Margaret Walker

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In 1942, Margaret Walker won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Award for her poem For My People. This accomplishment heralded the beginning of Margaret Walker’s literary career which spanned from the brink of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1930s to the cusp of the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s (Gates and McKay 1619). Through her fiction and poetry, Walker became a prominent voice in the African-American community. Her writing, especially her signature novel, Jubilee, exposes her readers to the plight of her race by accounting the struggles of African Americans from the pre-Civil War period to the present and ultimately keeps this awareness relevant to contemporary American society. Margaret Walker was born on July 7, 1915 in Birmingham, Alabama to Reverend Sigismund C. Walker and Marion Dozier Walker (Gates and McKay 1619). Her father, a scholarly Methodist minister, passed onto her his passion for literature. Her mother, a music teacher, gifted her with an innate sense of rhythm through music and storytelling. Her parents not only provided a supportive environment throughout her childhood but also emphasized the values of education, religion, and black culture. Much of Walker’s ability to realistically write about African American life can be traced back to her early exposure to her black heritage. Born in Alabama, she was deeply influenced by the Harlem Renaissance and received personal encouragement from Langston Hughes. During the Depression, she worked for the WPA Federal Writers Project and assists Richard Wright, becoming his close friend and later, biographer. In 1942, she was the first African American to win the Yale Younger Poets award for her poem For My People (Gates and McKay 1619). Her publishing career halted for... ... middle of paper ... ...was meant to be shared, to be remembered; it was made without exceptions, made for all to witness and recall a rich black history even with its brutality. Works Cited Gates, Henry Louis, and Nellie Y. McKay. The Norton Anthology of African American Literature. New York: W.W. Norton &, 1996. Print. Klotman, Phyllis. “’Oh Freedom’—Women and History in Margaret Walker’s Jubilee.” Black American Literature Forum 11.4 (Winter, 1977): 139-145. JSTOR. Web. 8 December 2013. "Margaret Walker." The Poetry Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 09 Dec. 2013. . McCray, Judith. "FOR MY PEOPLE: THE LIFE AND WRITING OF MARGARET WALKER." California Newsreel. N.p., 1998. Web. 08 Dec. 2013. . Walker, Margaret. How I Wrote Jubilee. Chicago: Third World, 1972. Print.

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