Zora Neale Hurston Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Hurston

[By Kenton Rambsy]

Zora Neale Hurston existed in obscurity for years after her death with very few people doing extensive scholarship on her work. When Alice Walker published her 1975 article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” she helped to revive interest in the late writer.

Richard Wright Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Wright

[By Kenton Rambsy]

The success of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) catapulted him to international success. Native Son has been credited as being one of the first most successful protest novels by in American literary history. The novel immediately became a best seller with over 250, 000 copies of the book sold with the first month of its release.

Toni Morrison Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Morrison

[By Kenton Rambsy]

Over the course of the past year, Toni Morrison has been a major focus for HBW blog posts as we seek to foster engaged scholarship on black novels. Morrison writer has become a totem of black literature since her 1970 novel debut with The Bluest Eye.

Since then, Morrison has been the recipient of a Pulitzer Prize (1987), a Nobel Prize in Literature (1993), and it was announced in 2012 that she would be the recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom—the highest award for a civilian.

The Coverage... Of Toni Morrison's Home

[By Kenton Rambsy]

This May, Nobel Prize Winning writer Toni Morrison released her 10^th novel, Home. The relatively short novel (approximately 160 pages) offers alternative visions of American history focusing on racial and social tensions after the Korean War.

Set in the 1950s, the novel disrupts the popular historical narrative that this period in America was characterized by national harmony and prosperity.