Walter Dean Myers

• Born: August 12, 1937
• Birthplace: Martinsburg, West Virginia
• Died: July 1, 2014
• Place of death: New York, New York

Writer

With more than fifty books to his name, Myers is the most prominent African American writer for young adults. His works dispel stereotypes about African American youths while depicting teenagers’ lives realistically. He also has written extensively about prominent figures in African American history.

Area of achievement: Literature

Early Life

Walter Dean Myers was born in Martinsburg, West Virginia, and raised by an adoptive family in Harlem, New York. His adoptive father, Herbert Dean, was African American, and his adoptive mother, Florence Dean, was Native American and German. Myers discovered much later that his father had never learned to read proficiently.

Myers struggled in school and often skipped classes. In his 2001 book Bad Boy: A Memoir, Myers explains that counselors believed he had suffered long-term emotional damage from a bout of scarlet fever when he was eight years old. At the age of sixteen, he underwent testing that did not find anything wrong with him; however, the tests led him to think about what it meant to be African American and what he might want to do in the future. Myers identified with the detachment of the character Meursault in The Stranger (1942) by Albert Camus and with the observational quality of Stephen Dedalus in A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916) by James Joyce.

Myers found a sense of identity through reading and creative writing, and he always considered himself an intellectual. He also overcame a speech impediment. Reading, writing, and the encouragement of a high school English teacher were essential to him. He also played basketball, which he credited with teaching him discipline. On his seventeenth birthday, Myers left high school to join the Army.

Myers believed that the military rescued him from the dangers of the New York streets. He served in the Army for three years and then eked out a living doing odd jobs, such as working in a factory, at a post office, as a messenger, and in construction. Upon realizing that it was important to consider himself a person with a brain, not just a body, Myers renewed his writing.

Life’s Work

Myers wrote prolifically starting in the early 1960’s. He was greatly influenced by his friendships with fellow African American authors, such as John Killens and James Baldwin, and the Harlem Writers Guild, an organization of black writers. In 1968, Myers won a contest for black writers run by the Council on Interracial Books for Children. His prize-winning book, Where Does the Day Go?, was published in 1969, and Myers published continually over the following decades. He has more than fifty books to his credit, representing a wide array of genres. His books depict contemporary times and events from African American history and encourage pride and uplift. Myers writes about harsh realities such as teen violence, gang life, and drug use, and he urges personal responsibility. For example, Dope Sick (2009) is a novel of magic realism about a young man who gets a chance to change the day he ruined his life by participating in a robbery homicide. The novel Shooter (2004) explores the circumstances leading to a fictional school shooting and is composed of police reports, journal entries, and interviews.

Myers received the Coretta Scott King Award six times in a variety of categories including a lifetime achievement award. He was a finalist for the National Book Award three times. Between 1979 and 2005, more than twenty-one books by Myers were recognized as Best Books for Young Adults by the Young Adult Library Services Association. The 1999 bookMonster, about a teenager on trial as an accomplice to murder, earned numerous honors, including a Michael Printz Award.

In 1991, Myers’s heralded history book Now Is Your Time! The African-American Struggle for Freedom was published. It blended well-known facts with obscure incidents and people to bring African American history vividly to life. The 1988 book Fallen Angels, which describes the experience of a seventeen-year-old in Vietnam, won several awards and was named one of School Library Journal’s Best Books of the Year. In 2001, Myers published Autobiography of My Dead Brother, a novel for teens about the bond between two young African American boys surviving in an atmosphere of gang violence. Myers’s works are widely read and studied in schools.

Myers died in New York in 2014. From 2012 until his death he was the National Ambassador for Young People's Literature. The Walter Dean Myers Award (also known as the Walter Award) was inaugurated in 2016 to recognize outstanding books for young adults. The award is administered by We Need Diverse Books to promote diversity in children's literature.

On a Clear Day (2014) and the historical novel Juba (2015) were published posthumously. Juba concerns a nineteenth century African American dancer's influence on the development of jazz and tap dancing. Monster, which reprises Myers's 1999 novel of the same title, was illustrated by Dawud Anyabwile and published as a graphic novel in 2015.

Significance

Myers is known as a versatile writer whose work spans fiction, nonfiction and verse. His writings serve to inspire readers to overcome obstacles and envision happier, more responsible lives. Through his popular nonfiction and fiction, Myers also educates young people about major figures in African American history, such as Ida B. Wells, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X, who were subjects of well-received books by Myers between 1994 and 2008. His books’ emphasis on pride and uplift have made him an inspirational figure for generations of readers.

Bibliography

Jordan, Denise. Walter Dean Myers: Writer for Real Teens. Berkeley Heights, N.J.: Enslow, 1999. An accessible work aimed at adolescent readers of Myers’s books. Illustrated.

Lane, R. D. “’Keepin’ It Real’: Walter Dean Myers and the Promise of African American Children’s Literature.” African American Review 32, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 125-138. Lane analyzes how Myers has achieved popularity among young readers and respect from critics through his urban canvases, subtle realism, and strong voices.

Lee, Felicia R. "Walter Dean Myers Dies at 76; Wrote of Black Youth for the Young." The New York Times, 3 July 2014, www.nytimes.com/2014/07/04/arts/walter-dean-myers-childrens-author-dies-at-76.html. Accessed 28 Dec. 2017.

Myers, Walter Dean. Bad Boy: A Memoir. New York: Harper Collins, 2001. In this autobiography focused on his youth, Myers describes growing up in Harlem in the 1940’s and 1950’s and identifies influences on his writing career.

Schuck, Raymond. “From Politics to Personal Expression: Representations of Sport in Walter Dean Myers’s Young Adult Works.” In Young Adult Literature and Culture, edited by Harry Edwin Eiss. Newcastle upon Tyne, England: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2009. Schuck analyzes how five books by Myers show that athletes gain fulfillment through negotiating the politics of sports.

Snodgrass, Mary Ellen. Walter Dean Myers: A Literary Companion. Jefferson, N.C.: McFarland, 2006. Snodgrass provides a timeline of historical events in books by Myers, a chronology of the writer’s life, and thematic highlights from his books.