The Life and Times of a Caged Bird
March 14, 2022
A pioneering Black poet battles racism and his inner demons in this incisive biography from Princeton English professor Jarrett (Representing the Race). Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872–1906) was one of the first prominent modern African American poets, writing popular collections along with short stories, novels, and musicals before dying of tuberculosis at age 33. (His poem “Sympathy” includes the line “I know why the caged bird sings,” which inspired Maya Angelou’s memoir.) Jarrett’s Dunbar is a writer on the make, a son of enslaved people who was raised in Ohio and who tirelessly marketed his work to editors and the public, and received the praise of such literary lions as William Dean Howells, whose rave review aided his career. But while benefitting from white patronage, Jarrett shows that Dunbar also chafed at white expectations that pigeonholed him as a writer of “Negro dialect” poems and “underappreciated his literary skills.” Jarrett situates his analysis of Dunbar’s ambitious, sometimes prickly intellect in an insightful, vividly written portrait of Black political and literary culture at the turn of the 20th century, and probes his subject’s alcoholism, gambling, and violent tendencies. The result is a fascinating exploration of Black creativity wrestling with social constraints and personal failings. Photos.