 First edition | |
| Author | Walter Dean Myers |
|---|---|
| Country | United States |
| Subject | Harlem, romance |
| Genre | realistic fiction |
| Publisher | Viking Press |
Publication date | 1984 |
| Pages | 176 |
| Awards | 1985 Coretta Scott King Author Award |
| ISBN | 978-0-670-49062-2 |
Motown and Didi is a realistic fiction novel by Walter Dean Myers. It was first published in 1984 by Viking. It is centered on two African-American lovers living in Harlem, New York City, as they navigate life in the ghetto life and their romantic relationship.
Motown – One of the main character in the story. He is Didi's lover, a loner, and named after the record company, Motown.
Didi – The other main character in the story. She dreams of moving out of Harlem using her scholarship offerings and grades. Like Motown, she is a loner. She takes care of her younger brother who later dies of a drug overdose.
Nellallitea "Nella" Larsen was an American novelist. Working as a nurse and a librarian, she published two novels, Quicksand (1928) and Passing (1929), and a few short stories. Though her literary output was scant, she earned recognition by her contemporaries.
Fallen Angels is a 1988 young-adult novel written by Walter Dean Myers, about the Vietnam War. It won the 1988 Coretta Scott King Award. Fallen Angels is listed as number 16 in the American Library Association's list of 100 most frequently challenged books of 1990–2000 due to its use of profanity and realistic depiction of the war.
Dorothy West was an American novelist and short-story writer associated with the Harlem Renaissance. She was one of the few Black women writers to be published in major literary magazines in the 1930s and 1940s. She is best known for her 1948 novel The Living Is Easy, as well as other short stories and essays, about the life of an upper-class black family.
Sylvia Rhone is an American music industry executive. Since 2019, she is the chair and CEO of Epic Records, a label owned by Sony Music Entertainment.
Rudolph John Chauncey Fisher was an American physician, radiologist, novelist, short story writer, dramatist, musician, and orator. His father was John Wesley Fisher, a clergyman, his mother was Glendora Williamson Fisher, and he had two siblings. Fisher married Jane Ryder, a school teacher from Washington, D.C. in 1925, and they had one son, Hugh, who was born in 1926 and was also nicknamed "The New Negro" as a tribute to the Harlem renaissance. Fisher had a successful career as an innovative doctor and author, who discussed the dynamics and relationships of Black and White people living in Harlem. This racial conflict was a central theme in many of his works.
Patricia Smith is an American poet, spoken-word performer, playwright, author, writing teacher, and former journalist. She has published poems in literary magazines and journals including TriQuarterly, Poetry, The Paris Review, Tin House, and in anthologies including American Voices and The Oxford Anthology of African-American Poetry. She is on the faculties of the Stonecoast MFA Program in Creative Writing and the Low-Residency MFA Program in Creative Writing at Sierra Nevada University.
Margo Howard-Howard was a New York City drag queen who wrote memoirs titled I Was a White Slave in Harlem shortly before her death. With a preface by Quentin Crisp, the memoirs, co-written with Abbe Michaels, describe Howard-Howard's privileged childhood in Singapore under her given name of "Robert Hesse," her rape aboard a British Navy vessel escaping the Japanese at the start of World War II, and lifestyle as a drag queen and prostitute in the 1950s and 1960s in Manhattan. In these years, she supported a drug habit through prostitution, theft, and the exploitation of a wealthy but mentally ill old woman. She claimed to have had encounters with James Dean, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, and Truman Capote during this time as well. In 1964, she met Leroy "Nicky" Barnes, the most prolific heroin dealer in New York City, and claims to have been "kept" by him, not leaving her apartment in the Lenox Terrace co-op in Harlem for four years.
Stephanie St. Clair was a prominent black woman of African descent and racketeer who ran numerous enterprises in Harlem, New York, in the early 20th century. St. Clair resisted the Mafia's interests for several years after Prohibition ended; she became a local legend for her public denunciations of corrupt police and for resisting Mafia control. She ran a successful numbers game in Harlem and was an activist for the black community. Her nicknames included: "Queenie," "Madame Queen," "Madame St. Clair" and "Queen of the Policy Rackets".
Monster, published April 21, 1999 by HarperCollins, is a young adult drama novel by American author Walter Dean Myers. It was nominated for the 1999 National Book Award for Young People's Literature, won the Michael L. Printz Award in 2000, and was named a Coretta Scott King Award Honor the same year.
Walter Dean Myers was an American writer of children's books best known for young adult literature. He was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, but was raised in Harlem. A tough childhood led him to writing and his school teachers would encourage him in this habit as a way to express himself. He wrote more than one hundred books including picture books and nonfiction. He won the Coretta Scott King Award for African-American authors five times. His 1988 novel Fallen Angels is one of the books most frequently challenged in the U.S. because of its adult language and its realistic depiction of the Vietnam War.
Lillian Harris Dean was an African-American cook and entrepreneur who became a minor national celebrity in the 1920s for bringing the cuisine of Harlem, New York City, to national attention.
Scorpions, first published on June 20, 1988, by Harper & Row, is a young adult novel written by Walter Dean Myers. It was a Newbery Medal Honor Book in 1989.
Edna Mae Harris, sometimes credited as Edna May Harris was an American actress and singer. Harris, an African–American, was film actress in the late 1930s and early 1940s, appearing in films featuring mostly African–American casts.
Loving Couples is a 1980 American romantic comedy film written by Martin Donovan and directed by Jack Smight. It stars Shirley MacLaine, James Coburn, Susan Sarandon and Stephen Collins.
Christopher Myers is an American interdisciplinary artist, author and illustrator of children's books, and playwright. His wide-ranging practice—including tapestries, sculpture, stained glass lightboxes, theater and writing—is rooted in storytelling and artmaking as modes of transformation and cultural exchange. He explores contemporary hybrid cultures and identities resulting from histories of migration, globalization and colonization. Critics have noted his work's fluid movement between disciplines, image and language, sociopolitical research and mythology, and diverse materials. Shana Nys Dambrot of LA Weekly wrote, "Ideas about authorship, collaboration, cross-cultural pollination, intergenerational storytelling, mythology, literature and the oral histories of displaced communities all converge in his literal and metaphorical patchwork tableaux … [his] sharp, emotional and sometimes dark parables express it all in bright, jubilant patterns and saturated colors."
Chances is a 1981 novel by Jackie Collins and the first in her Santangelo novels series. The novel has three focal points, two of them focusing on the main characters of the novel and a third during the New York City blackout of 1977.
Meredith Russo is an American young adult author from Chattanooga, Tennessee.
Arvelia Myers was an American tennis player, wife, mother, coach, entrepreneur, and activist. After excelling in the sport, she founded Pyramid Tennis, the first female-owned, African-American tennis program, in Harlem which served youth for over forty years. She was known in her community as the "mother of Harlem tennis" and was often referred to as a pioneer and activist because of the measures she took to protect her program.
Sydney Morton is an American stage and television actress, singer and dancer.