For the inauguration of US President Bill Clinton
, the new president resuscitated an old tradition by inviting MA
to compose and read an inaugural poem. For this occasion she wrote On the Pulse of Morning.
“Contemporary Authors”. Gale Databases: Literature Resource Centre-LRC.
2014
politics
Toni Morrison
TM
cared deeply about politics, broadly defined. She believed the best art is always political. As a child she was already a member of the civil rights movement, and she took to feminism when it...
Reception
Adrienne Rich
AR
declined the National Medal of the Arts offered by US President Bill Clinton
, because, she said, of the way that politics was increasing economic and racial inequality, and concentrating power in fewer and...
Textual Features
Margaret Drabble
After harking back to the days in which eminent authors were not public figures, she amusingly described the culture of public performance which arose during the 1960s. Highlights in her narrative were the first Writers'...
Textual Features
Alice Walker
First among the acknowledgements stands the name of AW
's forebear May Poole
, who lived under slavery and reportedly died at the age of a hundred and twenty-five.
Walker, Alice. Anything We Love Can Be Saved. Random House, 1997.
xiii
The volume's strong element of...
Timeline
: For the first time a literary festival (brainchild...
Writing climate item
Summer 1988
For the first time a literary festival (brainchild of Norman
and Peter Florence
) was held at Hay-on-Wye on the Welsh border, a small town (Y Gelli in Welsh) with few amenities but...
7 January 1999: The United States Senate began impeachment...
National or international item
7 January 1999
The United StatesSenate
began impeachment hearings against President Clinton
.
CNN World News: World Trade Organization Ministerial Conference, Seattle. http://www.wto.org/english/thewto_e/minist_e/min99_e/min99_e.htm.
4 November 2008: Barack Obama (feared unelectable by some)...
National or international item
4 November 2008
Barack Obama
(feared unelectable by some) was voted in the first DemocraticUS president since Bill Clinton
and the first black president ever.
MacAskill, Ewen et al. “Barack Obama to be America’s first black president”. The Guardian, 5 Nov. 2008.