Story of Phyllis Wheatley of Boston, Mass., a slave, who published a book of poetry in 1773.

Chronicles the life of Dave, a nineteenth-century slave who went on to become an influential poet, artist, and potter.

"A paradigm-shattering biography of Phillis Wheatley, whose poetry was at the heart of the American Revolution"--

Shares the story of George Moses Horton, who born into slavery taught himself to read and earned money by selling his poems to the students of the University of North Carolina, before becoming the first published African American poet of the South.

Kwame Alexander shares snapshots of a man learning how to love. He takes us through stories of his parents: from being awkward newlyweds in the sticky Chicago summer of 1967, to the sometimes-confusing ways they showed their love to each other, and for him. Alexander attempts to deal with the unraveling of his marriage and the grief of his mother's recent passing while sharing the solace he found in learning how to perfect her famous fried chicken...

"Langston Hughes was born in Joplin, Missouri, and was raised by his grandmother, who told him many stories of the Black American experience and taught him to be proud of his race from a young age. With her guidance, Langston became a talented writer in high school, creating dramatic plays, poetry, and articles for the school paper. His career as a writer would continue to blossom. Langston pioneered jazz poetry and published nearly twenty poetry...

This book chronicles the life of Hughes, who came of age early in the 1920s in the two great playgrounds of the decade: Harlem and Paris.

"In a shotgun house in Gulfport, Mississippi, at the crossroads of Highway 49, the legendary highway of the Blues, and Jefferson Street, Natasha Trethewey learned to read and write. Before the land was a crossroads, however, it was a pasture: a farming settlement where, after the Civil War, a group of formerly enslaved women, men, and children made a new home. In this intimate and searching meditation, Trethewey revisits the geography of her childhood...