Gail Mitchell leads this session using the poems from "African American Poetry: 250 Years Of Struggle & Song" as the basis for discussion.
A literary landmark, "African American Poetry: 250 Years Of Struggle & Song," edited by Kevin Young, is the most ambitious anthology of Black poetry ever published, gathering 250 poets from the colonial period to the present. There are many themes that run throughout the selection of poems in this volume, including that of the Black experience in America. The discussion at this event will examine the works of poets such as Langston Hughes, Gwendolyn Brooks and others in relation to the history and memory of Black Americans.
About the Discussion Leader:
Gail Mitchell received an MFA in poetry from Drew University and a master’s in T.E.S.O.L. (Teacher of English to Speakers of Other Languages) from West Chester University. Her books of poetry are "Learning English the Cultural Way" and "Makers & Keepers." Mitchell is a master quilter, poet and a retired New Jersey public school teacher.
This program is part of Lift Every Voice: Why African American Poetry Matters, a national public humanities initiative of Library of America presented in partnership with The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture with generous support from The National Endowment for the Humanities, The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, and Emerson Collective.
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