Brent Staples

Last updated
Brent Staples
Born1951 (age 72–73)
Chester, Pennsylvania, U.S.
Alma mater
Occupation(s) The New York Times editorial writer, author

Brent Staples (born 1951) is an American author and member of the editorial board of The New York Times , where he specializes in coverage of education, criminal justice and economics. [1] His books include An American Love Story [2] and Parallel Time: Growing up In Black and White, [3] He writes about political, social and cultural issues, including race [4] and the state of the American school system. [5] [6]

Contents

His memoir Parallel Time was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. [7] He won the 2019 Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing [8] and is a fellow of the Society of American Historians. [9] He has also been a visiting fellow at several academic institutions.

Early life and education

Staples was born in 1951 in Chester, Pennsylvania, the oldest of nine children. His parents moved from rural Virginia to Chester as part of the Second Great Migration of Southern Blacks to urban centers in the North. His father was a truck driver and his mother a homemaker. By the time Staples was in the eighth grade, his family had moved within Chester seven times, often due to their inability to pay the rent. [10] His family had no money for tuition; his grades were average, and he had taken only a few high-level academic courses in high school. The expectation was that he would go straight to work, most likely at one of the shipyards in Chester. [11]

He was convinced to attend Widener University (then known as Penn Morton College) by the only African American professor at the school as part of a program named Project Prepare. He graduated from Widener University with a B.A. degree in 1973. He was awarded two doctoral fellowships from the Danforth Foundation and the Ford Foundation. [12] Staples received a master's degree in psychology in 1976 and a Ph.D. in the discipline in 1982 from the University of Chicago. [13] [14]

In 1983, his younger brother, Blake, a cocaine dealer, was murdered by a client, [15] which forced Staples to reconsider his own success and his inability to stop his brother's life choices. [16]

Career

Staples taught psychology at Widener University and various institutions in Chicago from 1977 to 1981, but began to pursue a separate career track in journalism. In 1983, he was hired as a science writer by the Chicago Sun-Times . [9] In 1985, Staples joined the staff of The New York Times as an editor of the Book Review and subsequently became assistant metropolitan editor. [17] His essay "Just Walk on By: Black Men and Public Space", published in Ms. Magazine in 1986, [18] was so influential that it soon became required reading in numerous college courses. [9] In 1990, he was appointed to the newspaper's editorial board. [17]

In 1994, his memoir, Parallel Time, was a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and winner of the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. [7]

In a 1994 interview with Paul Galloway of the Chicago Tribune, [19] Staples reflected: "Being Black enriches my experience; it doesn't define me .... I'm writing about universal themes – family and leaving home and developing your own identity – which all Americans can enjoy and understand." As a writer, he works to correct the myth that the American "Black experience" is defined only by poverty, violence, and crime. [13] In the same interview, he stated: "I despise the expression ['Black experience']. There is no such thing. Black people's lives in this country are too varied to be reduced to a single term." [13]

In 2000, Staples received an honorary doctorate degree in humane letters from Mount Saint Mary College. He has served as a visiting fellow at such institutions as the Hoover Foundation, the University of Chicago and Yale University. [9]

In 2019, Staples won the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing. [20] His editorials highlighted the history of racism in the United States and were described by the Pulitzer Prize committee as being "written with extraordinary moral clarity". [9]

Bibliography

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize</span> Award for achievements in journalism, literature, and musical composition within the United States

The Pulitzer Prizes are two dozen annual awards given by Columbia University in New York for achievements in the United States in "journalism, arts and letters." They were established in 1917 by the will of Joseph Pulitzer, who had made his fortune as a newspaper publisher.

William Julius Wilson is an American sociologist, a professor at Harvard University, and an author of works on urban sociology, race, and class issues. Laureate of the National Medal of Science, he served as the 80th President of the American Sociological Association, was a member of numerous national boards and commissions. He identified the importance of neighborhood effects and demonstrated how limited employment opportunities and weakened institutional resources exacerbated poverty within American inner-city neighborhoods.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing</span> American journalism award

The Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing is one of the fourteen American Pulitzer Prizes that are annually awarded for Journalism. It has been awarded since 1917 for distinguished editorial writing, the test of excellence being clearness of style, moral purpose, sound reasoning, and power to influence public opinion in what the writer conceives to be the right direction. Thus it is one of the original Pulitzers, for the program was inaugurated in 1917 with seven prizes, four of which were awarded that year. The program has also recognized opinion journalism with its Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Cartooning from 1922.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Colson Whitehead</span> American novelist (born 1969)

Arch Colson Chipp Whitehead is an American novelist. He is the author of nine novels, including his 1999 debut The Intuitionist; The Underground Railroad (2016), for which he won the 2016 National Book Award for Fiction and the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction; and The Nickel Boys, for which he won the Pulitzer Prize for Fiction again in 2020, making him one of only four writers ever to win the prize twice. He has also published two books of nonfiction. In 2002, he received a MacArthur Fellowship.

<i>The Daily Northwestern</i> Student newspaper at the Northwestern University

The Daily Northwestern is the student newspaper at Northwestern University which is published in print on Mondays and Thursdays and online daily during the academic year. Founded in 1881, and printed in Evanston, Illinois, it is staffed primarily by undergraduates, many of whom are students at Northwestern's Medill School of Journalism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Junot Díaz</span> Dominican-American writer, academic, and editor

Junot Díaz is a Dominican-American writer, creative writing professor at Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and a former fiction editor at Boston Review. He also serves on the board of advisers for Freedom University, a volunteer organization in Georgia that provides post-secondary instruction to undocumented immigrants. Central to Díaz's work is the immigrant experience, particularly the Latino immigrant experience.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Levering Lewis</span> American historian

David Levering Lewis is an American historian, a Julius Silver University Professor, and professor emeritus of history at New York University. He is twice winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Biography or Autobiography, for part one and part two of his biography of W. E. B. Du Bois. He is the first author to win Pulitzer Prizes for biography for two successive volumes on the same subject.

The following are the Pulitzer Prizes for 1986.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Brion Davis</span> American intellectual and cultural historian (1927–2019)

David Brion Davis was an American intellectual and cultural historian, and a leading authority on slavery and abolition in the Western world. He was a Sterling Professor of History at Yale University, and founder and director of Yale's Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition.

Ira B. Harkey Jr. was an American writer, professor of journalism, and editor and publisher of the Pascagoula Chronicle-Star in Mississippi from 1951 to 1963. Harkey was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Editorial Writing in 1963 for his anti-segregation editorials during the civil rights crisis surrounding the admission of James Meredith, a black man, to the University of Mississippi at Oxford, Mississippi in 1962.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Isabel Wilkerson</span> American journalist (born 1961)

Isabel Wilkerson is an African-American journalist and the author of The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration (2010) and Caste: The Origins of Our Discontents (2020). She is the first woman of African-American heritage to win the Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

<i>The Hemingses of Monticello</i> 2008 book by Annette Gordon-Reed

The Hemingses of Monticello: An American Family is a 2008 book by American historian Annette Gordon-Reed. It recounts the history of four generations of the African-American Hemings family, from their African and Virginia origins until the 1826 death of Thomas Jefferson, their master and the father of Sally Hemings' children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">David Leonhardt</span> American journalist and columnist (born 1973)

David Leonhardt is an American journalist and columnist. Since April 30, 2020, he has written the daily "The Morning" newsletter for The New York Times. He also contributes to the paper's Sunday Review section. His column previously appeared weekly in The New York Times. He previously wrote the paper's daily e-mail newsletter, which bore his own name. As of October 2018, he also co-hosted "The Argument", a weekly opinion podcast with Ross Douthat and Michelle Goldberg.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Annette Gordon-Reed</span> American historian

Annette Gordon-Reed is an American historian and law professor. She is currently the Carl M. Loeb University Professor at Harvard University and a professor of history in the university's Faculty of Arts & Sciences. She is formerly the Charles Warren Professor of American Legal History at Harvard University and the Carol K. Pforzheimer Professor at the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study. Gordon-Reed is noted for changing scholarship on Thomas Jefferson regarding his relationship with Sally Hemings and her children.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Tyehimba Jess</span> American poet

Tyehimba Jess is an American poet. His book Olio received the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Poetry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Adrian Matejka</span> American writer

Adrian Matejka is an American poet. He was the poet laureate of Indiana for the 2018–2019 term. Since May 2022, he has been the editor of Poetry magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jericho Brown</span> American poet and professor (born 1976)

Jericho Brown is an American poet and writer. Born and raised in Shreveport, Louisiana, Brown has worked as an educator at institutions such as the University of Houston, the University of San Diego, and Emory University. His poems have been published in The Nation, New England Review, The New Republic, Oxford American, and The New Yorker, among others. He released his first book of prose and poetry, Please, in 2008. His second book, The New Testament, was released in 2014. His 2019 collection of poems, The Tradition, garnered widespread critical acclaim.

The Chicago Maroon, the independent student newspaper of the University of Chicago, is a weekly publication founded in 1892. During the academic year, The Maroon publishes every Tuesday and Friday. The paper consists of seven sections: news, opinion ("Viewpoints"), arts, sports, Grey City, podcasts, and games. In September, it publishes its annual orientation Issue (O-Issue) for entering first-year students, including sections on the University and the city of Chicago.

<i>The Warmth of Other Suns</i>

The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration is a 2010 non-fiction book by Pulitzer Prize-winning author Isabel Wilkerson. The book provides a detailed historical account of the Great Migration, a movement of approximately six million African Americans from the Southern United States to the Midwest, Northeast, and West between 1915 and 1970. Wilkerson's work has been widely acclaimed for its comprehensive research, engaging narrative style, and significant contribution to the understanding of this crucial period in American history.

References

  1. ↑ "Brent Staples". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  2. ↑ Staples, Brent; Penelope Falk; Jennifer Fox (1999). An American Love Story. Random House. ISBN   0375502998.
  3. ↑ Staples, Brent (1995). Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White . HarperCollins. pp.  288. ISBN   0380724758.
  4. ↑ Brent Staples (2005-10-31). "Why Race Isn't as 'Black' and 'White' as We Think". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  5. ↑ Editorials/Op-Ed (2005-11-25). "Are Japan's Schools Really Better?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  6. ↑ Staples, Brent (2017-04-20). "Where Did All the Black Teachers ago?". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
  7. 1 2 "The New York Times Editorial Board: Brent Staples – Education, Criminal Justice, Economics". The New York Times. 2016-05-02. Retrieved 2017-04-21.
  8. ↑ "2019 Pulitzer Prizes Journalism: Editorial Writing - Brent Staples of The New York Times". 2019-04-16. Retrieved 2019-04-16.
  9. 1 2 3 4 5 "Pulitzer-winning alum's incisive editorials expose America's uncomfortable truths". www.news.uchicago.edu. 25 June 2020. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  10. ↑ French, Mary Ann. "THE WRITER WHO STALKED WISDOM". The Washington Post. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  11. ↑ Russ, Valerie (22 April 2019). "Brent Staples talks about his path from Chester to a Pulitzer Prize". www.inquirer.com. Philadelphia Inquirer. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  12. ↑ "Brent Staples's Biography". www.thehistorymakers.org. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  13. 1 2 3 "Brent Staples." Contemporary Black Biography, vol. 8. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 1994. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, 2017-04-21.
  14. ↑ Chung, Jeanie (Fall 2015/Winter 2016). "Knowledge through the decades: Alumni from the past 50 years recall their experiences in the Division of the Social Sciences". The University of Chicago Magazine: Dialogo (alumini publication for the division of Social Sciences). Retrieved 2017-4-21.
  15. ↑ "Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White". www.anisfield-wolf.org. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
  16. ↑ Staples, Brent. "About Men; A Brother's Murder". The New York Times Retrieved 2020-03-07.
  17. 1 2 "Brent Staples Is Appointed to Times's Editorial Board". The New York Times. 1990-06-07. Retrieved 2008-02-28.
  18. ↑ Grønstad, Asbjørn; Vågnes, Øyvind (2010). Coverscaping: Discovering Album Aesthetics. Museum Tusculanum Press. p. 130. ISBN   9788763507745 . Retrieved 8 August 2013.
  19. ↑ "Brent (A.) Staples." Contemporary Authors Online. Farmington Hills, MI: Gale, 2005. Retrieved via Biography in Context database, 2017-04-21. Also available online via Encyclopedia.com.
  20. ↑ "Brent Staples of The New York Times". www.pulitzer.org. Retrieved 17 September 2020.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.