“Frank Yerby”的意思、由来-开放百科全书

Yerby was born in Augusta, Georgia, on September 5, 1916, the second of four children^[2] of Rufus Garvin Yerby (1886–1961) and Wilhelmina Ethel Yerby (née Smythe) (1888–1960). Rufus, a hotel doorman, was part African-American, part Seminole; Wilhelmina ("Willie") was Scots-Irish.^[1] Yerby would later refer to himself as "a young man whose list of ancestors read like a mini-United Nations."^[3] As a child, Yerby attended Augusta's Haines Institute, a private school for African Americans.^[4] In 1937, he graduated from Paine College with a B.A. in English, and earned his M.A. from Fisk University in 1938, where he published his first [https://blog.bestamericanpoetry.com/the_best_american_poetry/2019/03/frank-yerby-protest-and-the-picturesque-by-hollis-robbins.html poems].^[1] In 1939, he began courses for his doctorate in education at the University of Chicago, but left school to teach.^[5]

Novelist

Yerby was originally noted for writing romance novels set in the antebellum South. In mid-century, Yerby began writing a series of best-selling historical novels ranging from the Athens of Pericles to Europe in the Dark Ages. Yerby took considerable pains in research and often endnoted his historical works. In all, he wrote 33 novels. In 1946, he published The Foxes of Harrow, a southern historical romance, which became the first novel by an African-American to sell more than a million copies. In this work he faithfully reproduced many of the genre's most familiar features, with the notable exception of his representation of African-American characters, who bore little resemblance to the "happy darkies" that appeared in such well-known works as Gone With the Wind (1936). That same year he also became the first African-American to have a book purchased for screen adaptation by a Hollywood studio, when 20th Century Fox optioned Foxes. Ultimately, the book became a 1947 Oscar-nominated film of the same name starring Rex Harrison and Maureen O'Hara.

In some quarters, Yerby is best known for his masterpiece, Dahomean (1971). The novel, which focuses on the life of an enslaved African chief's son who is transported to America, serves as the culmination of Yerby's efforts toward incorporating racial themes into his works. Prior to that, Yerby was often criticized by blacks for the lack of focus on or stereotypical treatment of African-American characters in his books.^[6]

In 2012, The New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof wrote an article featuring an at-risk child whose life was turned around by reading Yerby books that one of his teachers was secretly providing to him.^[7]

Later years and death

Yerby left the United States in 1955, in protest against racial discrimination, and moved to Spain (then under the Franco regime), where he remained for the rest of his life. Yerby died from congestive heart failure in Madrid and was interred there in the Cementerio de la Almudena.

Posthumous honors

In 2006, Yerby was posthumously inducted into the Georgia Writers Hall of Fame.^[6]

In 2013, the Augusta Literary Festival created an award to honor Frank Yerby. This award is given to three fiction authors from a submission pool.^[8]

Novels

Film adaptations

References

1. ^¹²{{cite encyclopedia |last=Frazier |first=Valerie |author-link= |editor-last= |editor-first= |editor-link= |encyclopedia=New Georgia Encyclopedia |title=Frank Yerby (1916–1991) |trans-title= |url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/articles/arts-culture/frank-yerby-1916-1991 |access-date=January 20, 2017 |language= |edition= |date=July 16, 2002 |year= |publisher= |series= |volume= |location= |id= |isbn= |oclc= |doi= |pages= |quote= |ref=}}
2. ^{{cite web |url=https://www.geni.com/people/Rufus-Yerby/316040337660008069 |title=Rufus Garvin Yerby |author= |date=October 30, 2014 |website=geni.com |publisher= |access-date=January 20, 2017 |quote=}}
3. ^{{cite news |last=Folkart |first=Burt A. |author-link= |date=January 9, 1992 |title=Frank Yerby; Novelist Felt Rejected by His Native South |url=http://articles.latimes.com/1992-01-09/news/mn-2134_1_frank-yerby |newspaper=The Los Angeles Times |access-date=January 20, 2017}}
4. ^{{cite web |url=http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/frank-yerby-was-award-winning-novelist |title=Frank Yerby Was an Award Winning Novelist |author= |date= |website=African American Registry |publisher= |access-date=January 20, 2017 |quote= |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170202001349/http://www.aaregistry.org/historic_events/view/frank-yerby-was-award-winning-novelist |archive-date=2017-02-02 |dead-url=yes |df= }}
5. ^{{cite magazine |last=Lyon |first=Bill |date=March 30, 1981 |title=Expatriate Writer Frank Yerby Is Grousing Even Though His 30th Best-Seller Is Coming Up |url=http://people.com/archive/expatriate-writer-frank-yerby-is-grousing-even-though-his-30th-best-seller-is-coming-up-vol-15-no-12/ |magazine=People |location= |publisher= |access-date=January 20, 2017}}
6. ^¹{{cite news|url=http://www.georgiaencyclopedia.org/nge/Article.jsp?id=h-523 |title=Frank Yerby |work=New Georgia Encyclopedia}}
7. ^{{cite news|url=https://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/22/opinion/sunday/kristof-how-mrs-grady-transformed-olly-neal.html |title=How Mrs. Grady Transformed Olly Neal|author=Kristof, Nicholas D. |work=The New York Times|date= January 21, 2012}}
8. ^{{cite web|url=http://www.augustaliteraryfestival.org/the-yerby-award |title=Frank Yerby |website=Augusta Literary Festival Award}}
9. ^{{cite news|work=The New York Times|url=https://www.nytimes.com/movie/review?res=9B06EED91131E53BBC4D52DFB366838F649EDE|author=O.A.G.|date= May 15, 1954|accessdate=November 4, 2015|title=Movie Review: The Saracen Blade (1954) At the Palace}}