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Although her literary achievements are impressive, the mark that Rita Dove's literary career will reach is for the future to determine. Her poems began to appear in print as early as 1974, but until 1987, the year she won the Pulitzer Prize in poetry for Thomas and Beulah (1986), her name was mentioned only occasionally in college classrooms and at meetings of learned societies. Not long after she won the Pulitzer, though, her name and works began to appear in college courses and academic panels on American literature, African-American studies, and women's studies. Before Dove won the Pulitzer, Gwendolyn Brooks was the only African-American poet who had gained this coveted award.
Born in Akron, Ohio, to well-educated parents, Dove is the daughter of Ray A. Dove, the first African-American chemist to break the racial barrier in the tire-and-rubber industry. Her mother is the former Elvira Elizabeth Hord. In 1970, shortly before her eighteenth birthday, Dove was invited to the White House as a "Presidential Scholar," indicating that she had ranked among the top one hundred high-school seniors in the nation for that year.
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