Mildred d taylor biography author
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Book Links July 2006 (vol.15, no.6)
by Nancy J. Johnson and Cyndi Giorgis
Born in Mississippi in 1943 and raised in Ohio, Mildred D. Taylor grew up immersed in family stories. As a child, Taylor visited her great-grandfather’s house built at the turn of the past century, a house that didn’t have running water or electricity. Memories of those visits found their way into a series of stories about the Logan family, most notably
Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, the 1977 Newbery Medal winner. Taylor’s stories reveal struggles, racial tension, and tragedy, as well as triumph, pride, and family honor.
NJJ & CG: How did you begin writing for children?
Taylor: I had been trying to write stories for years that were based on narratives told by my family, and everything was always rejected. A friend of mine told me about a contest that was sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. The story I submitted was one I had previously written from se
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Mildred DeLois Taylor (born September 13, 1943) is an African-American writer known for her works exploring the struggle faced by African-American families in the Deep South. Taylor was born in Jackson, Mississippi but lived there only a short amount of time, then moved to Toledo, Ohio, where she spent most of her childhood. She now lives in Colorado with her daughter. She has expressed her views on the Great Depression as an economical crisis, as well as slavery. Many of her works are based on stories of her family that she heard while growing up. She has stated that these anecdotes became very clear in her mind, and in fact, once she realized that adults talked about the past, "I began to visualize all the family who had once known the land, and I felt as if I knew them, too ..." Taylor has talked about how much history was in the stories; some stories took place during times of slavery and some post-slavery. Taylor's most famous book is Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry
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Taylor, Mildred D. 1943–
Writer
At a Glance…
Challenged Racism
Sources
Mildred Delois Taylor fryst vatten a critically acclaimed author of children’s novels. Most of her works, which are based on her own family history, revolve around the close-knit Logan family, an African American family that rises above the indignities of racism through courage and love. In 1977, Taylor won the Newbery Medal, the most prestigious award in children’s literature, for her historical novel Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry. Since 1977, Taylor’s fiction continued to portray the effects of racism counterbalanced with courage and love. In doing so, her fiction defied the “political correctness” of the 1990s.
Taylor was born at home on September 13, 1943 in Jackson, Mississippi, where she joined her older sister Wilma. Their paternal great-grandfather, the son of a white Alabama plantation owner and a slave woman, had become a successful farmer in Mississippi. His la