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The Richer, the Poorer

Stories, Sketches, and Reminiscences

Author Dorothy West
Ebook
Knopf | Anchor
On sale May 12, 2010 | 272 Pages | 9780307754912
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On the heels of the bestseller success of her  novel The Wedding, Dorothy West,  the last surviving member of the Harlem  Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that  explore both the realism of everyday life, and the  fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one  woman's life in a mythic time. Traversing the  universal themes and conflicts between poverty and  prosperity, men and women, and young and old, and  compiling writing that spans almost seventy years,  The Richer, The Poorer not only  affords an unparalleled window into the  African-American middle class, but also delves into the  richness of experience of "one of the finest writers  produced in this country during the Roaring  Twenties"(Book Page).

Dorothy West founded the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Challenge in 1934, and New Challenge in 1937, with Richard Wright as her associate editor. She was a welfare investigator and WPA relief worker in Harlem during the Depression.  Her first novel, The Living Is Easy, appeared in 1948 and remains in print.  Her second novel, The Wedding, was a national bestseller and literary landmark when published in the winter of 1995.  A collection of her stories and autobiographical essays, The Richer, The Poorer, appeared during the summer of 1995.  She died in August 1998, at the age of 91.

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On the heels of the bestseller success of her  novel The Wedding, Dorothy West,  the last surviving member of the Harlem  Renaissance, presents a collection of essays and stories that  explore both the realism of everyday life, and the  fantastical, extraordinary circumstances of one  woman's life in a mythic time. Traversing the  universal themes and conflicts between poverty and  prosperity, men and women, and young and old, and  compiling writing that spans almost seventy years,  The Richer, The Poorer not only  affords an unparalleled window into the  African-American middle class, but also delves into the  richness of experience of "one of the finest writers  produced in this country during the Roaring  Twenties"(Book Page).

Author

Dorothy West founded the Harlem Renaissance literary magazine Challenge in 1934, and New Challenge in 1937, with Richard Wright as her associate editor. She was a welfare investigator and WPA relief worker in Harlem during the Depression.  Her first novel, The Living Is Easy, appeared in 1948 and remains in print.  Her second novel, The Wedding, was a national bestseller and literary landmark when published in the winter of 1995.  A collection of her stories and autobiographical essays, The Richer, The Poorer, appeared during the summer of 1995.  She died in August 1998, at the age of 91.

View titles by Dorothy West

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