Generations: A Memoir (New York Review Classics) - Softcover

Lucille Clifton; Tracy K. Smith

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1681375877 ISBN 13: 9781681375878

Publisher: NYRB Classics, 2021

Synopsis

A moving family biography in which the poet traces her family history back through Jim Crow, the slave trade, and all the way to the women of the Dahomey people in West Africa. <p/>Buffalo, New York. A father's funeral. Memory. <p/>In Generations, Lucille Clifton's formidable poetic gift emerges in prose, giving us a memoir of stark and profound beauty. Her story focuses on the lives of the Sayles family: Caroline, "born among the Dahomey people in 1822," who walked north from New Orleans to Virginia in 1830 when she was eight years old; Lucy, the first black woman to be hanged in Virginia; and Gene, born with a withered arm, the son of a carpetbagger and the author's grandmother. <p/>Clifton tells us about the life of an African American family through slavery and hard times and beyond, the death of her father and grandmother, but also all the life and love and triumph that came before and remains even now. <p/>Generations is a powerful work of determination and affirmation. "I look at my husband," Clifton writes, "and my children and I feel the Dahomey women gathering in my bones."

About this title

About the Author

<b>Lucille Clifton</b> (1936-2010) was an American poet known for her work focusing on the African American experience and family life. Winner of the National Book Award and the Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize, Clifton is the only author to have two books of poetry nominated for a Pulitzer Prize in the same year. She is best known for her collections <i>Two-Headed Woman</i>, <i>Next</i>, <i>Good Woman</i>, and <i>Quilting</i>. In addition to her several poetry collections, Clifton also wrote numerous books for children, including her Everett Anderson series. <p/><b>Tracy K. Smith</b> is a writer and former United States Poet Laureate. The author of a memoir, <i>Ordinary Light</i>, and four poetry collections, including <i>Life on Mars</i>, which won the Pulitzer Prize in 2012, she currently serves as the chair of Princeton University's Lewis Center for the Arts.

Edition details

• Publisher: NYRB Classics
• Publication date: 2021
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1681375877
• ISBN 13: 9781681375878
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 96