Carolyn Rodgers

In 2009, Rodgers was inducted into the International Literary Hall of Fame for Writers of African Descent at the Gwendolyn Brooks Center for Black Literature and Creative Writing. In 2012, Rodgers was inducted into the Chicago Literary Hall of Fame.

Other volumes of work such as The Heart as Ever Green (1978) and How I Got Ovah (1975) also reflect on feminine issues such as female identity, women's roles in society, and the relationships between mothers and daughters. However, How I Got Ovah exhibits a more crafted tendency than previous books, along with being more autobiographical and transformative. Personal voice pervades the poems of How I Got Ovah. Rodgers develops the individual tone so well that the reader experiences a kinship with the poet and her subject matter (McElroy). The poem "how i got ovah" (from which the book receives its title) serves as an example of this deep personal voice. Rodgers begins an intimate revealing of personal survival with the opening lines:

If this cannot be characterized as transformative, nonetheless her work seems to have shifted from a collective black perspective in her early work to an individual one in her later writings. Consequently, by the time she publishes The Heart as Ever Green in 1978, Rodgers is incorporating earlier themes of feminism and human dignity in her poems, along with newer or more pronounced themes of love and Christianity. Some readers and cultural observers do not recognize a break or rupture from Rodgers's past in her later work. For them, Rodgers's spiritual progress in her poetry still brings a radical infusion. Even in her later poetry, we can still break open into a vision uniquely situated in a poetics that remains strident, militant and experimental.

By the 1970s, Rodgers was distilling her language and militant persona into poetry that was deeply concerned with religion, God, and the quest for inner beauty. The change from militant views to more religious views can be seen in her 1975 poem "and when the revolution came." The repetition in the first four verses show a constancy in the black church communities:

She used slang and heartfelt language to write about love, lust, body image, family, religion, and the grace of human kindness. In her earliest writings such as Paper Soul (1968) and Songs of a Blackbird (1969), her revolutionary ideas about women's roles conflicted with the more traditional ideas of the African-American culture. She was criticized for her use of profanity, which male leaders of BAM found inappropriate for a woman.

Later, Rodgers began writing her own works, which grappled with black identity and culture in the late 1960s. She was a leading voice of the Black Arts Movement (BAM) and the author of nine books, including How I got Ovah (1975). She was also an essayist and critic, and her work has been described as delivered in a language rooted in a black female perspective that wove strands of feminism, black power, spirituality, and self-consciousness into a sometimes raging, sometimes ruminative search for identity. She also wrote deeply on the subject of mother/daughter relationships, particularly focusing on feminist, matriarchal issues.

Born in the Bronzeville neighborhood in the South Side of Chicago, Illinois, Rodgers was encouraged from a young age to pursue music, and learned to play guitar and composed music for much of her life. She kept a journal throughout adolescence in which she explored poetry, but did not take writing seriously until she began college. Rodgers first attended college at the University of Illinois in 1960, but transferred in 1961 to Chicago's Roosevelt University, where she earned her BA degree in 1965. She later earned an MA in English from the University of Chicago in 1980. Rodgers is most well known for her writing contributions to the Black Arts Movement (BAM). Rodgers first became involved in writing during that period while attending Writers Workshops by the Organization of Black American Culture (OBAC), of which she was an active member from 1967 to 1971. The organization sought to promote city involvement and inclusion of the arts in the city of Chicago, which Rodgers was eager to participate in.

She became distinctive as a new black woman poet in the 1960s with the publication of her first two books, Paper Soul and Songs of a Blackbird (Chicago: Third World Press, 1969). Following the national success of Paper Soul, Rodgers was awarded the first Conrad Kent Rivers Memorial Fund Award. Rodgers also won the Poet Laureate Award from the Society of Midland Authors in 1970. She then went on to receive an award from the National Endowment of the Arts, following the publication of Songs of a Blackbird. In 1980, Rodgers won the Carnegie Writer's Grant. She won the Television Gospel Tribute in 1982 and the PEN Grant in 1987.

Carolyn Marie Rodgers (December 14, 1940 – April 2, 2010) was a Chicago-based writer, particularly noted for her poetry. The youngest of four, Rodgers had two sisters and a brother, born to Clarence and Bazella Rodgers. Rodgers was also a founder of one of America's oldest and largest black presses, Third World Press. She got her start in the literary circuit as a young woman studying under Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Gwendolyn Brooks in the South Side of Chicago.