Robert Olen Butler Robert Olen Butler, Jr., was born January 20, 1945, and grew up in Granite City, Illinois, a steel town near St. Louis, Missouri. His father, Robert Olen Butler, Sr., was chair of the theater department at St. Louis University, and his mother, Lucille Hall Butler, an executive secretary. Butler graduated from the University of Illinois with a B.S. in oral interpretation. He went on to the University of Iowa, receiving his M.A. in playwriting in 1969. While in Iowa, he married, and then divorced Carol Supplee. When Butler finished graduate school he enlisted in the Army. He was assigned to Military Intelligence, given intensive training in the Vietnamese language, and sent to Vietnam. Butler’s “professional proficiency” was gained in a year’s immersion course, taught by a Vietnamese exile who also gave him insight into the Vietnamese culture and the struggles of an exile. His tour of duty was served in Saigon until 1972. It is felt by many that his war time training and experiences deeply influenced his life, writing, and thinking. In July 1972, he married the poet Marilyn Geller and worked as an editor and reporter in New York City for a year. When his wife became pregnant with their son, Joshua, the family moved back to Illinois. Butler taught as a substitute in his hometown of Granite City in 1973 and 1974, then became a reporter in Chicago. He moved back to the New York City area in 1975 and took a job as editor-in-chief of Energy User News, an investigative newspaper he created. According to Butler, every word of his first four published novels was written on a legal pad, by hand, on his lap, on the Long Island Railroad as he commuted back and forth from Sea Cliff to Manhattan. In 1985, Butler assumed an assistant professorship at McNeese State University in Lake Charles, Louisiana. Louisiana is home to several Vietnamese communities, and the Louisiana Vietnamese provided Butler with material for his Pulitzer Prize-winning collection of short stories, A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain. Butler once said that he finds that much fiction about Vietnam fails to portray the Vietnamese people with sufficient depth, perhaps because it focuses more on the military action. His early work is dominated by the “Vietnam trilogy,” novels in which a minor character in one shows up as a major character in another.
In Christmas 1910, Robert Butler uses plot and character to reflect on the setting of the short story. The setting takes place in her third Christmas in the west river country, which is described as a bad, hopeless and depressing place. There is nothing there but flat lands everywhere. There is nothing better for Abigail to do to make her life better there, so she just has to do what her parents do. The areas around them are even desolated. Due to droughts, it makes South Dakota lonely and go through some hard times. The winter makes it hard for people to interact with other people. Abigail needs her own character, she wants attention from people that are not her family. The weather where they live is not your typical ideal weather, Abigail
basic charge of this criticism can be stated in the words of a recent critic,
It is April 1861; the Civil War has just begun with the first attack on Fort Sumter. The Southern states have already seceded from the Union and formed the Confederate States of America. Now the country is split, Union in the North and the Confederacy in the South. Both the Union and the Confederacy will soon be in need of resources especially since war is about to be declared by Abraham Lincoln. Leadership for the Union and the Confederate armies are given away mostly to those with seniority rather than to those who deserve it by merit. James Ewell Brown (“Jeb”) Stuart is among the Confederacy leaders to gain his position as general not only because of his age but also because of his experience with fighting the Indians and other whites on the frontier in Bleeding Kansas. Jeb Stuart along with thirteen other Virginian’s was part of the Confederate leadership which was made up of a total forty-four men. Jeb Stuart was given his position because of the seniority he had over the other men signed up for the war, but did he also earn the position by merit and if so, does he keep his merit throughout the Civil War?
In the year 1786, at the pressing invitation of his friend, Colonel Howard, he removed from Annapolis to Baltimore. By this gentleman, he was generously presented with a square of ten lots of land, upon a spot in which he erected a house, in which he lived until his death. On his removal from Annapolis, the corporation of that city tendered to him the expressions of their respect, in the following address: "Sir, the mayor, aldermen, and common councilmen of the city of Annapolis, impressed with a due sense of the services rendered to this corporation by you, in the capacity of recorder thereof, do take this occasion to assure you of their entire approbation of your conduct in the performance of the duties of that trust, and to acknowledge your ready exertion, at all times, to promote the interest and welfare of this city, They sincerely regret the occasion of this address, as your removal from the city of Annapolis will deprive this body of a faithful and able officer, and the city of a valuable citizen. You have our warmest wishes for your happiness and welfare.''
Leroy Anderson was born June 29, 1908 in Cambridge, Massachusetts. His parents, as children, immigrated to the United States from Sweden with their families. His father, Bror Anton Anderson, worked as a postal clerk in the Central Square post office. He also played the mandolin. Anna Margareta Anderson, his mother, was the organist at the Swedish church in Cambridge. He lived in the suburbs of Boston for twenty seven years with his parents and brother.
Podolsky, Marjorie J. "Octavia E. Butler." Magill’S Survey Of American Literature, Revised Edition (2006): 1-5. Literary Reference Center. Web. 14 Mar. 2014.
Walter Dean Myers expresses a lot of wisdom throughout his stories. In many of his stories he gives the wisdom of fighting for what you believe in. Two such stories are “The Glory Field” and “Ida Wells.” Both stories “warmed in my mind” to help me discover this wisdom.
Robert Johnson I went down to the crossroads fell down on my knees. Robert Johnson went to the crossroads and his life was never the same again. The purpose of this essay is to tell you about the life of Robert Johnson. He is the root of much of the music of today. If he didn't influence the musicians of today directly, he influenced the bands that influenced today's music.
Wright, Richard. "The Man Who Was Almost a Man." Literature and the Writing Process. Ed.
In Douglas Monroy’s essay “The Creation and Re-creation of California Society,” the thesis is that studying history of California is not just about changes in state’s political concerns but is more about relation with human existence. First, he talks about land and liberty and how Californians settled at the landscape. Second, Douglas explains about the life in present day California. Last, he talks about Californios and Indios. Douglas Monroy’s purpose in writing this essay is to inform readers of how California and the inhabitants were in the 1800s by showing detailed life style.
...in the Cumberland Massacre. His career was in corporate communications before returning to creative writing. He currently is working on an anthology of short stories that are stylistically reminiscent of O. Henry and a novel set in Taiwan during the Vietnam war. He lives in Connecticut and can be reached at w.giersbach@att.net.
One of the most inspiring and instructive stories in black history is the story of how Carter G. Woodson, the father of black history, saved himself.
America's greatest and most influential authors developed their passion for writing due to cataclysmic events that affected their life immensely. The ardent author Richard Wright shared similar characteristics to the many prominent American authors, and in fact, attained the title of most well-known black author of America. Richard Wright created many important pieces of literature, that would impact America's belief of racial segregation, and further push the boundaries of his controversial beliefs and involvements in several communist clubs.
He published two articles in national magazines and wrote a collection of stories for the school paper that were so popular he was asked to continue writing them even after graduation. After Tennessee finished high school, he went to the University of Missouri to study journalism for three years until he failed ROTC. At the university he began to write more and discovered alcohol as a cure for his over-sensitive shyness. After his third year, his father forced him to leave the university and get a job in the shoe factory in St. Louis. He worked there for two years; he later classified this time as the most miserable two years of his life. He spent dreary days at the warehouse and then devoted his nights to writing poetry, plays, and short stories. After two years of working all day and writing all night, he had a nervous breakdown and went to Memphis, Tennessee, to recuperate with his grandfather, who had moved there after
Bain, Robert, Joseph M. Flora, and Louis D. Rubin, Jr., eds. Southern Writers: A Biographical Dictionary. Baton Rouge, LA: Louisiana State University Press, 1979.