BHM 2021: Spotlight: African American Writers in California

From Credo: There is an important and long running strand within African-American culture that expresses a tragic-comic view of both life in general and the experience of white racism in particular. Paul Beatty's writings, especially his novels, are perhaps the best contemporary exemplification and refinement of this strand.

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From Credo: Born Marguerite Johnson, Angelou spent her formative years shuttling between St. Louis, Missouri, a tiny, totally segregated town in Arkansas, and San Francisco, where she realized her ambition of becoming that city's first black streetcar conductor.

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From Credo: Reed has challenged his talent in many directions, from novelist, poet, and essayist to songwriter, television producer, publisher, and playwright. He has taught at Harvard, Yale, and Dartmouth, and he has lectured at the University of California for over twenty years. He has received numerous prizes such as the Lewis H. Michaux Literary Prize in 1978, fellowships from the Wisconsin Board and Yale University's Calhoun College in 1982, and grants from the National Endowment of the Arts and the MacArthur Foundation.

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From Credo: Born in Pasadena, California, Octavia Butler is a graduate of Pasadena City College. She has attended science fiction workshops and is a member of the Science Fiction Writers of America. Her writing has focused on the impact of race and gender on the future society.

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From Credo: Born in Trenton, New Jersey, on October 18, 1948, Paulette Linda Williams, who changed her name to Ntozake Shange in 1971, graduated from Barnard College and received her master's degree from the University of Southern California. She studied African American dance and gave many poetry readings in California. Shange taught at Sonoma Mills College in California from 1972 to 1975. Her play For Colored Girls Who Have Considered Suicide/When the Rainbow Is Enuf, a choreopoem, was first produced in California after her dance-drama Sassafrass was presented in 1976.

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From Credo: Walter Mosley's parents, Leroy (an African-American school custodian) and Ella (a Jewish-American schoolteacher and school administrator), raised him in South Central Los Angeles, where he attended public schools. Leroy plays a central role in many of Walter's novels, in that Walter's Easy Rawlins character bears a striking resemblance to Leroy.

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