Download or read book Conversations with Leon Forrest written by Leon Forrest and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2007 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A collection of interviews in which African-American author Leon Forrest discusses his life, works, artistic vision, and more.
Download or read book Leon Forrest written by John G. Cawelti and published by Popular Press. This book was released on 1997 with total page 338 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Forrest: Introductions and Interpretations combines biography and various methods of critical analysis to interpret the work of this important African-American novelist and essayist, who critics have compared to Joyce, Faulkner, and Tolstoy. Highly praised by Saul Bellow, Ralph Ellison and Toni Morrison, Forrest's four novels present a remarkably rich and engaging view of contemporary African-American urban culture and its roots in the southern past. The book includes a general introduction which surveys Forrest's life and presents an interpretation of the unity of his fiction, as well as individual essays offering different interpretations of Forrest's four major novels, three interviews with the writer, and a detailed chronology and bibliography.
Download or read book There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden written by Leon Forrest and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-11 with total page 228 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Forrest, acclaimed author of Divine Days, uses a remarkable verbal intensity to evoke human tragedy, injustice, and spirituality in his writing. As Toni Morrison has said, "All of Forrest's novels explore the complex legacy of Afro-Americans. Like an insistent tide this history . . . swells and recalls America's past. . . . Brooding, hilarious, acerbic and profoundly valued life has no more astute observer than Leon Forrest." All of that is on display here in two novels that give readers a breathtaking view of the human experience, filled with humor and pathos.
Download or read book Divine Days written by Leon Forrest and published by Northwestern University Press. This book was released on 2023-02-15 with total page 1652 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A virtuosic epic applauded by Stanley Crouch as “an adventurous masterwork that provides our literature with a signal moment,” back in print in a definitive new edition “I have an awful memory for faces, but an excellent one for voices,” muses Joubert Jones, the aspiring playwright at the center of Divine Days. A kaleidoscopic whorl of characters, language, music, and Black experience, this saga follows Jones for one week in 1966 as he pursues the lore and legends of fictional Forest County, a place resembling Chicago’s South Side. Joubert is a veteran, recently returned to the city, who works for his aunt Eloise’s newspaper and pours drinks at her Night Light Lounge. He wants to write a play about Sugar-Groove, a drifter, “eternal wunderkind,” and local folk hero who seems to have passed away. Sugar-Groove’s disappearance recalls the subject of one of Joubert’s earlier writing attempts—W. A. D. Ford, a protean, diabolical preacher who led a religious sect known as “Divine Days.” Joubert takes notes as he learns about both tricksters, trying to understand their significance. Divine Days introduces readers to a score of indelible characters: Imani, Joubert’s girlfriend, an artist and social worker searching for her lost siblings and struggling to reconcile middle class life with her values and Black identity; Eloise, who raised Joubert and whose influence is at odds with his writerly ambitions; (Oscar) Williemain, a local barber, storyteller, and founder of the Royal Rites and Righteous Ramblings Club; and the Night Light’s many patrons. With a structure inspired by James Joyce and jazz, Leon Forrest folds references to African American literature and cinema, Shakespeare, the Bible, and classical mythology into a heady quest that embraces life in all its tumult and adventure. This edition brings Forrest’s masterpiece back into print, incorporating hundreds of editorial changes that the author had requested from W. W. Norton, but were not made for their editions in 1993 and 1994. Much of the inventory from the original printing of the book by Another Chicago Press in 1992 had been destroyed in a disastrous warehouse fire.
Download or read book The Bloodworth Orphans written by Leon Forrest and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2001-12 with total page 420 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Forrest, acclaimed author of Divine Days, uses a remarkable verbal intensity to evoke human tragedy, injustice, and spirituality in his writing. As Toni Morrison has said, "All of Forrest's novels explore the complex legacy of Afro-Americans. Like an insistent tide this history . . . swells and recalls America's past. . . . Brooding, hilarious, acerbic and profoundly valued life has no more astute observer than Leon Forrest." All of that is on display here in a novel that give readers a breathtaking view of the human experience, filled with humor and pathos.
Download or read book A History of the African American Novel written by Valerie Babb and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2017-07-31 with total page 499 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This History is intended for a broad audience seeking knowledge of how novels interact with and influence their cultural landscape. Its interdisciplinary approach will appeal to those interested in novels and film, graphic novels, novels and popular culture, transatlantic blackness, and the interfacing of race, class, gender, and aesthetics.
Download or read book Two Wings to Veil My Face written by Leon Forrest and published by Moyer Bell. This book was released on 1997 with total page 316 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Conversations with Ralph Ellison written by Ralph Ellison and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 1995 with total page 436 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Interviews with the author of Invisible Man and many other works
Download or read book Sacraments of Memory written by Erin Michael Salius and published by University Press of Florida. This book was released on 2022-10-04 with total page 167 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catholic themes and imagery in the work of writers including Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson Sacraments of Memory is the first book to focus on Catholic themes and imagery in African American literature. Erin Michael Salius discovers striking elements of the religion in neo-slave narratives written by Toni Morrison, Leon Forrest, Phyllis Alesia Perry, and Charles Johnson, among others. Examining the emergence of this major literary genre following Vatican II and amidst the Black Power and civil rights movements, she uncovers the presence of Catholic rituals and mysteries—including references to the Eucharist, Augustinian theology, spirit possession, and stigmata. These textual references occur alongside and in tension with criticisms of the Church's political and social policies. Salius offers a nuanced reading of Beloved that interprets the novel in light of Toni Morrison's affiliation with the religion. She argues that Morrison, and the other novelists in this study, draw on a Catholic countertradition in American literature that resists Enlightenment rationality. She highlights allusions to Catholic tropes such as the connections between spirit possession and the hijacking of Jane's narrative voice in Ernest Gaines's The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman. Salius also identifies Augustinian theology on the prescience of God in the flash-forward narrative techniques used in Edward P. Jones's The Known World. These authors use Catholicism to challenge the historical realism of past slave autobiographies and the conventional story of American slavery. Ultimately, Salius contends that this tradition enables these novelists to imagine and express radically different ways of remembering the past. Publication of the paperback edition made possible by a Sustaining the Humanities through the American Rescue Plan grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities.
Download or read book Leon Gaspard written by Forrest Fenn and published by Tia Collection. This book was released on 2019-01-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Shulman Gaspard (1882-1964) was an interesting addition to the New Mexico arts scene when he arrived in 1918. A Russian-born, French-trained veteran of the airborne campaigns of the Great War, he arrived physically diminished from a horrific plane crash that had put him in a French hospital for two years. Seeking a more hospitable climate, he arrived in Taos to find a vibrant arts community and an exotic blend of native, western, and Hispanic cultures. Having traveled widely throughout Russia, China, Mongolia, Tibet, Morocco, and Northern Africa as a fur trader, painter, army pilot and spy, Gaspard had a love of exotic cultures and a desire to document them artistically. Taos allowed him just such an opportunity, and he set out to paint the Native Americans in much the same way he had painted the native peoples of North Africa and Asia while in Paris. A pariah of sorts when he first arrived, Gaspard was saved socially when Herbert Dunton, one of the founding members of the Taos Society of Artists, took a liking to him and began to bring him around to meet his colleagues. A kindly and gregarious man, Gaspard eventually became accepted and well liked, and one of the most important of the many distinguished artists that made Taos their home in the early part of the twentieth century.
Download or read book Crucibles of Black Empowerment written by Jeffrey Helgeson and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 2014-04-24 with total page 392 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The term “community organizer” was deployed repeatedly against Barack Obama during the 2008 presidential campaign as a way to paint him as an inexperienced politician unfit for the presidency. The implication was that the job of a community organizer wasn’t a serious one, and that it certainly wasn’t on the list of credentials needed for a presidential résumé. In reality, community organizers have played key roles in the political lives of American cities for decades, perhaps never more so than during the 1970s in Chicago, where African Americans laid the groundwork for further empowerment as they organized against segregation, discrimination, and lack of equal access to schools, housing, and jobs. In Crucibles of Black Empowerment, Jeffrey Helgeson recounts the rise of African American political power and activism from the 1930s onward, revealing how it was achieved through community building. His book tells stories of the housewives who organized their neighbors, building tradesmen who used connections with federal officials to create opportunities in a deeply discriminatory employment sector, and the social workers, personnel managers, and journalists who carved out positions in the white-collar workforce. Looking closely at black liberal politics at the neighborhood level in Chicago, Helgeson explains how black Chicagoans built the networks that eventually would overthrow the city’s seemingly invincible political machine.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to African American Women s Literature written by Angelyn Mitchell and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2009-04-30 with total page 337 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Cambridge Companion to African American Women's Literature covers a period dating back to the eighteenth century. These specially commissioned essays highlight the artistry, complexity and diversity of a literary tradition that ranges from Lucy Terry to Toni Morrison. A wide range of topics are addressed, from the Harlem Renaissance to the Black Arts Movement, and from the performing arts to popular fiction. Together, the essays provide an invaluable guide to a rich, complex tradition of women writers in conversation with each other as they critique American society and influence American letters. Accessible and vibrant, with the needs of undergraduate students in mind, this Companion will be of great interest to anybody who wishes to gain a deeper understanding of this important and vital area of American literature.
Download or read book Inspiring Life Stories Of Leon written by Leon D Halfon and published by . This book was released on 2020-11-16 with total page 298 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This self-help book challenges the reader to look beyond the norm and let go of biases, beliefs, prejudices, illusions, hate, and excuses that are self-destructive. If a word makes you mad it is because you have cognitive dissonance, which impedes your accurate understanding of reality.
Download or read book Contemporary African American Literature written by Lovalerie King and published by Indiana University Press. This book was released on 2013-08-28 with total page 393 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Essays exploring contemporary black fiction and examining important issues in current African American literary studies. In this volume, Lovalerie King and Shirley Moody-Turner have compiled a collection of essays that offer access to some of the most innovative contemporary black fiction while addressing important issues in current African American literary studies. Distinguished scholars Houston Baker, Trudier Harris, Darryl Dickson-Carr, and Maryemma Graham join writers and younger scholars to explore the work of Toni Morrison, Edward P. Jones, Trey Ellis, Paul Beatty, Mat Johnson, Kyle Baker, Danzy Senna, Nikki Turner, and many others. The collection is bracketed by a foreword by novelist and graphic artist Mat Johnson, one of the most exciting and innovative contemporary African American writers, and an afterword by Alice Randall, author of the controversial parody The Wind Done Gone. Together, King and Moody-Turner make the case that diversity, innovation, and canon expansion are essential to maintaining the vitality of African American literary studies. “A compelling collection of essays on the ongoing relevance of African American literature to our collective understanding of American history, society, and culture. Featuring a wide array of writers from all corners of the literary academy, the book will have national appeal and offer strategies for teaching African American literature in colleges and universities across the country.” —Gene Jarrett, Boston University “[This book describes] a fruitful tension that brings scholars of major reputation together with newly emerging critics to explore the full range of literary activities that have flourished in the post-Civil Rights era. Notable are such popular influences as hip-hop music and Oprah Winfrey’s Book Club.” —American Literary Scholarship, 2013
Download or read book August Wilson written by Alan Nadel and published by University of Iowa Press. This book was released on 2010-05-16 with total page 241 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Contributors to this collection of 15 essays are academics in English, theater, and African American studies. They focus on the second half of Wilson's century cycle of plays, examining each play within the larger context of the cycle and highlighting themes within and across particular plays. Some topics discussed include business in the street in Jitney and Gem of the Ocean, contesting black male responsibilities in Jitney, the holyistic blues of Seven Guitars, violence as history lesson in Seven Guitars and King Hedley II, and ritual death and Wilson's female Christ. The book offers an index of plays, critics, and theorists, but not a subject index. Nadel is chair of American literature and culture at the University of Kentucky.
Download or read book The Scholar Denied written by Aldon Morris and published by University of California Press. This book was released on 2017-01-17 with total page 322 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this groundbreaking book, Aldon D. Morris’s ambition is truly monumental: to help rewrite the history of sociology and to acknowledge the primacy of W. E. B. Du Bois’s work in the founding of the discipline. Calling into question the prevailing narrative of how sociology developed, Morris, a major scholar of social movements, probes the way in which the history of the discipline has traditionally given credit to Robert E. Park at the University of Chicago, who worked with the conservative black leader Booker T. Washington to render Du Bois invisible. Morris uncovers the seminal theoretical work of Du Bois in developing a “scientific” sociology through a variety of methodologies and examines how the leading scholars of the day disparaged and ignored Du Bois’s work. The Scholar Denied is based on extensive, rigorous primary source research; the book is the result of a decade of research, writing, and revision. In exposing the economic and political factors that marginalized the contributions of Du Bois and enabled Park and his colleagues to be recognized as the “fathers” of the discipline, Morris delivers a wholly new narrative of American intellectual and social history that places one of America’s key intellectuals, W. E. B. Du Bois, at its center. The Scholar Denied is a must-read for anyone interested in American history, racial inequality, and the academy. In challenging our understanding of the past, the book promises to engender debate and discussion.
Download or read book There is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden written by Leon Forrest and published by . This book was released on 1988 with total page 213 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Leon Forrest, acclaimed author of Divine Days, uses a remarkable verbal intensity to evoke human tragedy, injustice, and spirituality in his writing. As Toni Morrison has said, "All of Forrest's novels explore the complex legacy of Afro-Americans. Like an insistent tide this history . . . swells and recalls America's past. . . . Brooding, hilarious, acerbic and profoundly valued life has no more astute observer than Leon Forrest." All of that is on display here in two novels that give readers a breathtaking view of the human experience, filled with humor and pathos.
