But it was quite intense to be the first Black person that my German friends had seen. Actually laid eyes, and hands, on. And there was the German language, which I had to learn, and the German kids learned British English, so my American English was frowned upon. … Maybe I write like I do because I spent those years in the cauldron of not fluently speaking the native language of my classmates. Those several years of being told that the tongue I spoke wasn’t right.
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Suzan-Lori Parks
Playwright, screenwriter and novelist; Pulitzer Prize for Drama, 2002
United States · b. 1963
Arts and letters
About
American dramatist, the first African American woman to receive the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, for Topdog/Underdog. Born in Fort Knox, Kentucky, she moved frequently as a child because of her father’s army career, including four years in West Germany. She was encouraged toward the theatre by James Baldwin while a student at Mount Holyoke College.
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