Lucille’s two extra fingers were amputated surgically when she was a small child, and her “two ghost fingers” became a theme in her poetry and other writings.Ĭlifton grew up in Buffalo, New York, and graduated from Fosdick-Masten Park High School in 1953. Girls in her family are born with an extra finger on each hand, a genetic trait known as polydactyly. Growing up she was told by her mother, “Be proud, you’re a Dahomey women!” She cites as one of her ancestors the first Black woman to be “legally hanged” for manslaughter in the state of Kentucky during the time of the Maafa (Atlantic slavery) in the United States. She traced her family’s roots to the West African Kingdom of Dahomey, now the Republic of Benin. Thelma Lucille Sayles was born in Dewpew, New York on June 27, 1936. Her children’s book Everett Anderson’s Good-bye won the 1984 Coretta Scott King Award. Clifton was the first author to have two books of poetry chosen as finalists for the Pulitzer Prize, Good Woman: Poems and a Memoir, 1969-1980 (1987), and Next: New Poems (1987). In addition to her numerous poetry collections, she wrote many children’s books. Clifton is the recipient of many honors including, a 1999 Lila Wallace Readers Digest Writers award the National Book Award, for “Blessing the Boats: New and Selected Poems, 1988-2000” the 2007 Ruth Lilly Poetry Prize and the Frost Medal, from the Poetry Society of America. Lucille Clifton was a distinguished award-winning poet, who from 1979 to 1985 was the Poet Laureate of Maryland. “I would like to be seen as a woman whose roots go back to Africa, who tried to honor being human…”
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