By Howard Rambsy II As a region, the South is the birthplace of many African American novelists. Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Alice Walker, James Weldon Johnson, Gayl Jones, and Ernest Gaines among many others. With its history of brutal segregation and racism, the South is the home of all kinds of troubling circumstances, poverty, … Southern-born writers

By Howard Rambsy II Generation X, also known as Gen Xers, are people born between 1965 and 1980. Several talented and award-winning novelists emerged from this generation, including Colson Whitehead (b. 1969), Edwidge Danticat (b. 1969), Marlon Jones (b. 1970), N. K. Jemisin (b. 1972), Zadie Smith (b. 1975), Jesmyn Ward (b. 1977), and Chimamanda … Generation X (1965–1980)

By Howard Rambsy II Baby Boomers, people born between 1946 and 1964, include many accomplished Black novelists such as Octavia Butler (b. 1947), Charles Johnson (b. 1948), Gayl Jones (b. 1949), Gloria Naylor (b. 1950), Edward P. Jones (b. 1951), Walter Mosely (b. 1952), and Paul Beatty (b. 1962), to name some of the authors. … Baby Boomer (1946–1964)

By Howard Rambsy II The Silent Generation, people born between 1928 and 1945, include several well-known African American and African novelists. In the United States, as children, the cohort experienced the Great Depression of the 1930s and World War II. When many of the generation were in their 30s, the country experienced the Civil Rights … The Silent Generation (1928–1945)

By Howard Rambsy II The Greatest Generation, people born between 1901 and 1927, include some of the first Black novelists to become widely popular and critically acclaimed, most notably Richard Wright (b. 1908), Ralph Ellison (b. 1914), and James Baldwin (b. 1924). The Greatest Generation came of age during the Great Depression of the 1930s … The Greatest Generation (1901–1927)

By Elizabeth Cali and Howard Rambsy II Who are these people who composed memorable fictional tales, and under what conditions did they write their works? How did their childhoods inform their novels, and in what ways did the places where they lived and traveled influence their artistic output? Questions like these are at the core … Biographical sketches