Samuel r delany autobiography in five short

After a difficult 36-hour labor, on April 1st, 1942, at seven o’clock in the morning, Samuel Ray Delany, Jr., was born at Harlem Hospital on Lenox Avenue and 138th Street, in New York City’s black ghetto.

Because he was cyanotic, there was some suspicion he might be brain damaged.

Samuel r delany autobiography in five short

The youngest of four daughters, Delany’s mother, Margaret Carey Boyd Delany (June 16th, 1913–March 2nd, 1995), was a short, level-headed, intelligent woman—exactly five feet tall—who’d met her husband while she worked for the WPA.

For a while, after her marriage to Samuel Delany, Sr., Margaret had worked as a stenotypist. At her husband’s urging, she got her own license as a funeral director, though she never practiced.

Samuel R. Delany, Sr.

(May 6th, 1906–October 1st, 1960), was the youngest of ten children in a family of black educators and professionals involved with the black Episcopal college, St. Augustine’s, in Rale