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A major poet Paul Laurence Dunbar 18721906 was one of the first African American writers to garner international recognition in the wake of emancipation In this definitive biography the first fullscale 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 thirtythree