Rosa Guy Book order

"What happens to a dream deferred?" asked Langston Hughes. Bird at My Window answers that question with a psychological study of a black man whose aspirations are subverted by his environment. Wade Williams wakes up in a mental hospital and is told he has assaulted his sister. As he retraces his steps during the course of the novel, the rich complexity of mid-twentieth-century Harlem and its problematic relationship to its residents is revealed in this powerful cultural critique. Rosa Guy was born in 1928 in Trinidad, and came to the United States in 1932. The author of fifteen novels and the editor and translator of several volumes, Guy is the founder of the Harlem Writer’s Guild. She lives in New York, New York.

Billy is very young when his parents begin to plan his future. As he grows older one thing becomes clear. Billy definitely has a mind of his own. When new neighbors move in and tempers flare, Billy's high spirits and independent nature allow him to prove that sometimes parents can learn a thing or two from their child.

Part of a GCSE series that offers innovative texts celebrating the best of modern women's writing, with pre-reading activities, notes and course work assignments, this novel tells of Edith, a young black orphan who must decide whether to submit to, or fight, the prejudices that constrain her.

Phyllisia eventually recognizes that her own selfish pride rather than her mother's death and her father's tyrannical behavior created the gulf between her and her best friend.