Lorraine Hansberry: A Radiant Black Radical Imagination
Lorraine Vivian Hansberry lived only 34 years, yet she reshaped American theater, sharpened the intellectual edge of the Civil Rights Movement, and left behind a...
Category : Authors & Poets
Lima Barreto: Brazil’s Sad Visionary
Afonso Henriques de Lima Barreto (1881–1922) was a distinguished Brazilian novelist, journalist, and short-story writer renowned for his incisive social criticism and satirical depictions of...
Mazisi Kunene: Poet Laureate of Africa
How will I ever forget you, magic leaf Tormented as I am by your taunts The prodding jeers and the branding iron You command, “[Captive],...
Edward Kamau Brathwaite: Poet of the Tides
Edward Kamau Brathwaite — born Lawson Edward Brathwaite on May 11, 1930 — was a Barbadian poet, historian, linguist and cultural theorist who became one...
Jayne Cortez: Firespitter of the Black Arts Movement
Jayne Cortez (born Sallie Jayne Richardson) was a visionary African American poet, performer, and cultural activist whose fierce, music‑driven poetics made her a defining voice...
Rudolph Fisher: A Renaissance Man of Science and Story
Rudolph Fisher (1897–1934) was a physician, radiologist, writer, musician, and orator whose remarkable, though brief, life had a profound impact on the Harlem Renaissance and...
A Free Black Man in Captivity: Reflections of Mumia Abu-Jamal
“I am a thinker, writer, activist, creative being, man, dad, husband, grandpop, and son. But just to keep it simple: I’m a free Black man living in...
Jacques Stephen Alexis: Healer, Novelist, Revolutionary
Jacques Stephen Alexis (1922–1961) was a Haitian novelist, neurologist, and Marxist political activist whose life and work came to embody the intertwined struggles for culture,...
Gwendolyn B. Bennett: The Harlem Renaissance Writer and Painter
Gwendolyn B. Bennett was an African-American poet, essayist, short-story writer, and artist. Although she never published her own volume of poetry, she was one of...
Lucille Clifton: The Award-winning Poet
“I write to celebrate life.” “I would like to be seen as a woman whose roots go back to Africa, who tried to honor being...