Female author: HARPER LEE (1926-2016)

WHO IS SHE?

Harper Lee (Alabama, 1926) was an American writer born and raised in a small town in the southern United States. As a child she was a precocious reader and study partner and neighbor of Truman Capote. After graduating from high school, she went to a university exclusively for women where she started a law degree and was editor of the humor magazine. Although she did not complete her studies, she studied a summer in Oxford before moving to New York definitively in 1950. In this city she worked as an employee in an airline before dedicating herself completely to writing. Harper completed his masterpiece, "Kill a Mockingbird" in the summer of 1959. After its publication in 1690, the novel became an immediate success that was received graciously by critics and by the public.

Harper did not give interviews and lived a modest retired life in his hometown. In 2007 she received the "Presidential Medal of Freedom" from the president of the United States. UU George W. Bush in the White House. The sequel to "Kill a Nightingale", titled ("Go, Set a Watchman"), was published on July 14, 2015. A year later the author died while asleep.

WHAT HAS SHE WRITTEN?

Harper Lee wrote several articles published in the American press between 1961 and 2006, as well as long stories. However, her two emblematic novels are:

• “To Kill a Mockingbird" (1960): won the Pulitzer Prize in 1961. It is a plea for equality, justice and against racism; It narrates the life in the town of the writer during the years of the Great Depression and, specifically, an episode occurred in which Atticus Finch, a respected man in his community and model of righteousness, defends an African-American man falsely accused of rape of a white woman, in the framework of a very racist South, where the prejudices by the color of the skin suppose the condemnation.
• "Go, Set a Watchman" (2015): it is a sequel to her first novel, the story is placed about 20 years later, when Scout returns to Maycomb from New York to visit his father, Atticus Finch.

WHAT HAS SHE SAID?

“You never really understand a person until you consider things from his point of view... Until you climb inside of his skin and walk around in it.”

― Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

“Until I feared I would lose it, I never loved to read. One does not love breathing.”

― Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”

― Harper Lee, “To Kill a Mockingbird”

WHY SHOULD WE NOT FORGET HER AND HER WORK?

Harper Lee(1926-2016) is a world-renowned author: her work "Kill a Mockingbird" remains a bestseller with more than 30 million copies sold and in 1999 is was voted "Best Novel of the Century" in a Library Journal poll. The issues she has dealt with are timeless and relevant at any time and place (spatially within the United States): equality, justice and racism.

-R.