She is well known for her exceptional novel, "Their Eyes Were Watching God." ... The two novels embody many similar concerns and methods that characterize the black women's literary tradition. ... Hurston released her first novel, Jonah's Gourd Vine, in 1934. ... By the mid-1940s, Hurston's writing career was faltering, and she was arrested and charged with molesting a ten-year-old boy and his two friends. ... "God does love black people, doesn't He?" ...

• Word Count: 1464
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

One of the most interesting aspects of the novel is the excellent contrast in characters that it affords. ... Siles versus Harriet and Jim Boy. The novel is very slow, even tedious, reading in its early chapters, but once it gains its momentum it moves as swiftly as a jazz rhythm. Its chapters, emerging ever more clearly and challenging as the novel proceeds, gives it this rhythm. Every character in the novel, with the exception of Mr. ...

• Word Count: 2112
• Approx Pages: 8
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

His parents, James Hughes and Carolina Mercer Langston, separated when he was a very young boy in 1903. ... At night they would read him stories from such works from popular black authors such as W.E.B. ... They would also tell him stories of black history, and encourage him to try to make positive changes someday. ... In his autobiographical novel, Hughes said as a young boy, "For the first time loneliness strikes me, strikes me terribly settling down in a dull ache round about, in the dusk." ... Even as a young boy he was ready to take chances in life. ...

• Word Count: 1483
• Approx Pages: 6
• Grade Level: High School

His childhood and his relationship with his stepfather was the basis for his most famous novel, Got Tell it on the Mountain. ... From novels to non-fiction to poetry, Baldwin got a taste of many different forms and styles of writing. ... He felt as though he was "too black" as well as isolated, and all of these insecurities constituted for his leaving Switzerland after only two weeks (Als 141). ... His most famous novel, Got Tell It on the Mountain published in 1953, is an unusual depiction of a coming-of-age story of a fourteen year old boy, John Grimes. ... Baldwin's most controversi...

• Word Count: 2437
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

A famous club known for showcasing black-talent was the "Cotton Club". The "Cotton Club" was owned by whites, but all of the performers were black. ... The radio and film industries also discriminated against blacks. ... Black artists flocked to Harlem in the late nineteen twenties. ... He attended an all black school as a child. ...

• Word Count: 2498
• Approx Pages: 10
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Langston Hughes Langston Hughes opened his first volume of poems with the expression of his- and every Negro's- "soul world": "I am a Negro: /Black as the night is black, /Black like the depths of my Africa" (Emanuel 17). ... Hughes spent a lifetime illuminating that world through poems, stories, novels, lectures, and various other literary forms - with virtuosity and understanding so unmatched that he has been unofficially granted the title as Negro Poet Laureate and Dean of Negro Writers in America. ... The city opened a new world to the small town boy from Kansas. ... Langston was...

• Word Count: 1325
• Approx Pages: 5
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School

Hughes never married and several of his friends were homosexual, among them Carl Van Vechten, who wrote the controversial novel Nigger Heaven (1926) therefore causing an unrelevant speculation about his sexuality. ... Hughes' poetry announced to the world that the streets of black America were culturally rich, vibrant and fiercely poetic. ... For example "Mother to Son- the mother says "So boy don't you turn back, don't set you down on the steps cause you find its kinder harder, don't you fall now-. ... The black man that is lynched in the poem could not be free in this ...

• Word Count: 1518
• Approx Pages: 6
• Has Bibliography
• Grade Level: High School