Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part One. On Becoming African American Novelists
James Baldwin (1924–1987)
Why I Stopped Hating Shakespeare (1964)
Arna Bontemps (1902–1973)
Introduction to Black Thunder (1968)
Langston Hughes (1902–1967)
From The Big Sea (1940)
Richard Wright (1908–1960)
From Black Boy (1945)
From The Devil Finds Work (1976)
Chester Himes (1909–1984)
From The Quality of Hurt (1973)
Ishmael Reed (1938–)
Boxing on Paper: Thirty-Seven Years Later (1988)
James Alan McPherson (1943–)
On Becoming an American Writer (1978)
Terry McMillan (1951–)
Introduction to Breaking Ice (1990)
John Edgar Wideman (1941–)
From Brothers and Keepers (1984)
Part Two. On Aesthetics, Craft, and Publication
W.E.B. Du Bois (1868–1963)
Criteria of Negro Art (1926)
The Negro Artist and the Racial Mountain (1926)
Gayl Jones (1949–)
About My Work (1988)
James Weldon Johnson (1871–1938)
Negro Authors and White Publishers (1929)
Zora Neale Hurston (1891–1960)
What White Publishers Won’t Print (1950)
Preface to Breaking Ice (1990)
Writers Like Me (2007)
Charles Johnson (1948–)
The Writer’s Notebook: A Note on Working Methods (1999)
Walter Mosley (1952–)
For Authors, Fragile Ideas Need Loving Every Day (2001)
Part Three. On Writing Major Novels
From “How ‘Bigger’ Was Born” (1940)
Ralph Ellison (1913–1994)
From “Introduction to the Thirtieth Anniversary Edition of Invisible Man” (1981)
From “How I Wrote Jubilee” (1972)
Ernest J. Gaines (1933–)
Miss Jane and I (1978)
Alice Walker (1944–)
Writing The Color Purple (1982)
Writing A Lesson Before Dying (2005)
Toni Morrison (1931–)
Nobel Lecture (December 7, 1993)
List of Contributors’ Novels and Short Stories
Notes
Sources and Permissions
Index