Archive - History of Black Writing Blog
The Banner image for the HBW Blog, which was published from 2011-2021.
Black Literary History Making
The HBW Blog published regularly for ten years from 2011-2021 at the URL https://projecthbw.ku.edu. During that time, it served as a major forum for the exchange of information and ideas, as well as a robust network for scholars, teachers, and students from different disciplines around the world.
Guest contributors include leading scholars and writers, but most of the posts were conceived of, researched, and written by HBW's staff of undergraduate and graduate students. Its content consists of feature editorials, book reviews, memorials, and coverage of HBW programming. Altogether, 95 writers contributed more than 750 posts.
The HBW Blog Archive is searchable by topic, month and year, and contributor name.
| Blog Post/Link | Date |
|---|---|
| Oprah Winfrey: A Sponsor of African American Novelists There are many different ways to talk about the growing popularity of African American literature over the years. We can talk about Pulitzer Prize Winners such as Alice Walker (1983) and Edward P. Jones (2004). .. | |
| 15 Dates of Importance, 1940 – 1970 1940 – Native Son by Richard Wright is published; the work is a Book-of-the-Month Club selection. 1941 – Orson Welles directs stage adaption of Native Son by Richard Wright. Actor Canada Lee stars as Bigger Thomas... | |
| 15 Dates of Importance, 1912- 1939 1913– Author and director Oscar Micheaux publishes his first novel, Conquest: The Story Of A Negro Pioneer, through The Woodruff Press. The novel is published anonymously and is based on his life as a homesteader... | |
| 10 Dates of Importance, 1852 – 1912 1852– The Heroic Slave, a novella by Frederick Douglass, is published in 1852 by John P. Jewett and Company. The novella resembles a slave narrative even though it is a work of fiction... | |
| 25 Dates of Importance, 1996 – 2012 1996 – The White Boy Shuffle by Paul Beatty is published. .. | |
| 15 Dates of Importance, 1986 – 1995 1986 – A second adaptation of Richard Wright’s Native Son is made with Victor Love playing the role of Bigger Thomas and Oprah Winfrey playing his mother, Mrs. Thomas. .. | |
| 15 Dates of Importance, 1970 – 1985 1970 – The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison is published by Holt, Rinehart, and Winston Publisher. 1971 – The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman by Ernest Gaines is published... | |
| Timeline Series—African American Novel History The importance of chronology of African American literary history has become all the more important to me after viewing “The Timeline of African American Poetry.” My older brother, an associate professor of African American literature and director of Black Studies at Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, recently compiled a timeline of significant events in African American poetry that spans from 1854 to 2012... | |
| Zora Neale Hurston Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Hurston Zora Neale Hurston existed in obscurity for years after her death with very few people doing extensive scholarship on her work. When Alice Walker published her 1975 article “In Search of Zora Neale Hurston,” she helped to revive interest in the late writer... | |
| Richard Wright Revisited: A Collection of HBW Posts on Wright The success of Richard Wright’s Native Son (1940) catapulted him to international success. Native Son has been credited as being one of the first most successful protest novels by in American literary history. The novel immediately became a best seller with over 250, 000 copies of the book sold with the first month of its release.. |