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Memoir, Biography & Letters · Fiction & Novels · Poetry
My poems are written to be heard: public, representative and spoken aloud. Critics who prefer poetry as a written form have undervalued them, but that public purpose is the point of the art.
As a consultant to the Martin Luther King Jr. Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2011, I objected publicly to a paraphrase of King carved on it and demanded it be changed. The paraphrase was removed.
From 1961 to 1965 I worked as a journalist and broadcaster in Africa: associate editor of The Arab Observer in Cairo, then feature editor, freelance writer and radio broadcaster in Accra, Ghana.
Touring Europe with Porgy and Bess in 1954–1955, I made a practice of learning the language of every country I visited, and within a few years I was proficient in several languages.
Educators use my autobiographies as teaching tools: to train teachers to talk about race, to frame resilience in children, and to illustrate child development research with real-life cases.
In 1981, with no bachelor's degree, I accepted the lifetime Reynolds Professorship of American Studies at Wake Forest University and taught philosophy, ethics, theology, science, theater and writing.
When critics objected to my using the details of my life in my work, I answered with Balzac and the 19th-century writers: I write for money. Writing is my profession, and I treat it as one.
I write in the slave narrative tradition, speaking in the first-person singular about the first-person plural. My autobiographies describe Black culture and interpret it for a wider, white readership.
Starting with Caged Bird, I followed the same writing ritual for every book: I put myself back into the time I am writing about, even the traumatic parts, until I reach what I call enchantment.
My screenplay Georgia, Georgia (1972), produced by a Swedish film company, was the first original script by a Black woman to be produced. I also wrote the film's soundtrack.
