One of Haki R. Madhubuti ’s first encounters with Black literature was reading Richard Wright’s Black Boy in the segregated section of his public library in Detroit.

“For the first time in my life, I was reading literature. I was reading language that was not an insult to my own personhood,” said Madhubuti, now a best-selling author and cofounder of the oldest independent Black-owned publisher in the U.S., Third World Press . “At 14, I read Black Boy in less than 24 hours. That’s how hungry I was for anything that would give me some nurturing.”

A little over a decade later, Madhubuti would attend a workshop Gwendolyn Brooks was leading at a local church and present her with a collection of his own poetry. He recalls that she “put [the book] to her heart” and the following day the

See Full Page