How to Become a Black Writer

How to Become a Black Writer by award-winning novelist, memoirist, literary activist, and teacher of writing Marita Golden opens with a description of a nightly ritual where her father told her bedtime stories about heroes and champions of Black history, from Fredrick Douglass to Sojourner Truth. Golden, the author of over twenty works of fiction and nonfiction, asks "Did my father know he was making me a writer? Did he know he was my first writing teacher?" This book documents the forces that shaped Golden's productive life as a writer and literary activist, from coming of age against the backdrop of social change in the 1960s, being mentored by feminist poet Audre Lorde, writing groundbreaking journalism for Essence Magazine, and beginning her career as a novelist in the decade that witnessed the explosion in Black women's writing led by Alice Walker, Toni Morrison, and Ntozake Shange. How to Become a Black Writer is for anyone who loves to read or loves to write. Golden explores the challenges, the triumphs, and the sublime journey of becoming a Black writer.