Paulette Childress
{{Short description|American poet and writer (born 1948)}}
{{Infobox writer
|birth_date={{Birth year and age|1948}}
|birth_place=Hamtramck, Michigan, U.S.
|occupation=Writer
|alma_mater=Wayne State University
|genre={{hlist|Poetry|Short fiction}}
|years_active=1972–present
}}
Paulette Childress (born 1948), also known as Paulette Childress White, is an American writer of poetry and short fiction.
Early life
Paulette Childress was born in 1948 in Hamtramck, an enclave of Detroit, Michigan.{{Cite book |url=https://www.oxfordreference.com/display/10.1093/oi/authority.20110803122102477 |title=The Concise Oxford Companion to African American Literature |date=2012 |publisher=Oxford University Press |isbn=978-0-19-991649-8 |editor-last=Andrews |editor-first=William L. |edition=Online ed. rev. and updated 2011 |series=Oxford Reference online premium |location=Oxford |chapter=Paulette Childress White}}{{Cite web |title=Michigan Authors and Illustrators: Paulette Childress White |url=https://libraryofmichigan.state.mi.us/authors/Author/Details/453 |access-date=2025-01-27 |website=Library of Michigan}}{{Cite book |last=Beaulieu |first=Elizabeth A. |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=_kXPEAAAQBAJ |title=Writing African American Women: An Encyclopedia of Literature by and about Women of Color |date=2006-04-30 |publisher=Bloomsbury Publishing USA |isbn=978-0-313-02462-7 |language=en |chapter=White, Paulette Childress (1948–)}} She was the third of thirteen children born to Norris and Effie Childress.
After attending art school for one year, she dropped out due to financial problems and the birth of her first son. She would go on to have five children, all sons: Pierre, Oronde, Kojo, Kala, and Paul. After her difficult first marriage ended, she remarried.
Career
Eventually, Childress began to pursue writing. She published her first poem in 1972, followed by her first short story, in Essence, in 1977. She eventually returned to school, graduating with a bachelor's degree from Wayne State University in 1986, followed by a PhD from the same institution in 1998.
In 1975, she published her first poetry collection, Love Poem to a Black Junkie.{{Cite journal |last=Brown |first=Beth |date=1985 |title=Review of The Watermelon Dress; Breaking Camp; Elegies for Patrice; Now Is the Thing to Praise |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/44322393 |journal=CLA Journal |volume=29 |issue=2 |pages=250–256 |issn=0007-8549}} She was included in the 1977 Blacksongs broadside series, and then her book The Watermelon Dress: Portrait of a Woman, a four-part narrative poem, was published in 1984.
Throughout the 1970s and '80s, Childress produced short stories and poems for various publications, including Essence, Michigan Quarterly Review, Calalloo, and Redbook.{{Cite journal |date=1988 |title=Author/Title Index for Callaloo 1-11 |url=https://www.jstor.org/stable/2931726 |journal=Callaloo |issue=37 |pages=911–933 |issn=0161-2492}} Her writing has appeared in the anthologies Sturdy Black Bridges: Visions of Black Women in Literature (1979), Midnight Birds: Stories of Contemporary Black Women Writers (1980), and Mending the World: Stories of Family by Contemporary Black Writers (2003).{{Cite book |last=Dickson-Carr |first=Darryl |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4EyrAgAAQBAJ |title=The Columbia Guide to Contemporary African American Fiction |date=2005-12-06 |publisher=Columbia University Press |isbn=978-0-231-12472-0 |language=en}}
Themes of her work, which tends toward the autobiographical, include solidarity among women, marriage and motherhood, identity, and connections to Africa.{{Cite web |last=Smith Pollard |first=Deborah |date=Winter–Spring 2009 |title=Motherlove, Initiation, Poverty, and Pride: Teaching 'Getting the Facts of Life' by Paulette Childress White and 'The Sky Is Gray' by Ernest Gaines |url=https://files.eric.ed.gov/fulltext/EJ1097611.pdf |access-date=2025-01-27 |website=College English Association}} She draws significantly on her hometown of Detroit as a setting.
Childress taught from 1987 to 1997 at Wayne State University, then at Henry Ford College, where she developed the school's first course in African American literature.
She has been honored with awards and grants from the Michigan Legislature, the Michigan Council for the Arts, and the Focus on Women Program at Henry Ford College.
References
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Category:20th-century African-American women writers
Category:20th-century African-American writers
Category:20th-century American poets
Category:20th-century American short story writers
Category:20th-century American women writers
Category:African-American short story writers
Category:African-American women poets
Category:African-American women short story writers
Category:African-American women writers
Category:American women short story writers
Category:People from Hamtramck, Michigan