Zadie Smith
Zadie Smith (1975 - ) was born in northwest London and grew up in circumstances common and unsurprising, nothing remarkable, nothing unusual, nothing foreshadowing the explosion she made on the literary scene when she was 18. That year an uncompleted manuscript of a novel was seized upon the London publishing world and auctioned for the privilege of publishing it. The novel, White Teeth, became the sensation of the decade. Smith has gone to fulfill and expand that promise.
Besides White Teeth, she is the author of the novels The Autograph Man, On Beauty, NW and Swing Time, as well as a novella, The Embassy of Cambodia, and two collections of essays, Changing My Mind and Feel Free. Zadie was elected a fellow of the Royal Society of Literature in 2002, and was listed as one of Granta’s 20 Best Young British Novelists in 2003 and again in 2013. White Teeth won multiple literary awards including the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award and the Guardian First Book Award. On Beauty was shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize and won the Orange Prize for Fiction, and NW was shortlisted for the Baileys Women’s Prize for Fiction. Zadie Smith is currently a tenured professor of fiction at New York University and a Member of the American Academy of Arts and Letters.
Black Manhattan
Black Manhattan
Originally published in 1930, and now back in print with a foreword by best-selling author Zadie Smith, Black Manhattan traces the black experience in New York City from the earliest settlements in Chatham Square during the pre-Revolutionary War period to the triumphant achievements of the Harlem Renaissance. Written by one of the leading African American scholars and activists of the early twentieth century, Black Manhattan is an essential sociological and historical document.
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was an early civil rights activist, a pioneering leader of the NAACP, and a seminal figure in the creation and development of the Harlem Renaissance. Johnson’s first success as a writer was the poem “Lift Ev’ry Voice and Sing” (1899), which became known as the “Negro National Anthem.” His published works include The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man (1912), God’s Trombones (1927), and Black Manhattan (1930).