Sue Lawley's guest this week is the poet Rita Dove. The first African-American to become the US Poet Laureate, Rita Dove was brought up to believe that education was the key to the Great American Dream. As a child she would lose herself in the local library, but she learned the art of story-telling from her aunts as they swapped tales about the Great Depression, civil rights, and, of course, motherhood.
[Taken from the original programme material for this archive edition of Desert Island Discs]
Favourite track: Koln Concert by Keith Jarrett
Book: 100 Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
Luxury: Ballroom and robotic dance instructor
Published on Sunday, 22nd August 1999.
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