My Lives and How I Lost Them by Countee Cullen

by Countee Cullen

Now in his ninth life, a cat reminisces about adventures in the previous eight.

Genres: Fiction

Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1969

About the author

Countee Cullen was was an American poet who was a leading figure in the Harlem Renaissance. He was raised in a Methodist parsonage. He attended De Witt Clinton High School in New York and began writing poetry at the age of fourteen.

In 1922, Cullen entered New York University. His poems were published in The Crisis, under the leadership of W. E. B. Du Bois, and Opportunity, a magazine of the National Urban League. He was soon after published in Harper's, the Century Magazine, and Poetry. He won several awards for his poem, "Ballad of the Brown Girl," and graduated from New York University in 1923. That same year, Harper published his first volume of verse, Color, and he was admitted to Harvard University where he completed a master's degree.

His second volume of poetry, Copper Sun (1927), met with controversy in the black community because Cullen did not give the subject of race the same attention he had given it in Color. He was raised and educated in a primarily white community, and he differed from other poets of the Harlem Renaissance like Langston Hughes in that he lacked the background to comment from personal experience on the lives of other blacks or use popular black themes in his writing. An imaginative lyric poet, he wrote in the tradition of Keats and Shelley and was resistant to the new poetic techniques of the Modernists. He died in 1946.

Reviews

[Jessica Burstrem · Rating 3 out of 5]

An entertaining book to read out loud to my 10-year-old. Cullen was clearly a longtime cat lover and shows off his knowledge in this book purportedly from the perspective of his cat Christopher, who is as heedless and full of himself as any cat would be, I'm sure. Cullen throws in a few literary references for good measure. The occasional sexist remark is disappointing, though.

[Jennifer · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have been searching for this title in my memory bank for years. I came across this book in 3rd grade when I volunteered in our tiny 3rd-6th grade elementary school library. I used to help re-stock returned books. I loved it and used to go back every year just to make sure it was still there. I did not think to write down the name and soon forgot the title, but never the story and sentiment behind this book. The idea of a cat looking back on it's lives and the families it lived with fascinated a 8 year old cat lover. Now, I just have to get my hands on a copy and re-read it, again.

[James · Rating 2 out of 5]

I read this out of convenience and curiosity. A cute and clever book for children. A excellent book, I'd think, for kids to read or to have read to them.