Dr. Brenda M. Greene, executive director of the Center for Black Literature at Medgar Evers College, writes about Brooklynite Louise Meriwether, a civil rights movement activist and prolific author and journalist.
Looking for Nat Turner bostonreview.net - get the latest breaking news, showbiz & celebrity photos, sport news & rumours, viral videos and top stories from bostonreview.net Daily Mail and Mail on Sunday newspapers.
The book that put Nat Turner on the cover of
Newsweek magazine in the autumn of 1967 had its origins in the oral and written traditions of Tidewater Virginia. Styron traced his interest in the subject of slavery to the stories his grandmother who had owned slaves told him as a child growing up in Newport News. He first read about Nat Turner in a grammar school textbook in the mid-1930s. After reading the original “Confessions” late in the 1940s, Styron began to consider the possibilities of a novel. He gathered source materials and pitched the idea to his editor early in the 1950s. He started writing (and even drafted an outline for an original Hollywood screenplay) early in the 1960s. By the time