mercy (2008) deals with slavery in 17th-century America. In the redemptive Home (2012), a traumatized Korean War veteran encounters racism after returning home and later overcomes apat