Sterling Allen Brown
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Sterling Allen Brown (May 1, 1901 – January 13, 1989) was an African American teacher, and writer on folklore, of poetry and of literary criticism. He was mainly interested in black culture from the Southern United States.
Early life
He was born on the campus of Howard University in Washington D.C., where his father (a former slave and prominent minister) was a professor. He was educated at Dunbar High School and graduated as the top student for which he received a scholarship to attend Williams College. His academic excellence continued and he eventually left in 1922 after achieving an BA in English. He continued his studies at Harvard University, receiving an MA a year later.
Academic Career
Brown began his teaching career at a number of universities before returning to Howard in 1929 as a teacher where he remained for forty years. During his time there he taught and wrote about African-American literature and folklore and was a pioneer in the appreciation of this genre
Literary Career
In 1932 he published his first book of poetry, Southern Road. It was a collection of poetry with rural themes and treated the simple lives of poor, black, country folk with poignancy and dignity. It also used authentic dialect and structures. Despite the success of this book he struggled to find a publisher for the followup, No Hiding Place (book).
His poetic work was influenced in content, form and cadence by the African American music including work songs, blues and jazz. Like Jean Toomer, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes and other black writers of the period, his work often dealt with race and class in the United States. Brown is usually considered part of the Harlem Renaissance artistic tradition, although he spent the majority of his life in the Brookland neighborhood of Northeast Washington, D.C., where he was the city's poet laureate until his death from leukemia at the age of 88.
Bibliography
- Southern Road, 1932 (original poetry)
- Negro Poetry (literary criticism)
- Drama and The Negro in American Fiction (criticism)
- The Negro Caravan, 1941, co-editor with Arthur P. Davis and Ulysses Lee(anthology of African-American literature)
- The Last Ride of Wild Bill (poetry)
- The Collected Poems of Sterling A. Brown, 1980, Michael S. Harper, ed.
Sources
- http://www.howard.edu/library/Development/SterlingBrown.htm
- http://www.litencyc.com/php/speople.php?rec=true&UID=5046
- [Sterling A. Brown at Modern America Poetry]
- [Sterling A. Brown at The Academy of American Poets]
- [Sterling Brown's letter on Brookland]
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