William Melvin Kelley was a prominent and influential African-American novelist and short-story writer. His works often delved into themes of race, identity, and the African-American experience in society. Kelley was known for his distinctive literary style, employing humor, satire, and wordplay to explore complex social issues. His writing significantly contributed to American literature, offering valuable insights into the Black experience.
A previously unpublished work by William Melvin Kelley, this book enriches African American literature with its unique perspective. Known for his acclaimed novel A Different Drummer, Kelley offers readers a compelling exploration of themes relevant to the African American experience, showcasing his distinctive voice and narrative style.
William Melvin Kelley's final work, a Joycean, Rabelaisian romp in which he brings back some of his most memorable characters in a novel of three intertwining stories.
A searing, provocative satire by one of the most important African-American novelists of the twentieth century that lays bare the abiding racism and the legacy of slavery on the psyche of white America. Mitchell Pierce is a well-off New York ad executive whose marriage is falling apart. He no longer feels any passion for his pregnant wife, Tam, and even feels estranged from his toddler son, Jake. Mitchell is trapped in an unrewarding and loveless life, and though domestic violence isn't in his character, it is never very far away, either. Mitchell's life will irrevocably change one day, though, when a young man appears at his apartment door to pick up the family's black maid, Opal, for a date. Cooley it turns out is not a stranger to the household. The twins that Tam is carrying are a result of superfecundation—the fertilization of two separate ova by two different males. So when one child is born black and the other white, Mitchell goes on a quest to find Cooley and make him take his baby. In the tradition of Brer Rabbit trickster tales, dem enacts a modern-day fable of turning the tables on the white oppressor and inverting the history of miscegenation and subjugation of African Americans.
A collection of seventeen stories, from the author of A Different Drummer.
One of the great jazz novels of any era, A Drop of Patience tells the story of a blind horn player's journey through the themes of race, blindness, and music. At the age of five, Ludlow Washington is given up by his parents to a brutal white-run state institution for blind African American children, where everyone is taught music—the only trade by which they are expected to make a living. Ludlow is a prodigy on the horn and at fifteen is "purchased" out of the Home by a bandleader in the fictive Southern town of New Marsails. By eighteen, he is married with a baby daughter, but as his reputation spreads, he seeks to grow musically, leaving his budding family for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New York City. Navigating the worlds of music and race and women, Ludlow's career follows an arc towards collapse, a nervous breakdown, recovery, a long-delayed public recognition, only for him to finally abandon the spotlight and return to his roots and find solace in the black church. A Drop of Patience is a brilliant portrayal of a jazz musician. It stands apart as an exemplary parable of African American history, of racial politics, and of musical creative genius.
A lost masterpiece, following in the footsteps of Suite Francaise, Alone in Berlin and Stoner.