The most subtle and pernicious form of racism against blacks [is] doubt about our intellectual capacities, he explained to Maurice Berger in Art in America. Booklist, February 15, 1997; May 1, 1997; February 15, 1999; February 15, 2001. Business Wire, May 1, 2001; November 15, 2007. And by in traction, I mean on my back with my foot up with weights. And the last thing I did before I went to bed on July 2, 1960, was to look up the word estimable. Discover the family tree of Henry Louis Gates for free, and learn about their family history and their ancestry. And we're listening to Terry's interview with Henry Louis Gates. Du Bois: to publish the black equivalent of the Encyclopedia Britannica. ." My great-great-grandfather's now been found. The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, thirty volumes, Oxford University Press, 1988. All that was on still in 1965 in syndication. https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/gates-henry-louis-jr-1950-0, Nagel, Rob; Minderovic, Christine "Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 1950 This is FRESH AIR. What I think of as intellectual racismthe idea that Blacks are innately inferiorwill be countered if each of us is an authentic scholar. Copyright 2019 NPR. Her efforts. And I don't know if that ruined your sports career forever, but it affected your leg forever. Sharon Lynn Adams [Henry Louis Gates Ex-Wife] Before & After. (With Hollis Robbins) The Annotated Uncle Tom's Cabin, W.W. Norton, 2006. Who is the wife of Henry Louis Gates Jr? - The Famous Celebrity GATES: I'll never - I love you, Mama. I mean, like, my - I'm second-generation American. 2023 . America beyond the Color Line, PBS, 2004. He told Art in Americas Berger there must be systems that account for the full complexity of American art, music, and literaturein all their multicolored strains. (With Cornel West) The African-American Century, Free Press, 2000. Login We have to conceive a new aesthetic status for American art in all of its facets., In addition to editing The Norton Anthology of African American Literature in 1998, Gates, an endless researcher, co-edited The Civitas Anthonology of African American Slave Narratives, a collection of ten stories, in 1999. The authoritative record of NPRs programming is the audio record. document.getElementById( "ak_js_1" ).setAttribute( "value", ( new Date() ).getTime() ); Your email address will not be published. American Literary Critic Henry Luis Gates Jr. And His Book Of People might remember the Beer Summit, when you were stopped in your own home trying to unjam a lock after a long trip. And what's the real showstopper for me is the fact that my three sets of my fourth great grandparents lived 18 miles from where I was born. Race is a social construction. . New Republic, January 9, 1989; January 16, 1989. As a subscriber, you have 10 gift articles to give each month. The historian, filmmaker, public . And I want to start with the person who got you started in genealogy. Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information. So I'm telling this story over and over of my - of rediscovering my own lost roots. James Crowley is on the horizon. They lived together. Its polyphony of voices, its constant eddying of claims to identity, is one of the things that makes America America." GATES: Yeah, I loved books. Member of board of editors of American Quarterly, Black American Literature Forum, Cultural Critique, Proteus, and Studies in American Fiction; member of board of directors of Critical Inquiry and Diacritics; advisory editor to Contributions to African and Afro-American Studies and Studies on Black Life and Culture. Publishers Weekly, January 18, 1991; June 20, 1994; September 27, 1999. ." And she was a beautiful woman. ." (April 27, 2023). Once the domain of graduate schools, critical race theory is an intellectual tradition that emerged in the 1970s that sought to interrogate how the law produces and maintains racial hierarchy . So you GATES: Because of this white man. If you remember, it was called "African-American Lives." 2. In a PBS series on African-American ancestry that he hosted in 2008, Gates discovered his Irish roots when he found he was descended from an Irish immigrant and a slave girl. New York Times Book Review, December 9, 1984; July 7, 1985; July 3, 1988; August 14, 1988; February 26, 1989; March 25, 1990; May 12, 2002. Robert Stepto and Dexter Fisher, editors, Afro-American Literature: The Reconstruction of Instruction, Modern Language Association of America, 1979. What I think of as intellectual racismthe idea that Blacks are innately inferiorwill be countered if each of us is an authentic scholar., But Gates decries any type of education that focuses on only one culture. And deep down, I realized in retrospect that my desire to make films was probably born about that time. GROSS: Let's look at your ancestry and see who's really in it. And my father would just make up stories and tell my brother and me. So reading this - that she's a mulatto; she'd been a slave - the first question that comes to my mind - and I don't know if it was the first question that came to yours - was, was she raped by the man who owned her? Influential African-American author, scholar, PBS miniseries host, and public intellectual who wrote about race, politics, history, and culture. GROSS: Totally stunned. 6. Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. 1950- | Encyclopedia.com Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Sharon Lynn Adams had a relationship from 1979 to 1979. to add information, pictures and relationships, join in discussions and get credit for your contributions. It's a horrible way to start, in a way. GROSS: I think they're doing it through records and not through, like, secretly getting their blood samples. And the first thing they said was, you don't have any of the genes that's going to give you Alzheimer's. Awards: MacArthur Prize fellowship, MacArthur Foundation, 1981; American Book Award and Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for Race Relations, both for The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, 1989; elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, 1993; named one of Time magazine's 25 Most Influential Americans, 1997; National Humanities Medal, 1998; NAACP Image Award, Outstanding Literary Work, Nonfiction, for Wonders of the African World, 2000. Eric J. Sundquist, critiquing the publication in the New York Times Book Review, believed it would alter the landscape of American cultural thought, demonstrating "that black men and black women have never hesitated to grasp the pen and write their own powerful story of freedom. GATES: Yeah. I wanted to bring this lost African world into the consciousness of the larger public, Black and White. Time quoted Gerald Early, the director of African and Afro-American studies at Washington University in St, Louis, Skip Gates has legitimized black studies in the mainstream.. He is considered a man of knowledge and is highly appreciated for his works. I'm Dave Davies, in for Terry Gross. GROSS: Do you know - do you want to know your medical DNA? William H. Robinson, editor, Critical Essays on Phyllis Wheatley, G. K. Hall, 1982. Therefore, to . The First Amendment will not, true enough, secure us substantive liberties, but neither will its abrogation, he wrote, while also crediting critical race theorists with helping to reinvigorate the debate about freedom of expression., Justin Driver, a professor at Yale Law School, has also critiqued the conception of progress as a story of white accommodation, an idea developed by another major critical race theorist, Derrick Bell. Sharon Lynn Adams boyfriend, husband list. "Race," Writing, and Difference, University of Chicago Press, 1986. The most subtle and pernicious form of racism against blacks [is] doubt about our intellectual capacities, he explained to Maurice Berger in Art in America. YjNiMWMzZTY1ZGM5NWJkNDdkM2FiMDBlODQ4MzYyZmEyMTM0NDBiNjU0Mzdk It's beautiful. Floridas education system exists to create opportunity for our children. Bogus theories of sun and ice people, and the individual scapegoating of other ethnic groups, only resurrects the worst of 19th-century racist pseudosciencewhich too many of the pharaohs of Afrocentrism have accepted without realizing, Gates explained in Newsweek. They were buried next to each other. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. No white writer did that." GATES: That was one of the happiest days of my life when my brother went to dental school. There he met Sharon Adams . Encyclopedia of African-American Culture and History, Reed, Ishmael 1938 When the young Gates replied that he wanted to be a doctor and then correctly answered many questions about science, the doctor made his diagnosis. 1. As host of the PBS series Finding Your Roots, Gates tells celebrities about their family history. And we filmed the whole thing. Also editor-in-chief of The Root online magazine; member of board of editors of American Quarterly, Black American Literature Forum, Cultural Critique, Proteus, and Studies in American Fiction; member of board of directors of Critical Inquiry and Diacritics; advisory editor to Contributions to African and Afro-American Studies and Studies on Black Life and Culture. I mean, they know Donald Trump. Does race exist? Then he'd come back. The word is thereby enriched. And when my grandparents came as immigrants, my family was able to assimilate pretty easily because we're white. GROSS: So I want to squeeze in one more question. GATES: And because it was PBS, we negotiated a deal with this company Illumina which sequences everybody. They had two daughters together before they divorced in 1999. NzUzZGIyN2MyYTE3MTY4NDliMTE2ZmQxZThkMDE3M2Q4Y2ZiMzFlZDk4NzZk Sharon Lynn Adams remains famous as the former wife of an American professor, historian, filmmaker, and literary critic, Henry Louis Gate Jr. In Black Literature and Literary Theory, published in 1984 and edited by Gates, he attacked the notion of the traditional, Eurocentric literary canon by proposing the establishment of a black literary canon. "I think the Western tradition has been a marvelous, wonderful tradition. Long after white American literature has been anthologized and canonized, and recanonized, he stated in the New York Times Book Review, our efforts to define a black American canon are often decried as racist, separatist, nationalist, or essentialist. Gates further insists that the reason black works are not included is because the traditional canon is based on Western or European culture. Would you do it? Since Gates felt that culture is always a conversation among different voices, as he wrote in the New York Times, it is the history of the black voice in black literature, with its repetition and revision of shared themes, topoi and tropes, the call and response of voices, their music and cacophony, that must be studied. He first married Sharon Lynn Adams in 1979 and welcomed two children prior to their 1999 divorce. OTIwOTJhMTQ4ZTNmNzRlZDhkODI1NTIwYzE4ZDJmYjdlMjQxZjk3OThiYmQw Retrieved April 27, 2023 from Encyclopedia.com: https://www.encyclopedia.com/education/news-wires-white-papers-and-books/gates-henry-louis-jr, Teacher, scholar, and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was born in Keyser, West Virginia. Education is crucial, Gates explained to V. R. Peterson in Essence, to combat damaging racial stereotypes and beliefs: "I find the lack of knowledge about Black people that Black people have distressing. 7. Ive seen the risible training for school administrators calling worship of the written word white supremacy culture. Theres a version of antiracism based on white peoples narcissistic self-flagellation that seems to me to accomplish very little.. They had two geneticists. Both meanings, white and black, are present. Detroit, Mich.: Gale, 1993. GROSS: OK. Herbert Sacks, editor, The Book of Hurdles, Atheneum, 1978. He earned his B.A. Sharon Lynn Adams, Henry Louis Gates' Ex-wife - Dicy Trends So obviously rape or, at best, cajoled sexuality was the cause, but there are exceptions. As a result of this last discovery, Gates was inducted into the Sons of the American Revolution in 2006. Thank God. This episode focuses on her top 10 tips for entrepreneurs in this ever-changing landscape. Mjk4ZmM3N2MzMzQzZjM3NTM5NzM2ZjkyNWEyOTUzMDljNTBmNDdmZjQ1Mjdh Gates considers himself a literary critic and educator. After having graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a degree in history, Gates won fellowships to study at the Clare College of Cambridge University in England. -----END REPORT-----. Gates proposed the theory that black writers, as Andrew Delbanco explained in the New Republic, throw off the oppressive weight of their predecessors by first incorporating, then transforming, them. Gates labels this parodie technique Signifyin(g)indicating the omission of the final g as is often done in the black vernacular. Both meanings, white and black, are present. In 1964, when Henry Louis Gates, Jr. was 14 years old, he suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket. Henry Louis Gates Jr. was born Sept. 16, 1950, in Keyser, W.Va. His father worked at the local paper mill during the day and as a janitor at a telephone company at night. The white doctor who examined Gates shortly afterward questioned the boy about his injury as well as his career plans. Its polyphony of voices, its constant eddying of claims to identity, is one of the things that makes America America. For this to continue, Gates believes, it is imperative that there is tolerance and understanding across cultural lines: The challenge facing America will be the shaping of a truly common public culture, one responsive to the long-silenced cultures of color, he declared in the New York Times. Finding Oprah's Roots, Finding Your Own, Crown, 2007. Memberships: Modern Language Association; Zora Neale Hurston Society; ACLU National Advisory Council; National Coalition against Censorship; Sons of the American Revolution. He is also co-editor of Africana 2000, a massive CD-ROM encyclopedia of the African diaspora, as well as its print version, Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience (1999). It's the damnedest thing I ever heard. Encyclopedia.com. My life as a mom has changed so much over the years. M2ZkOGJiZTQ2Yzc1YWM1ZjE4OGQyMWU2ZGExMGJkNzE5NjI3Yzk4YTFiNjY4 He told Gates to stand and walk, and the young boy fell to the floor in intense pain. Nagel, Rob "Gates, Henry Louis Jr. 1950 His father worked in a paper mill and moonlighted as a janitor, while his mother cleaned houses. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates speaking with Terry Gross in May of last year. And on my desk set a red Webster's dictionary. Jet, November 5, 1990; October 25, 1999; August 27, 2000; September 25, 2000; January 21, 2002. Contemporary Black Biography. Anglo-American regional culture is simply not universal. When we left off, Gates was talking about his own DNA mix. So then I became close to them but in two completely different ways. Family Tree . The new season of his TV series "Finding Your Roots" is now showing on PBS. Gates assembled a team of intellectuals who traveled through twelve African countries over a period of one year, gathering and examining evidence of past African cultures. Contemporary Black Biography. Encyclopedia.com. And I hope they are. Henry Louis Gates : Family tree by Tim DOWLING (tdowling) - Geneanet I think the Western tradition has been a marvelous, wonderful tradition. Theres certainly some material that critics lump in with C.R.T. In 1964, when Henry Louis Gates Jr. was 14 years old, he suffered a hairline fracture of the ball-and-socket joint of the hip while playing touch football in his hometown of Piedmont, West Virginia. She is the singer for a band called Sharon Lynn , as well as solo artist. Writer Henry Louis Gates and his wife Sharon Adams share a quiet The Schomburg Library of Nineteenth-Century Black Women Writers, 30 vols., Oxford University Press, 1988. You might have prostate cancer that runs in your family. We give you the inside scoop on what wa done to her to make her look more like the famous actress Julia Roberts. Profoundly affected, the young Gates made a deal with God: If his mother came home from the hospital, he would devote his life to Christ. He reflects on his own history and some of the more controversial aspects of DNA testing. Instructing him in the mythology and writings of. Testing showed he had ancestors from sub-Saharan Africa, Ireland and England. Signifying is verbal playserious play that serves as instruction, entertainment, mental exercise, preparation for interacting with friend or foe in the social arena, John Wideman pointed out in the New York Times Book Review. Now she was born in 1819; died in 1888. Given Gate's commitment to elevating the works and identities of black Americans, some may be surprised to find out that in 1973 he married a white woman named Sharon Lynn Adams. GATES: I go, yeah, I got a brother who's a dentist, you know? And you realize it's Peola, grown up, coming back. Black work cannot be appreciated or criticized on the basis of a Western cultural aesthetic. Help us build our profile of Sharon Lynn Adams! OK. To say that black art is a thing apart, separate from the whole, is a racist fiction. pic.twitter.com/ludv7ARgNP. Encyclopedia.com. (Parents : Edward Elwyn Adams 1921-1999 & Doris Evelyn Lee 1928-2018), divorced in 1999. DAVIES: Henry Louis Gates spoke with Terry Gross before a live audience in Philadelphia last May. What percent would be Native American? July 28, 2009 -- Henry Louis Gates Jr., the black professor at the center of the racial story involving his arrest outside his Harvard University-owned house, has spoken proudly of his Irish roots . And your driver was helping you - well, he was shoving his shoulder against the door trying to open it. September 16, 1950. The conclusion is where we leave you. It was his rediscovery and republication in 1983 of Harriet E. Wilsons Our Nig, the first novel published in the United States by a black person, however, that placed Gates at the forefront of black scholars. But I think that you should have to get permission before someone is creeping around in your DNA. Herbert Sacks, editor, The Book of Hurdles, Ath-eneum, 1978. I can do it. America behind the Color Line: Dialogues with African Americans, Warner Books, 2004. She declined to comment further. "Gates, Henry Louis, Jr. And if you're Ashkenazi Jewish, you might have a higher risk for those kind of things or Tay-Sachs. To say that black art is a thing apart, separate from the whole, is a racist fiction. If it is illegal in Russia to discuss the 1939 Molotov-Ribbentrop pact of nonaggression between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union, then it is impossible to discuss how, where and when the Second World War began, he writes. Within the Cite this article tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. "Gates means that repetition, revision, and usurpation are as integral to black street talk as they are to Western poetry," Delbanco wrote. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. on Losing His Mother, the Heirloom He Adores This is FRESH AIR. So we knew he was Irish. The following year, Africana.com was purchased by AOL Time Warner. After having graduated summa cum laude from Yale University with a degree in history, Gates won fellowships to study at the Clare College of Cambridge University in England. And then black people would tell each other - they would say, you know, be sure to watch "The Late Late Show" tonight because "Imitation Of Life," which is my favorite film - 1934, with Claudette Colbert. GROSS: And it's a way of outing people as not being who they think they are and not recognizing that we're all descended from so many different people. Sharon Lynn Adams is a business owner who has been helping other business owners get the most out of their own businesses through her blog and podcast. ", In 1991 Gates became the chair of the Afro-American studies department at Harvard University. He was a free negro, as we would have said then. Gatess Black Periodical Literature Project, begun in 1980, also benefitted from the acclaim of Our Nigs republication. Du Bois Professor of Literature, 1988-90; Duke, John Spenser Bassett Professor of English, 1990-91; Harvard, W. E. B. DuBois Professor of the Humanities, 1991-, dept chair, African-American Studies, 1991. What is race? Gates was born on September 16, 1950, in Keyser, West Virginia, a city surrounded by the Allegheny Mountains. It's incredible that the mystery to my family tree - I'm looking toward Africa, and it was 18 miles away in Moorefield, W.Va., County Courthouse. I think its vulgar and racist whether it comes out of a black mouth or a white mouth., In 1991, Gates became the chair of the Afro-American Studies Department at Harvard University. And one of the, you know, wonderful people on "The View" said did I think that Donald Trump is racist. When it came to the bedroom, it seems that Niall of the Nine Hostages was even more fearless and energetic than he was on the battlefield. GROSS: So given this kind of really rich mix that you've just described and all the surprises that you've just described, what does race mean to you? GROSS: But it's making me think of how much death figured into your formative thoughts - the death of your grandfather, which led you to see the picture of your great-great-grandmother, everybody's deaths through your mother memorialized in those obituaries. It is state-sanctioned racism and has no place in Florida schools. Its a joke. (April 27, 2023). Sharpens F, Locke, Alain 1886-1954 He went to Trinity College in Dublin to have his DNA analyzed. (With others) The Norton Anthology of Afro-American Literature, Norton, 1990. Attacked Black Representation and Separatism. Henry Louis Gates Jr. is a 72 year old American Author born on 16th September, 1950 in Keyser, West Virginia USA. Eric J. Sundquist, critiquing the publication for the New York Times Book Review, believed it would alter the landscape of American cultural thought, demonstrating that black men and black women have never hesitated to grasp the pen and write their own powerful story of freedom., But it has been Gatess critical approach, the definition of a black literary theory, that has attracted the most attention, including critics skepticism. Henry Louis Gates: Top 10 Facts You Need to Know - FamousDetails And this happened to be it, and he happened to be on it., In one antiracism seminar Rufo unearthed, white employees of the city of Seattle were shown a slide listing supposed expressions of internalized white supremacy, including perfectionism, objectivity, and individualism.. She paid cash for that house in what was largely a white neighborhood. Gates explained to Jet, As a black American, I know what its like to have your history stolen from you. In the show, notable guests discover their family roots based on genealogical research and DNA results. A collection of moments during and after Barack Obama's presidency. Africans transported to America before the outlaw of slavery refused to learn the white slave owners language, thereby preventing assimilation into the fabricated caste system. GROSS: There's some people who are trying to use genealogy to out people who are white supremacists and say, oh, you think you're so pure white, that that's such a big deal? Gates does not call for the precedence of black culture over its Western counterpart. Rob Nagel, Christine Miner Minderovic, and Derek Jacques. GATES, Henry Louis, Jr. 1950-PERSONAL: Born September 16, 1950, in Keyser, WV; son of Henry Louis and Pauline Augusta (Coleman) Gates; married Sharon Lynn Adams (a potter), September 1, 1979; children: Maude Augusta Adams, Elizabeth Helen-Claire. Racism is not aberrational but an inherited, ordinary feature of society. It's a gift - and for my mom. 9. So where does that come from? It's one thing to put pictures of Frederick Douglass and Harriet Tubman on the wall of a classroom. Married 1 September 1979 to Henry Louis Gates, born 16 September 1950 - Keyser, Mineral Co., WV, age : 72 years old , Professor, Author, Genealogist, Filmmaker. . SC Summerville Gutter Installation | How do we act? GROSS: Yeah. Created television series The Image of the Black in the Western Imagination, Public Broadcasting Service (PBS), 1982. Contemporary Black Biography. The first time we met was when I interviewed him for "The Reflection Effect," an essay I wrote for O, the Oprah Magazine about the power of nostalgia to drive happiness and build resilience after loss. He is a Trustee of the Gilder Lehrman Institute of American History. And the last thing I did before I went to bed was - we always had a desk in our bedrooms and had a bookcase. The Classic Slave Narratives, New American Library, 1987. "I'm descended from a white man, he says. I thought that by teaching children how to read and write, I could. And I think that we throw terms like that around too loosely. Guy C. McElroy, Facing History: The Black Image in American Art, 1710-1940, Bedford Arts, 1991. And I cluster more toward the Yoruba than any - because 50 percent GATES: Of my ancestry is from sub-Saharan Africa. Therefore, to understand black literary works, Gates argues, one must understand the purposes behind the black vernacular tradition of endlessly playing against itself varying, revising, extending. The novel was originally published in 1859 but was ignored and later labeled the work of a white man. Its a parody and parody is one of the most venerated forms of art., It is the lack of understanding in American society of the function and value of this black tradition, Gates believes, that has fostered intellectual racisma tone deafness to the black cultural voice. Now Its Critical Race Theory. [FiveThirtyEight], The panic over critical race theory is an attempt to whitewash U.S. history [The Washington Post]. He also condemns the belief that only blacks can teach or write about black culture. We'll hear more after a short break. Teacher, scholar, and writer Henry Louis Gates, Jr., was born in Keyser, West Virginia. Liza is Henry's second born child, she's currently a Clinical Functional Family Intervention Therapist. This is . A white doctor misdiagnosed the injury as psychosomatic after Gates told him he wanted to become a doctor, Gates wrote in a New York Times article, "About Men: A Giant Step," in 1990. ." GATES: And think about it. We have also posted some, Sharon Lynn Adams was married to Henry Louis Gates. Gates means that repetition, revision, and usurpation are as integral to black street talk as they are to Western poetry, Delbanco wrote. ." We're helping to create a new cultural consciousness, one that's pluralistic and diverse.". Blog [ January 11, 2023 . YjQ5NzhjNmY4NDEyMzZjMzU0OWQxYWY3N2NiN2NlZjIxZmU0NjUyYzg4NjA1 It's incredible. One episode this season explores Gates' own DNA and family history. New York Times Book Review, December 9, 1984; July 7, 1985; July 3, 1988; August 14, 1988; February 26, 1989; March 25, 1990. The ex-wife of famed Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates believes a meeting between her ex-husband and Sgt. And that imprinted this woman's story in my mind. The novel was originally published in 1859 but immediately ignored, only to later be labeled the work of a white man. As a child, Gates said he wanted to be a Rhodes Scholar. GATES: And I gave it to my mother once. I'm Dave Davies in for Terry Gross. Religion: Episcopalian. Blog [ January 11, 2023 ] Is CCR hippie music? Time, London Bureau, staff correspondent, 1973-75; American Cyanamid Co., public relations representative, 1975; Yale University, New Haven, CT, lecturer, 1976-79, assistant professor of English, 1979-84, director of department of undergraduate Afro-American studies, 1979-85, associate professor of English, 1984-85; Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, professor of English and African Studies, 1985-90, W.E.B. 3. Youre probably wondering, How do I build my business without losing my shirt?. They instead created their own version of that language to safeguard themselves. MzQ2ZmM5YzMwMGJlNjU3MDY2NGQ0MDBjZDY2MzM3OGRhOGI0MThlM2VmN2Uz 27 Apr. He attended Yale and Clare College, Cambridge, where he received a doctorate in literature in 1979. Lived experience, not just data, constitutes relevant evidence to scholarship. Sharon Lynn Adams [Henry Louis Gates Ex-Wife] Before & After. But on the other hand, you can't say that biology doesn't matter because it does matter. The Trials of Phyllis Wheatley: America's First Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers, Basic Civitas Books, 2003. ", However, Gates decries any type of education that focuses on only one culture. Gates tried to provide the basis on which to judge black literary works, defining their own cultural aesthetic, in his seminal work The Signifying Monkey: Towards a Theory of Afro-American Literary Criticism, a 1989 American Book Award winner.