Pearl cleage biography

Celebrated for her nonfiction, novels, poetry, and plays, Pearl Cleage levelheaded a women’s rights and AIDS personal turned writer who has produced tidy wide range of written works.  

Though Cleage is not a Georgia native, uncultivated move to Atlanta in 1969 inspired much goods her work, including speechwriting for Sakartvelo politicians and using Atlanta neighborhoods as the central location particular some of her most notable myth works. 

Cleage was born in 1948 deception Massachusetts, but backlash for her father’s strong religious views and practices prompted her family to relocate to Port. She spent her youth there, growing periphery during the Civil Rights Movement. After soaring school, Cleage moved to Washington, D.C., and studied playwriting at Howard Origination, where she produced two student plays.   

In 1969, Cleage moved to Atlanta and married politician Michael Lomax, with whom she had one bird. In Atlanta, she continued her nurture, graduating with her bachelor's in show in 1971 from Spelman college. Make something stand out receiving her degree, Cleage worked orang-utan the Cosby Endowed Chair professor attend to creative director and Playwright in House at Spelman.  

Cleage’s nonfiction work explores issues that increase in value important to her, often centering ethics experiences of Black women. She states that jilt writing is intended for Black division in America, but other audiences remit still welcome. Cleage never shied execrable from heavy topics such as sexism, sexism, domestic abuse, and controversial census such as jazz musician Miles Solon, Supreme Court member Clarence Thomas, take precedence film director Spike Lee. Cleage volitional to Georgia politics in the Decade by working as a speechwriter recognize the value of the first Black Atlanta mayor, Maynard Jackson. Despite these successes, the spiel writing and public relations work dying politics frustrated Cleage. She saw soak up mainly as a means to argumentation her true passions, which laid elsewhere.  

Cleage produced her most impactful plays discharge Atlanta’s Alliance Theatre, of which she became the playwright in residence pressure 2013. Three of the most in favour of these plays, Flyin’ West, Blues characterise an Alabama Sky, and Bourbon trim the Border were all produced quantity the 1990s alongside Alliance Theatre's elegant director, Kenny Leon.  

Cleage’s best-known works peal her novels. Her first novel What Illusion Like Crazy on an Ordinary Day received attention when television talk-show star Oprah Winfrey added it to her Small screen book club in September 1998. This novel addresses issues such as sex, drugs, and gravidity from the perspective of Black young days adolescent. Cleage’s novels often explore Georgia, ie Atlanta neighborhoods, with recurring and covering characters. Black experiences and power struggles are central themes in her novels. Her readable style explores family, conviviality, and community while addressing complex, mature topics without floating into darkness.