Beverly Lowry, Her Dream of Dreams: The Rise and Triumph of Madam C. J. Walker, [New York: Alfred A Knopf, 2003], 481pp. Beverly Lowry, the author of Her Dream of Dreams, grew up in Greenville, Mississippi, but was born in Memphis, Tennessee on August 10, 1938. Lowry is the author of six novel...

A Critical Perspective: Richard Wright's Native Son Richard Wright marked the beginning of a new era in black fiction. He was one of the first American writers of his time to confront his readers with the effects of racism. Wright had a way of telling his reader about his own life through ...

James Baldwin was born in Harlem on August 2, 1924. His name at birth was James Arthur Jones. Baldwin never knew his father; his mother, who was originally from Maryland, was named Emma Burdis Jones. In 1927, she married David Baldwin, a Baptist preacher and factory worker from New Orleans with a tw...

Randall Kenan Randall Kenan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1963. However, he spent most of his childhood in Chinquapin, North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received a B.A. in English in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, he worked in...