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Sherley Anne Williams

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Sherley Anne Williams (August 25, 1944 – July 6, 1999) was an African-American poet, novelist, professor, and social critic. Many of her works tell stories about her life in the African-American community.

Biography

Williams was born in Bakersfield, California. When she was little her family picked cotton in order to get money. At the age of eight her father died of tuberculosis and when she was sixteen her mother died. She graduated from Thomas Alva Edison High School in Fresno California in 1962. In 1966 she earned her bachelor's degree in English at what is now California State University at Fresno and she received her master's degree at Brown University in 1972. The following year (1973) she became a professor of English Literature at the University of California at San Diego. She traveled to Ghana under a 1984 Fulbright grant.[1] Her works include collections of poetry such as The Peacock Poems (1975), the novel Dessa Rose (1986), and two picture books. She also published the groundbreaking work Give Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study of Neo-Black Literature in 1972. Williams is also known and remembered for her music which mainly consisted of blues, and jazz poetry. In the early-1990s she did some recording sessions for Bertram Turetzky's album called – "Compositions And Improvisations" which consist of various artist such as Vinny Golia, Jerome Rothenberg, Quincy Troupe, Nancy Turetzky, and Sherley Anne Williams her self. She is credited for her contributions to Bertram Turetzky's album (as a poet & vocalist). The album was recorded at Studio 101, in Solana Beach, California during the summer of 1992. The album was released the following year by Nine Winds Records in 1993. Three of the songs featured in the album consisted of poems which was previously written by Sherley Anne Williams called "One-Sided Bed Blues," "Big Red And His Brother," and "The Wishon Line," which were all recorded in musical format for the album.[2][3]

Bibliography

Fiction

  • Dessa Rose (1986)
  • Working Cotton (1992)
  • Girls Together (1999)

Poetry

  • The Peacock Poems (1975)
  • Someone Sweet Angel Chile (1982)

Non-fiction

  • Giving Birth to Brightness: A Thematic Study in Neo-Black Literature (1972)

Further reading

  • Davis, Mary Kemp. "Everybody Knows Her Name: The Recovery of the Past in Sherley Anne Williams's Dessa Rose", Callaloo 12.3 (Summer 1989), pp. 544–558.
  • Draper, James P. "Sherley Anne Williams", Black Literature Criticism: Excerpts from Criticism of the Most Significant Works of Black Authors Over the Past 200 Years, Vol. 3. Detroit: Gale Research, 1992, pp. 1950–1961.
  • Shirley M. Jordan, "Sherley Anne Williams", in Black Women Writers At Work, ed. Claudia Tate, New York: Continuum, 1983, pp. 205–213.
  • Nagel, Carol De Kane. "Sherley Anne Williams", African American Biography. Detroit: Gale Research, 1994, pp. 787–789.

References

  1. ^ Mildred E. Mickle, "Williams, Sherley Anne", in William L. Andrews, Frances Smith Foster & Trudier Harris (eds), Oxford Companion to African American Literature, New York/Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997.
  2. ^ " Sherley Anne Williams - Discography" Sherley Anne Williams (1993). Discogs p.1 www.discogs.com Retrieved 25-01-2016
  3. ^ " Bertram Turetzky – Compositions And Improvisations Tracklisting" Bertram Turetzky(1993). Discogs p.1 www.discogs.com Retrieved 25-01-2016

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