Paul Laurence Dunbar

The Life and Times of a Caged Bird

By: Gene Andrew Jarrett

Narrated by: Mirron Willis

A major poet, Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906) was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation. In this definitive biography, the first full-scale life of Dunbar in half a century, Gene Andrew Jarrett offers a revelatory account of a writer whose Gilded Age celebrity as the "poet laureate of his race" hid the private struggles of a man who, in the words of his famous poem, felt like a "caged bird" that sings.

Jarrett tells the fascinating story of how Dunbar, born during Reconstruction to formerly enslaved parents, excelled against all odds to become an accomplished and versatile artist. A prolific and successful poet, novelist, essayist, playwright, and Broadway librettist, he was also a friend of such luminaries as Frederick Douglass and Orville and Wilbur Wright. But while audiences across the United States and Europe flocked to enjoy his literary readings, Dunbar privately bemoaned shouldering the burden of race and catering to minstrel stereotypes to earn fame and money. Inspired by his parents' survival of slavery, but also agitated by a turbulent public marriage, beholden to influential benefactors, and helpless against his widely reported bouts of tuberculosis and alcoholism, he came to regard his racial notoriety as a curse as well as a blessing before dying at the age of thirty-three.

©2022 Princeton University Press (P)2022 Tantor

Left me wanting more depth .

I did not do previous research into Mr. Dunbar’s life and was unfamiliar with his work , other than what our teachers gave us for Black History Month. I’m left feeling I still don’t have great insight into the man or the poet.
A tragic figure who I continue to believe has even more ‘meat on the bone’ to discover. From his wife, to his personal demons, the contributions and highlights of whatever actually and ultimately constituted his life - I don’t have the bottom of the stories that were introduced.

So many wonderful letters.

A learning experience. Mr Dunbar was a true rock star. The reader's voice was clear and smooth.