Mississippi Vacation and Travel Ideas for Literary Tours
Margaret Walker Alexander Library
2525 Robinson Road
Jackson, MS 39209
Website: http://www.jhlibrary.com/branches/mwal.htm
Email: cmoman@jhlibrary.com
Phone (601) 354-8911
Margaret Walker Alexander (1915 - 1998) was an African American poet and Margaret Walker Alexander Research Center
Jackson State University
Ayer Hall
Jackson, MS 39217
Website: http://www.jsums.edu/maw.htm
Email: mwa@jsums.edu
Phone: (601) 979-2055
Margaret Walker Alexander (1915 - 1998) was an African American writer born in Birmingham, Alabama. She wrote under the name Margaret Walker. Her work generally focuses on African American themes. Her most acclaimed works include the poem For My People, which won the Yale Series of Younger Poets Competition, and her highly acclaimed 1966 novel Jubilee.
Walker earned her PhD. from the University of Iowa in 1965, and served for a time as professor what is today Jackson State University. She is remembered in Jackson at the Margaret Walker Alexander Library, and at the Margaret Walker Alexander Research Center. The library is a public library, with the mission to "enhance the understanding of African American experiences including legacy, dreams, contradictions and opportunity in the world by providing library and related services for the public on the culture and history of people of African descent." The library hosts a number of special events throughout the year.
The Margaret Walker Alexander Research Center at Jackson State University houses Alexander's papers, as well as important documents pertaining to her contemporaries, and hosts a number of conferences and festivals pertaining to the African American experience.
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Rowan Oak, William Faulkner's home in Oxford
City Hall
107 Courthouse Square
Oxford, MS 38655
Website: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/rowanoak.html
Email: webmaster@oxfordms.net
Phone: (662) 236-1310
William Faulkner (1897 - 1962), a native of Mississippi, is one of the most highly acclaimed American writers of the 20th century. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1949, two Pulitzer Prizes, one for A Fable (1954) and the second for The Reveirs (1962), and two National Book Awards. His work includes such celebrated novels as The Sound and the Fury (1929), As I Lay Dying (1930), and Absalom, Absalom! (1936). In addition to writing novels, Faulkner produced short stories, screenplays, and poetry. Faulkner's writing is characterized by his extensive use of symbolism, allegory, stream of consciousness, and multiple points of view, and his work is often criticized for being difficult to understand.
Faulkner moved to Oxford, Mississippi in 1930, to an 1840s Greek Revival house built by pioneer settlers. The Faulkner family named the home "Rowan Oak," after the legend of the Rowan tree from Sir James Frazier's story The Golden Bough. In the story, a cross of Rowan wood placed over a threshold provides peace and privacy for the occupants of a home. The fiercely private Faulkner deliberately sought such a refuge in his new home. Faulkner lived at Rowan Oak until his death. The house and grounds remain very much as they did during the time that he lived there. His study has been virtually untouched, and features his handwritten outline for The Fable inscribed on the wall, along with his typewriter, desk, and other personal effects.
The town of Oxford in Lafayette County played an important role in Faulkner's writing, Yoknapatawpha County, the setting for many of Faulkner's novels and short stories, is based on Lafayette County. Visitors to Oxford can see Faulkner's grave, along with many other sites pertaining to the writer and his work. For more information about Faulkner in Oxford, visit: http://www.mcsr.olemiss.edu/~egjbp/faulkner/wfsites.html.
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