Kenan, Randall

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (Harvest American Writing Series)

A Visitation of Spirits: A Novel

"Marks the debut of a very gifted writer.... Kenan speaks eloquently and with a great deal of courage."--Gloria Naylor

Randall Kenan's daring and innovative first novel weaves a vivid and horrific tale through the generations of a black Southern family.

Sixteen-year old Horace Cross is plagued by issues that hover in his impressionable spirit and take shape in his mind as loathsome demons, culminating in one night of horrible and tragic transformation. In the face of Horace's fate, his cousin Reverend James "Jimmy" Green questions the values of a community that nourishes a boy, places their hopes for salvation on him, only to deny him his destiny.

Told in a montage of voices and memories, A Visitation of the Spirits just how richly populated a family's present is with the spirits of the past and the future.

The Souls of Black Folk: 100th Anniversary Edition (Signet Classic)

William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the turn of the 20th century still ring true.

With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching, to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings; two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley Jr.

First published in 1903, this extraordinary collection of 14 essays was a groundbreaking literary work. Grappling with the contradictions of being black and being American, W.E.B. Du Bois created a manifesto for the emerging class of African-American intellectuals.

First published in 1903, this eloquent collection of essays exposed the magnitude of racism in society. The book endures today as a classic document of American and political history.

Let the Dead Bury Their Dead and Other Stories

Racing Home: New Stories by Award-Winning North Carolina Writers

Racing Home's stories are as remarkable as its authors, who have won over 80 literary awards between them, reminding us that North Carolina really is “The State of the Arts.”

James Baldwin (Gay and Lesbian Writers)

James Baldwin: American Writer (Lives of Notable Gay Men & Lesbians)