Gwendolyn Brooks, Poet Laureate of Illinois since 1968, is the first black writer to have won the Pulitzer Prize: her second book of poetry, "Annie Allen," was selected for the award in 1950. Born in 1917, Brooks began her writing career while still a child growing up in the slums of Chicago. At the

African american fiction, In-your-face, Modernist poetry, Pathos, Political, Urban

Toni Morrison, arguably the most famous living African American author, was born Chloe Anthony Wofford in 1931 in Ohio. As a child, she was an avid and precocious reader, and her family of masterful storytellers raised her on a steady diet of tales and legends. She studied literature at Howard and Co

African american fiction, Dense, Feminine, Layered, Melancholy, Pathos, Religious, Southern gothic, Spectral, Women's literature

Tarkovsky's poetic films, interwoven with loose narrative threads and strikingly sublime images, demand a lot from the viewer, but return much more. In his signature piece "Andrei Rublev" (1969), a three-hour exposition on the fifteenth-century painter, Tarkovsky takes the viewer through series of sc

Depressive, Implosive, Moodscape, Pathos, Political

The next time you watch a Howard Hawks film, look for the seams -- they won't be there. An unobtrusive, quietly gifted director, writer, and producer, Hawks constructed films that seem as effortless and artless as the films of his contemporaries seem idiosyncratic. With a background in mechanical eng

Classic hollywood, Contemplative, Film noir and neo-noir, Layered, Pathos, Subtle