An artful and intimate meditation on the life and works of the acclaimed novelist. From her childhood in the steel town of Lorain, Ohio to '70s-era book tours with Muhammad Ali, from the front lines with Angela Davis to her own riverfront writing room, Toni Morrison leads an assembly of her peers, critics, and colleagues on an exploration of race, America, history and the human condition as seen through the prism of her own literature.

The definitive biography of an important American cultural intellectual of the twentieth century--Ralph Ellison, author of the masterpiece Invisible Man. In 1953, Ellison's explosive story of a young black man's search for truth and identity catapulted him to national prominence. Ellison earned many honors, but his failure to publish a second novel, despite years of striving, haunted him for the rest of his life. Rampersad, the first scholar given...

Toni Morrison: a biography looks at the remarkable life of an essential American novelist, whose critically acclaimed, bestselling books offer lively, powerful depictions of black America. Toni Morrison serves as a basic introduction to the literary influences that shaped Morrison's writing, from the early novels to the breakout success of Song of Solomon, from the overwhelming achievement of Beloved: a novel to her most recent book, A Mercy. The...

"Born Chloe Ardelia Wofford, she grew up listening to stories and loved reading. As a teenager she worked at the Lorain town library and later attended Howard University. As an editor at a New York publisher, she found time early in the morning and late at night after her children were asleep to write. When she looked about over her life and all what she had seen and learned, she knew she wanted to write about her people, Black people. Today and always...

The Newbery Honor-winning author of Genesis Begins Again offers a picture book rendering of Zora Neale Hurston's childhood to illuminate the rich natural-world and cultural experiences that shaped her education and career as a storyteller.

Profiles the African American author who survived a violent, impoverished childhood and earned fame as the author and screenwriter of "Waiting to Exhale" and "How Stella Got Her Groove Back."