This sense of pride continued into 1970s but also expanded into mainstream literature. Black writers began to earn a high place in American writing and were recognized through many awards, achievements and best- selling novels. Today, African American writers continue to address many of the same societal concerns but are accepted outside of their community, as well. "Winning as an American is very special but winning as a black American is a knockout" writer like Toni Morrison, Alice Walker and James Baldwin often represent " black literature" to contemporary audiences. James Baldwin was a civil rights activist, writer and essayist. Born in August 2, 1924 in Harlem, Baldwin never knew his biological father but was adopted at a young age by his mother’s husband. At 14, Baldwin began to preach in the Pentecostal church. Just three years later, at seventeen, he left Harlem and moved to Greenwich Village, a neighborhood known for artists and writers. During this time, he began to …show more content…
She was the youngest of eight children, to Willie Lee Walker and Minnie Lou Tallulah Grant. Her father was a poor sharecropper and her mother worked as a maid. In the summer of 1952, Walker was blinded in her right eye by a BB gun pellet while playing with her brother. Alice grew up in an environment rife with racism and poverty which, along with her passion for gender issues, remains a large part of narratives. Her first novel was The Third Life of Grange Copeland was published in 1970, an epic novel that tracks three generations of a black Southern family through internal strife and a struggle to rise from sharecropping. Meridian, walker’s second novel was published six years later. She wrote the critically acclaimed novel The Color Purple (1982), a epistolary novel that depicted rape, incest, bisexuality, and lesbian love among African Americans for which she won the National Book Award and the Pulitzer Prize for