Margaret Walker
Margaret Walker grew up with books. Her father was a well-educated, scholarly Methodist minister, and her mother was a music teacher. Her father shared with her his great love of literature, and her mother played ragtime music and read poetry to her daughter.
Early in life, Walker decided to write poetry. She won the Yale University Younger Poets Award in 1942 for her first collection of poems, For My People. The title poem portrays the experiences of African Americans and is written in the rhythm of a preacher's sermon. One of Walker's most famous works is a novel, Jubilee. It tells the story of her great-grandmother, a slave in Georgia during the time of the Civil War. Walker used the traditional form of the slave narrative to create her historical novel. During the 30 years it took her to write this novel, she also raised four children, taught school, and earned a doctorate. Walker was a teacher for much of her career, most of the time as a professor of English at Jackson State College in Mississippi.
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