By Nava Atlas | On February 18, 2015 | Updated September 21, 2022 | Comments (0)
Gwendolyn Brooks (1917 – 2000), the Pulitzer Prize-winning American poet, produced works that included sonnets and ballads as well as blues rhythm in free verse. The Bean Eaters was a well-received collection of poems published in 1960. Critics noted her ability to tap into both specific and universal experiences:
“Her poems are clear, not because they are childishly simple but because they strike at the thought and feelings common to mature people.”
Though Brooks poetry reflects urban African-American life, its underlying themes are universal to the human experience. Following is a review of this collection from the year in which it was published: Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On February 2, 2015 | Updated July 13, 2023 | Comments (0)
The Ballad of the Sad Café by Carson McCullers was first published in 1951. The original book (shown at right) included, in addition to the title novella, Carson’s other major works of fiction. In later editions, the title novella is presented with six short stories, as follows:
- “The Ballad of the Sad Café”
- “Wunderkind”
- “The Jockey”
- “Madame Zilensky and the King of Finland”
- “The Sojourner”
- “A Domestic Dilemma”
- “A Tree, a Rock, a Cloud”
The title story, written in the genre of Southern Gothic, concerns Miss Amelia, a masculine and eccentric woman (who is also a moonshiner), her purported cousin Lymon (a hunchback), and Marvin Macy, a recently released convict two whom Miss Amelia was briefly married. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On January 31, 2015 | Updated May 21, 2024 | Comments (0)
Anne of Green Gables is a 1908 novel by beloved Canadian author L. M. (Lucy Maud) Montgomery (1874 – 1942). Her first full-length book, it was a great success from the the time it was published, and has appealing to generations of readers of all ages and backgrounds sine.
Anne Shirley is a dreamy, imaginative 11-year-old orphan girl mistakenly sent to middle-aged brother and sister Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert, who meant to adopt a boy to help on their farm.
Set in Prince Edward Island, where the author grew up, the original volume and its sequels follow Anne from her arrival in the fictional town of Avonlea, through school, college, marriage, and motherhood. Read More→
By Nava Atlas | On January 27, 2015 | Updated September 20, 2022 | Comments (0)
The Voyage Out by Virginia Woolf was the first novel by this iconic English author, published in Britain in 1915 and in the U.S. in 1920. Written at a point when Woolf was suffering from an acute period of mental illness during which there was a suicide attempt, the novel proceeded painfully slowly.
Nevertheless, it showed all the promise of her later work that would include stream of consciousness writing and themes of sexuality and death.
The final work was over-edited; her publisher felt that her commentary on British politics was too pointed and that it could nip her career in the bud. Read More→
By Taylor Jasmine | On January 21, 2015 | Updated August 23, 2023 | Comments (0)
Sapphira and the Slave Girl (1940) was Willa Cather’s last novel. It was the only book the Virginia-born author set in her home state. It was generally not as well-received as many of her other works, and today, is not as widely known or studied.
An actual incident from Cather’s family history provided the seed of the story, which concerns the troubled marriage of Henry and Sapphira Colbert, who own and operate a small farm and mill near Winchester, Virginia, before the years of the Civil War.
Sapphira, an unhappy and ill middle-aged woman, suspects that her husband is intimately involved with Nancy, a pretty young mixed-race enslaved female of the household. Read More→
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