Paule Marshall, 1929 - Novelist Paule Marshall was born on April 9, 1929 in Brooklyn, New York. She graduated from Brooklyn College and worked briefly as a librarian before joining Our World magazine in 1953. Marshall's first autobiographical novel "Brown Girl, Brownstones" (1959) is about an American girl of Barbadian parents who travels to their homeland as an adult and was critically acclaimed for its acute rendition of dialogue. "Soul Clap Hands and Sing" (1961) is a collection of four novellas that present four aging men coming to terms with refusing to affirm lasting values. "The Chosen Place, the Timeless People" (1969) takes place on a fictional Caribbean island where a… philanthropist attempts to modernize the impoverished and oppressed society. "Praisesong for the Widow" (1983) states her belief that African-Americans need to rediscover their heritage and "Daughters" (1991) tells of a West Indian woman in New York who returns home to assist her father's reelection campaign.
Edwidge Danticat was born in Haiti in 1969 and came to America at age twelve to live with her parents in Brooklyn. She studied French literature at Barnard College and received her M.F.A. from Brown University. Her work has achieved both popular and critical acclaim. Breath, Eyes, Memory (1994), her first novel and master's thesis, garnered Danticat a Granta Regional Award for Best Young American Novelist and was chosen as an Oprah Book Club selection, a singular honor. Her collection of short stories Krik? Krak! (1995) was nominated for the National Book Award. Along with awards for fiction from Seventeen and Essence and the 1995 Pushcart Short Story Prize, Danticat was chosen by Harper's… Bazaar as "one of 20 people in their twenties who will make a difference," and by the New York Times Magazine as one of "30 Under 30" people to watch. Her second novel, The Farming of Bones (1998), concerns a massacre in Haiti in 1937.