Myers, Walter DeanMyers, Walter DeanMyers, Walter Dean. (b. 1937), poet, editor, and novelist. A versatile and prolific writer, Walter Dean Myers (also Walter M. Myers) has published short fiction, essays, and poetry in such disparate periodicals as the Liberator, Negro Digest, McCalls, Essence, Espionage, and Alfred Hitchcocks Mystery Magazine. He was a regular contributor to mens magazines until, as he says, “they gave themselves up to pornography.” In 1968, he wrote his first childrens book as an entry to a contest sponsored by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. He won, Where Does the Day Go? was published by Parents Magazine Press, and thus began his career as a writer of childrens and young adult literature. To date, Myers has published nearly sixty books, many of which have earned awards and citations such as the American Library Association Best Book for Young Adults, the Newbery Honor Book, the Boston Globe>/Horn Book Honor Book, and the Coretta Scott King Award. In 1994, Walter Dean Myers was honored by the American Library Association and School Library Journal with a Lifetime Achievement Award.
Myers writes fantasy with black characters (The Golden Serpent, 1980, and The Legend of Tarik, 1981). He retells his fathers and grandfathers ghost stories and legends (The Black Pearl and the Ghost, 1980, and Mr. Monkey and the Gotcha Bird, 1984). His adventure tales take black adolescents to Peruvian jungles and Hong Kong temples (The Nicholas Factor, 1983, and The Hidden Shrine, 1985). His nonfiction is often innovative in form and subject matter. In Sweet Illusions (1987), Myers examines pregnancy through the stories of fourteen teenage mothers, fathers, and their friends and relatives. Each chapter ends with blank pages for readers to complete the ending. His biography of Malcolm X(1994) uses actual photographs and inserts from newspapers, interviews, and magazines to create an inspirational and provocative book. Myers pairs poems and commentary to turn-of-the-century photographs of African American children in Brown Angels (1993) and Jacob Lawrences pictures in The Great Migration (1994).
Walter Dean Myers is best known, however, for his young adult novels about Harlem residents. Like many black writers, Myers loved to read but rarely encountered books about people like him or his friends and family. This desire to fill a void, to create for other youth that which had been lacking in his own adolescence, was further motivated by his displeasure with the prevalent images of African Americans as exotics, misfits, criminals, victims, and “unserious” people. Having grown up in Harlem, he was particularly upset by the negative and monolithic portrayals of that community. Myerss stories usually take place within a Harlem community of diverse people who love, laugh, work, and dream as much as any other people in the world. Though praised for his natural dialogues, his optimistic endings, and his eccentric but loveable characters, Myers
is a serious literary and political novelist.
Walter Dean Myers is best known, however, for his young adult novels about Harlem residents. Like many black writers, Myers loved to read but rarely encountered books about people like him or his friends and family. This desire to fill a void, to create for other youth that which had been lacking in his own adolescence, was further motivated by his displeasure with the prevalent images of African Americans as exotics, misfits, criminals, victims, and “unserious” people. Having grown up in Harlem, he was particularly upset by the negative and monolithic portrayals of that community. Myerss stories usually take place within a Harlem community of diverse people who love, laugh, work, and dream as much as any other people in the world. Though praised for his natural dialogues, his optimistic endings, and his eccentric but loveable characters, Myers has long provided a well-formulated account of his childhood experiences, along with several unique and interesting anecdotes about a character’s life as his main focus and in-joke. These stories are often written from within a young adult novel and are typically drawn from real-life, contemporary African-American life, such as his involvement with the African-American community and Harlem youth (1952). For Myers, however, these narratives are ultimately based on “exotic, highly publicized, and often bizarre accounts” of his childhood. Myers is one of the few authors to successfully recreate and reinterpret Dickens’s Victorian-style world while simultaneously taking the place of Dickens’s contemporary city-dwellers.
Walter Dean Myers is best known, however, for his young adult novels about Harlem residents. Like many black writers, Myers loved to read but rarely encountered books about people like him or his friends and family. This desire to fill a void, to create for other youth that which had been lacking in his own adolescence, was further driven by his displeasure with the prevalent images of African Americans as exotics, misfits, criminals, victims, and “unserious” people. Having grown up in Harlem, he was particularly upset by the negative and monolithic portrayals of that community. Myers’s stories usually take place within a Harlem community of diverse people who love, laugh, work, and dream as much as any other people in the world. Though praised for his natural dialogues, his optimistic endings, and his eccentric but loveable characters, Myers
is a serious literary and political novelist.
Walter Dean Myers is best known, however, for his young adult novels about Harlem residents. Like many black writers, Myers loved to read but rarely encountered books about people like him or his friends and family. This desire to fill a void, to create for other youth that which had been lacking in his own adolescence, was further driven by his displeasure with the prevalent images of African Americans as exotics, misfits, criminals, victims, and “unserious” people. Having grown up in Harlem, he was particularly upset by the negative and monolithic portrayals of that community. Myers’s stories usually take place within a Harlem Community of diverse people who love, laugh, work, and dream as much as any other people in the world. Though praised for his natural dialogues, his optimistic endings, and his eccentric but loveable