Julia de Burgos (born February 17, 1914) Puerto Rican poet
Read about Julia de Burgos here and here
Read more about Julia de Burgos, a founder of the Nuyorican movement, here
Some of her poetry here
I Was My Own Route
I wanted to be like men wanted me to be:
an attempt at life;
a game of hide and seek with my being.
But I was made of nows,
and my feet level on the promissory earth
would not accept walking backwards
and went forward, forward,
mocking the ashes to reach the kiss
of new paths.
At each advancing step on my route forward
my back was ripped by the desperate flapping wings
of the old guard.
But the branch was unpinned forever,
and at each new whiplash my look
separated more and more and more from the distant
familiar horizons;
continued...
Watch a discussion of the literary work of Julia de Burgos
here
Huey Newton (born February 17, 1942) U.S. activist, co-founder of the Black Panther party – To Die for the People: The Writings of Huey P. Newton (1972)
Read about Huey Newton here
Listen to this 1970 excerpt from the album Huey Newton Speaks!
"Black suicide is because of a lack of love. What has happened -- the blacks have no profession, they have no hope to achieve a social position or material things, and as you deprive a person of social position or some material things -- a personality is made up of things that you hope to be: your aspirations or goals, and so forth. It's like the layer of skin on the onion. And as you strip these things away, you strip the person away... This is how the establishment or the regime has crushed blacks."
Watch a 1967 interview of Huey Newton in jail
here
Mo Yan 管謨業(Guan Moye) (born February 17, 1955) – Chinese novelist, 2012 Nobel Prize for literature - Red Sorghum
Watch an interview with
Mo Yan
Michel Rivgauche (born February 17, 1923) French lyricist
