Class IX Unit-I Roots-To My Nanny (Poem)

Alexandr Pushkin
Pushkin is ranked as one of Russia's greatest poets. He not only brought Russian poetry to its highest excellence, but also had a great influence on all Russian literature in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Early years
Alexandr Sergeevich Pushkin was born to Sergei and Nadezhda Pushkin on May 26, 1799. On his father's side he was a descendant of Russian nobility. On his mother's side he was related to an African lord. But by the time Alexandr was born, the family had gradually lost most of their wealth and influence, and they were lowered to the position of minor nobility. Alexandr's family life was far from ideal. 
Between 1811 and 1817 Pushkin attended a special school for privileged children of the nobility. Pushkin was not a very good student in most subjects, but he performed brilliantly in French and Russian literature.
Early works, 1814–1820
After finishing school, Pushkin led a wild and undisciplined life. He wrote about 130 poems between 1814 and 1817, while still at school. Most of his works written between 1817 and 1820 were not published because his topics were considered inappropriate.
In 1820 Pushkin completed his first narrative poem, Russlan and Ludmilla. It is a romance composed of fantastic adventures but told with the humor of the previous century. However, even before Russlan and Ludmilla was published in June 1820, Pushkin was exiled to the south of Russia because of the political humor he had expressed in his earlier poems. Pushkin left St. Petersburg on May 6, and he would not return for more than six years. He passed away on 29 January 1837.

Class IX Unit-I Roots-The Tattered Blanket (Short Story)

Kamala Suraiyya 
Kamala Das a major Indian English poet and a leading Malayalam author was born in Punnayurkulam, Thrissur District in Kerala, on March 31, 1934, to V. M. Nair, a former managing editor of the widely-circulated Malayalam daily Mathrubhumi, and Nalappatt Balamani Amma, a renowned Malayali poetess.
She spent her childhood between Calcutta, where her father was employed as a senior officer in the Walford Transport Company that sold Bentley and Rolls Royce automobiles, and the Nalappatt ancestral home in Punnayurkulam.
Like her mother, Balamani Amma, Kamala Das also excelled in writing. Her love of poetry began at an early age through the influence of her great uncle, Nalappatt Narayana Menon, a prominent writer.
At the age of 15, she got married to bank officer Madhava Das, who encouraged her writing interests, and she started writing and publishing both in English and in Malayalam. Calcutta in the 1960s was a tumultous time for the arts, and Kamala Das was one of the many voices that came up and started appearing in cult anthologies along with a generation of Indian English poets.
Her popularity in Kerala is based chiefly on her short stories and autobiography, while her oeuvre in English, written under the name Kamala Das, is noted for the fiery poems and explicit autobiography. 
On 31 May 2009, aged 75, she died at a hospital in Pune. Her body was flown to her home state of Kerala. She was buried at the Palayam Juma Masjid at Thiruvanathapuram with full state honour.

Awards and other recognitions

1. Kamala Das has received many awards for her literary contribution, including:
2. Nominated and shortlisted for Nobel Prize in 1984.
3. Asian Poetry Prize - 1998
4. Kent Award for English Writing from Asian Countries - 1999
5. Asian World Prize - 2000
6. Vayalar Award - 2001
7. Sahitya Academy Award - 2003
8. Kerala Sahitya Academy Award - 2005
9. Honorary D.Litt by University of Calicut - 2006
10. Muttathu Varkey Award - 2006
11. Ezhuthachan Puraskaram - 2009
12. Bibliography

English

• 1964: The Sirens (Asian Poetry Prize winner)
• 1965: Summer in Calcutta (poetry; Kent's Award winner)
• 1967: The Descendants (poetry)
• 1973: The Old Playhouse and Other Poems (poetry)
• 1976: My Story (autobiography)
• 1977: Alphabet of Lust (novel)
• 1985: The Anamalai Poems (poetry)
• 1992: Padmavati the Harlot and Other Stories (collection of short stories)
• 1996: Only the Soul Knows How to Sing (poetry)
• 2001: Yaa Allah (collection of poems)
• 1979: Tonight,This Savage Rite (with Pritish Nandy)
• 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem)
• 1999:My Grandmother House (Poem)

Malayalam

• 1964: Pakshiyude Manam (short stories)
• 1966: Naricheerukal Parakkumbol (short stories)
• 1968: Thanuppu (short story, Sahitya Academi award)
• 1982: Ente Katha (autobiography)
• 1987: Balyakala Smaranakal (Childhood Memories)
• 1989: Varshangalkku Mumbu (Years Before)
• 1990: Palayan (novel)
• 1991: Neypayasam (short story)
• 1992: Dayarikkurippukal (novel)
• 1994: Neermathalam Pootha Kalam (novel, Vayalar Award)
• 1996: Chekkerunna Pakshikal (short stories)
• 1998: Nashtapetta Neelambari (short stories)
• 1998:"Ente Kadha" (Autobiography)
• 2005: Chandana Marangal (Novel)
• 2005: Madhavikkuttiyude Unmakkadhakal (short stories)2x
• 2005: Vandikkalakal (novel)
• 1999: My Mother At Sixty-six (Poem)

Class IX Unit-I Roots-Those Winter Sundays (Poem)

Robert Hayden
Robert Hayden was born Asa Bundy Sheffey in Detroit, Michigan, on August 4, 1913. His parents, Ruth and Asa Sheffey, separated before his birth, and Hayden spent the majority of his childhood in the foster care system. His foster parents, Sue Ellen Westerfield and William Hayden, raised him in a low-income Detroit neighborhood known as Paradise Valley. He had an emotionally tumultuous childhood and was shuttled between the home of his parents and that of a foster family, who lived next door. Because of impaired vision, he was unable to participate in sports, but was able to spend his time reading. In 1932, he graduated from high school and, with the help of a scholarship, attended Detroit City College (later Wayne State University). 
He left college in 1936 to begin working for the Federal Writers’ Project. In this post, Hayden spent time researching African-American history and folk life—subjects that would inspire and inform his poetic work. 
Hayden published his first book of poems, Heart-Shape in the Dust, in 1940, at the age of 27. He enrolled in a graduate English Literature program at the University of Michigan where he studied with W. H. Auden. Auden became an influential critical guide in the development of Hayden's writing. Hayden admired the work of Edna St. Vincent Millay, Elinor Wiley, Carl Sandburg, and Hart Crane, as well as the poets of the Harlem Renaissance, Langston Hughes, Countee Cullen, and Jean Toomer. He had an interest in African-American history and explored his concerns about race in his writing.
Hayden's poetry gained international recognition in the 1960s and he was awarded the grand prize for poetry at the First World Festival of Negro Arts in Dakar, Senegal, in 1966 for his book Ballad of Remembrance.
In 1975, Hayden received the Academy of American Poets Fellowship, and in 1976, he became the first black American to be appointed as Consultant in Poetry to the Library of Congress (later called the Poet Laureate). He died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, on February 25 in 1980.

Class IX Unit-I Roots-The Son from America (Short Story)

Isaac Bashevis Singer ( November 21, 1902 – July 24, 1991) was a Polish-born Jewish-American author. Isaac Bashevis Singer was born Izaak Zynger on July 14, 1904 in Leoncin in the Russian Empire. The village is now part of east-central Poland. 
In 1907, the family moved to the poor, Yiddish-speaking Jewish Quarter in Warsaw where they eventually settled in an apartment on Krochmalna Street. This street and the Jewish Quarter in Warsaw came to figure prominently in a number of Singer's works.
Due to the suffering brought about by World War I, in 1917 Singer moved with his mother and younger brother to his mother's hometown of Bilgoraj in south-eastern Poland. In the early 1920s, at the urging of his older brother, Israel Joshua Singer (also a writer), Isaac Bashevis Singer moved to Warsaw. He found a job as a proofreader for Literarische Bleter where his brother was the editor. 
Greatly influenced by his older brother, Singer was determined to become a writer and began his career writing exclusively in Yiddish. His first stories were published, some serialized, in Literarische Bleter and Undzer Ekspres. In 1925 he won the first of several prizes in literature that he would earn throughout his career. The prize was for his short story entitled "In Old Age." Early in his writing career he used the pseudonym Izaak Baszewis, derived from his mother's first name, to distinguish himself from his brother. Later, he expanded his penname to how he is now known: Issac Bashevis Singer. In 1935 he emigrated to the United States and became a citizen in 1943. He realized he had a limited future as a writer in America if he continued to publish only in Yiddish. Thus, he readily encouraged translations of his works into English, which he considered his second mother tongue (Yiddish being his first). As a result of this decision, he achieved worldwide recognition. 
In his lifetime, Singer published 14 novels, 10 volumes of short stories, 5 volumes of memoirs, 16 books for childrem, and 3 anthologies of selected writings. Several of his works were adapted into movies: He won important and prestigious literary prizes from the United States, Italy, France, Israel, and Sweden's Nobel Prize in Literature (1978).
Singer was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1978. One of his most famous novels, due to a popular movie adaptation, was Enemies, a Love Story, in which a Holocaust survivor deals with his own desires, complex family relationships, and a loss of faith. Singer's feminist story "Yentl" has had a wide impact on culture since its conversion into popular movie starring Barbra Streisand. Perhaps the most fascinating Singer-inspired film is 1974's Mr. Singer's Nightmare or Mrs. Pupkos Beard by Bruce Davidson, a renowned photographer who became Singer's neighbor. This unique film is a half-hour mixture of documentary and fantasy for which Singer not only wrote the script but played the leading role. The 2007 film Love Comes Lately, starring Otto Tausig, was adapted from Singer's stories. Just after his 87th birthday, he died on July 24, 1991, in Surfside, Florida, where he had made his home for a number of years.

Novels

• Eulogy to a Shoelace
• The Family Moskat (1950)
• Satan in Goray (1955)
• The Magician of Lublin (1960)
• The Slave (1962)
• The Manor (1967)
• The Estate (1969)
• Enemies, a Love Story (1972)
• The Wicked City (1972)
• Shosha (1978)
• Old Love (1979)
• Reaches of Heaven: A Story of the Baal Shem Tov (1980)
• The Penitent (1983)
• Teibele and Her Demon (1983) (play)
• The King of the Fields (1988)
• Scum (1991)
• The Certificate (1992) 
• Meshugah (1994)
• Shadows on the Hudson (1997)

Short story collections

• Gimpel the Fool and Other Stories (1957)
• The Spinoza of Market Street (1963)
• Short Friday and Other Stories (1963)
• The image and other stories (1968)
• The séance and other stories (1968)
• A Friend of Kafka and Other Stories (1970)
• The Fools of Chelm and Their History (1973)
• A Crown of Feathers and Other Stories (1974) — shared the National Book Award, Fiction, with Gravity's Rainbow by Thomas Pynchon
• Passions and Other Stories (1975)
• The collected stories (1982)