the International Dyslexia Association awarded
Staples the Priscilla Vail Award (2004).
Before Staples wrote his autobiography, he
began to explore his voice as a writer during his
early 20s by carrying a journal with him every-
where he went. He writes,
I wrote on buses and on the Jackson Park el...
traveled to distant neighborhoods, sat on their
curbs, and sketched what I saw in words. I went
to a nightclub in The Loop and spied on the
patrons, copied their conversations and specu-
lated about their lives. The journal was more
than ‘a record of my inner transactions.’ It was
a collection of stolen souls from which I would
one day construct a book. (Staples, 221)In 1994, Staples published his highly personal
memoir, Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and
White, winner of the Anisfield Wolff Book Award,
which had been won previously by such writers as
JAMES BALDWIN, RALPH ELLISON, and ZORA NEALE
HURSTON. Addressing such themes as family,
leaving home, and the quest for identity, Staples
records his childhood experience in Chester, Penn-
sylvania, a racially mixed, crime-ridden, working-
class town; his young adult years during which he
earned academic degrees in places where he was a
distinct minority; his final year at the University
of Chicago; and the tragic plight of his younger
brother, Blake, a drug dealer, who was killed in
the streets at age 22 and whose funeral Brent did
not attend. One reviewer notes that the parallels
Staples draws between himself and his brother
“add a sadness that permeates the text even when
we would want to celebrate Staples’s successes”
(Donohue, 334). However, critic Verlyn Klinken-
borg points out that Staples is a careful observer of
several other parallels and pairs of subjects: those
between black and white, between black Chester
and white Polish and Ukrainian Chester, and be-
tween Chester and Chicago.
Although some critics may argue that Staples’s
memoir is not as powerful as the now-classic works
of such 20th-century black writers as RICHARD
WRIGHT, MALCOLM X, CHESTER HIMES, ELDRIDGE
CLEAVER, CLAUDE BROWN, and NATHAN MCCALL,
Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White made
a valuable contribution to a genre that reaches all
the way back to FREDERICK DOUGLASS and BOOKER
T. WASHINGTON, earning Staples a place as a gifted
writer in the African-American literary tradition.
Staples continues to work as journalist, contribut-
ing to such periodicals as Ms. and Harper’s.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Donohue, Stacey L. “Brent Staples.” In African Ameri-
can Autobiographers, edited by Emmanuel S. Nel-
son, 333–337. Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press,
2002.
Klinkenborg, Verlyn. “An American Story.” Review
of Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and White.
New York Times Book Review, 20 February 1994,
pp. 1, 26.
Nelson, Jill. “Hiding in Plain Sight.” Review of Parallel
Time: Growing Up in Black and White. Nation 258
(1994): 562.
Staples, Brent. Parallel Time: Growing Up in Black and
White. New York: Random House, 1994.
White, Jack E. “Between Two Worlds.” Review of Par-
allel Time: Growing Up in Black and White. Time,
7 March 1994, p. 68.
Loretta G. WoodardSteptoe, John Lewis (1950–1989)
An award-winning author of children’s books, il-
lustrator, and artist, John Lewis Steptoe was the
first and still is the youngest African-American
artist to publish a mainstream children’s book
that dealt with the realities and interactions of
black Americans. He used language reflecting the
black experience and painted pictures that cel-
ebrated all aspects of black American life. John
used his tools—crayons, pencils, inks, watercol-
ors, brushes, and paints—to lead the children who
read his books on adventures exploring imagina-
tive terrains, from urban neighborhoods to ancient
Zimbabwe.
Steptoe was born to Elesteen and John Oli-
ver Steptoe September 14, 1950, at Unity Hospi-480 Steptoe, John Lewis