Tony Lindsay Presents... Ralph Waldo Ellison

In American literature, there was a period between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement; the Black writers of this period are referred to by the historian Lawrence P. Jackson as the “Indignant Generation.” One of the leading writers of the era was Ralph Waldo Ellison.

Largely respected for his 1952 novel Invisible Man, Ellison wrote other fiction during the period as well; his short stories were gathered and edited by John F. Callahan in a posthumous collection titled Flying Home. The thirteen stories of the work reflect the development of Ellison’s literary style along with his use of themed stories, and any student of literary technique will be well served by the collection.

Ellison experiments with point of view in the four warm hearted coming of age and friendship stories with the protagonists, Riley and Buster, two young Black boys who: brag of the conquest of Mister Toussan (Toussaint Louverture), survive the Depression with creative pastimes and diligent parents and sports heroes, learn that all actions have consequence, and that one man’s witch could be another’s vixen.

In the story, “A Party Down at the Square,” Ellison creates another boy protagonist. This time the youth is white, and he is enticed into witnessing a killing, the burning alive of a Black man. The town gathered in the square for the “party.” Ellison reduced the victim, the Black man, to what the crowd and the boy saw; the Black man was no more than “a barbecued hog.” However, Ellison interrupts the celebration with a cyclone that causes a plane to crash, and a woman to be electrocuted, but despite the catastrophes the boy and the town’s people returned to the “party.” The boy did manage to generate a simulant of respect for the Black man when he broke free of the burning ropes with his last breath, “That Bacote nigger was some nigger.”

Ellison employed another boy child character in “The Black Ball.” John, the protagonist and the loving father of the boy works as a maintenance man. Ellison expertly built tension around the father and son love while juxtaposing Jim Crow restrictions with unions; causing John to understand that working without a union was working behind the blackball.

The titled story of the collection, “Flying Home” is the lengthiest story in the work; dealing with Jim Crow, classism among Blacks, self-worth, and community belonging are some of the apparent themes covered in this multi layered story. The protagonist can be easily interrupted as a Tuskegee Airman who felt he had elevated himself above Jim Crow restrictions and the more ignorant of his brethren. Ellison used reality as a sounding board for the character and the reader by having the character in out of consciousness pulling empathy from the reader, and at the same time reducing the character’s pompousness by having him depend on those he viewed as less than himself.  

  The stories in Ralph Ellison’s Flying Home exemplify the artistry of the writer and the pain of the era he wrote in. The stories are a must read for any serious student and writer, and a pleasurable read for anyone who enjoys good stories.    

 Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was chosen by Conversations Book Club as one of its Top 100 Books of 2012. Lindsay was named Conversations Author of the Year 2012-2013.  His new book EMOTIONAL DRIPPINGS is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook atwww.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... Ann Petry

There is phrase that appears on the dust jackets of select novels, a writer’s writer. The phrase seldom appears on literary novels mostly commercial works and in the biographies of popular writers, but to be a writer that writers admire one has to use literary devices on a master’s level in an effortless fashion, and yet . . . weave a plot with a captivating storyline.  Ann Petry is a writer’s writer. 

           In her novel, The Narrows, Petry’s use of literary devices moves a complicated plot twisted with deception, lust, and love easily forward. She does this while switching from third person narrative to first person with stealth like accuracy.  The story has two protagonists: an orphaned boy and a class conscious widow. Each of their lives could have been a novel within itself, but Petry combines them with skillfully placed flashbacks that do not interrupt or pause the story. While meshing her protagonists’ lives, she includes themes of classism, racism, sexism, and colorism.

The novel was written in 1953 during a time when America’s race relations were being redefined and challenged. However, during this period of racial unrest Petry writes about a Black community that comes together to raise a child. Lines of class and social etiquette are crossed for the benefit of a parentless child. Petry creates and unlikely band of heroes that come together in the growth and development of Lincoln Williams: a schizophrenic cook, a nearly homeless photographer, a madam, a gangster, a female undertaker, and a tree named The Hangman.  

The widow protagonist, Abigail Crunch takes in the child when her husband is alive, but his unforeseen death consumes her, and the boy is again orphaned. Petry writes the widow’s loss so deftly that a reader is left in grief after her husband dies. Link Williams, the orphan, finds refuge with the town’s underworld boss, Bill Hods.

The two, Hods and Crunch have been at odds since Abigail moved to The Narrows. Crunch looks down on Hods and all that make the livelihoods through elicit means. The two are oil and water, but Petry writes their acceptance of each other for the benefit Link with such craft that their cohesiveness seems like an everyday event. They come together with the others in The Narrow to make a man out of Lincoln Williams.     

Link graduates from college, develops a love of history, respects and love his elders, and has genuine concern for his fellow man; this concern for his fellows is what leads him into an interracial relationship that knocks him and The Narrows off of their paths. Petry personifies The Narrows complete with flaws, strengths, and emotions. When Link goes into a whirlwind so does the community that raised him.

The themes of racism and sexism are the two most poignant themes in the work. Blacks and women strive throughout the work for more; success is obtained, but failure looms attacking the successful and the striving. Petry’s women are not all week and neither are her Blacks all subservient. The reader leaves the work with a whole view of Link Williams and The Narrows; a view created by a writer’s writer, Ann Petry.

                                                               ***

 Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was chosen by Conversations Book Club as one of its Top 100 Books of 2012. Lindsay was named Conversations Author of the Year 2012-2013.  His new book EMOTIONAL DRIPPINGS is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... Etheridge Knight

‘The Essential Etheridge Knight’ is a compilation of poems from the poet’s first three works. These poems demonstrate Knight’s immense talent which stems from his ability to place the reader in the visions of the poet. What Knight sees . . . the reader experiences.

                                  AS YOU LEAVE ME

                Shiny record albums scattered over

                 the living room floor, reflecting light

                my eyes as I watch you, squatting among the platters,

                the beer foam making mustaches on your lips.

                              

And, too,

                                the shadows on your cheeks from your long lashes

                                fascinate me-almost as much as the dimples

                                in your cheeks, your arms, and your legs.

                              

                                You

                                hum along with Mathis-how you Mathis!

                                 with his burnished hair and quicksilver voice that dances

                                among the stars and whirls through canyons

                                like windblown snow, sometimes I think that Mathis

                                could take you from me if you could be complete

                                without me. I glance at my watch. It is now time.

                                You rise,

                                silently, and to the bedroom and the paint;

                                on the lips red, on the eyes black,

                                and I lean in the doorway and smoke, and see you

grow old before my eyes, and smoke, why do you

chatter while you dress? and smile when you grab

your large leather purse? Don’t you know when you

leave me I walk to the window and watch you? And light

a reefer as I watch you? and I die as I watch you

disappear in the dark streets

to whistle and smile at the johns.

                 The ethos of a reader’s mind and heart are manipulated while reading Etheridge Knight. The poet shares dark pain and light joy evenly in the collection. Perhaps, a life lived as Knight lived his (imprisonment, addiction, divorce, homelessness) had no choice but to produce art of the heart and mind.

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was chosen by Conversations Book Club as one of its Top 100 Books of 2012. Lindsay was named Conversations Author of the Year 2012-2013.  His new book EMOTIONAL DRIPPINGS is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... Rita Dove

In 1987, Rita Dove’s chronological collection of poems “Thomas and Beulah” won the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. What is instructional and needed are the very first words of the collection; “These poems tell two sides of a story and are meant to be read in sequence.” The two sides told are of a single love shared by two. And Dove bears the painfully ugly with the blissfully beautiful.

The two points of view of the story or poems are encompassed in two sections: I Mandolin and II Canary in Bloom. If the reader does as directed and reads the poems in sequence, two lives will unveil into one love and one family. The two poems featured here give two perspectives of the same event.

                                       Courtship
1.
Fine evening may I have
the pleasure . . .
up and down the block
waiting – for what? A
magnolia breeze, someone
to trot out the stars?

But she won’t set a foot
in his turtledove Nash,
it wasn’t proper.
Her pleated skirt fans
softly, a circlet of arrows

King of the Crawfish
in his yellow scarf,
mandolin belly pressed tight
to his hounds-tooth vest –
his wrist flicks for the pleats
all in a row. . .

2.

. . . so he wraps the yellow silk
still warm from his throat
around her shoulders. (He made
good money; he could buy another.)
A gnat flies
in his eye and she thinks
he’s crying.

Then the parlor festooned
like a ship and Thomas
twirling his hat in his hands
wondering how did I get here.
China pugs guarding a fringed sette
where a father, half-Cherokee,
smokes and frowns.
I’ll give her a good life-
what was he doing
selling all for a song?
His heart fluttering shut
then slowing opening.



                                        Courtship, Diligence  
A yellow scarf runs through his fingers
as if it were melting.
Thomas dabbing his brow.

                                       And now his mandolin in a hurry
though the night as they say,
is young
though she is getting on

Hush, the strings tinkle. Pretty gal.

Cigar-box music!
she’d much prefer a pianola
and scent in a sky-colored flask.

Not that scarf, bright as butter.
Not his hands, cool as dimes.

Dove masterfully allows the reader into two minds in the poems, and this creative prowess is extended throughout the collection. If a reader is seeking to escape into a shared love with its pains and joys then Thomas and Beulah will not disappoint.


Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was chosen by Conversations Book Club as one of its Top 100 Books of 2012. Lindsay was named Conversations Author of the Year 2012-2013.  His new book EMOTIONAL DRIPPINGS is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... Novelist Leon Forrest

There is genre fiction, and there is literary fiction. Within these two categories are groups; in part, genre fiction consists of mystery, romance, science fiction, chick-lit, street-lit, western, thriller, and the list continues to grow. The components of literary fiction are less in number but just as vast in scope: historical, magical realism, stream of consciousness, speculative, allegory, satire, and pastoral. Writers of literary fiction employ tropes or figurative devices in their work that go beyond the popular metaphors or reoccurring similes that are common genre fiction.

Magical realism, perhaps the most demanding category of literary fiction, is used by few writers successfully. One who has succeeded in being considered a magical realist is novelist Leon Forrest.

In his work, Two Wings to Veil My Face, Forrest writes the slave history of an African American family. He weaves the story through two protagonists: a grandson -Nathaniel Witherspoon and Great-Momma Sweetie Reed the grandmother. The masterful story telling begins with the stressful situation of the family at the funeral home to view the deceased grandfather.

In this section of the text, Forrest displays through painstaking imagery the complex relationship between the father-Arthur Witherspoon, the son/grandson, and a self reliant - spirit talking to Great-Momma Sweetie who refuses to attend the grandfather’s, her one hundred and seventeen year old husband, funeral.
Through this couples marriage, which starts when Great-Momma Sweetie is fifteen and Jericho Witherspoon is fifty-five, the reader witnesses slavery after the Civil War, the interdependent relationship of post slavery master and slave, the harsh truth of freedom bringing Union Soldiers, and the fragile lives of women of the era.
What Forrest does through magical realism . . . is make unbearable human situations bearable in the pages of Two Wings to Veil My Face. Relationships between the characters in this novel, in actual life, would have mind shattering repercussions. Only a magical realist can have an abused daughter visit an abuser father on his deathbed seeking solace and understanding. Only a magical realist can cause a reader to accept a barren wife of forty years raising a husband’s child from an adulterous affair. Only a magical realist could cause a reader to believe that a slave broke his master’s back for sleeping with his woman, and another slave healed the master and brought him back to life.

What is unacceptable in reality, through Leon Forrest’s literary craft becomes real in Two Wings to Veil My Face - one Leon Forrest’s five novels.
 There is a Tree More Ancient than Eden (Random House, 1973)
 The Bloodworth Orphans (Random House, 1977)
 Two Wings to Veil My Face (Asphodel, 1984)
 Divine Days (Another Chicago Press, 1992)
 Meteor in the Madhouse (Northwestern University, 2001)

Tony Lindsay is a writer and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His latest book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was chosen as one of Conversations Top 100 Books of 2012. Lindsay was also voted Conversations Author of the Year 2012-13. He can be reached at tonylindsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... Poet Lucille Clifton

In poetry, merit does not always equal celebrity. The poet who creates life through dialect, tone, and meter frequently lives an unrecognized life. And for many poets this is acceptable, but for the reader this forgotten legacy is a cultural loss.  

A poet who brought life to paper through the dialect of urban Blacks, the cadence of the Blues, and the oppressive tone of American society was Lucille Clifton. From, ‘Black Women Writer (1950-1980)’ Clifton states:

“I use a simple language. I have never believed that for anything to be valid or true or intellectual or “deep” it had to first be complex. I deliberately use the language that I use. Sometimes people have asked me when I was going to try something hard or difficulty, as if my work sprang from ignorance. I like to think that I write from my knowledge not my lack, from my strength not my weakness. I am not interested if anyone knows whether or not I am familiar with big words, I am interested in trying to render big ideas in a simple way. I am interested in being understood not admired. I wish to celebrate and not be celebrated (though a little celebration is a lot of fun)” (137).

Maryland’s Poet Laureate from 1979-1985 she was not a stranger to some celebrity, but what is argued here is that her name does not ring with the familiarity it deserves within America’s literary canon or within the Black community.  

                                                                solomon

                                                                i bless the black

                                                                skin of the woman

                                                                and the black

                                                                night turning around her

                                                                like a star’s bed

                                                                and the black

                                                                sound of Delilah

                                                                across his prayers

                                                                for they have made me

                                                                wise      

she understands me

                                                                it is all blood and breaking,

                                                                blood and breaking. the thing

                                                                drops out of its box squalling

                                                                into the light. They are both squalling,

animal and cage. her bars lie wet, open

                                                                and empty and she made herself again

                                                                out of flesh out of dictionaries,

                                                                she is always emptying and it is all

                                                                the same wound the same blood the same breaking

                                                                              

For more of this seldom celebrated writer read -  ‘good woman: poems and a memoir 1969-1980’ by Lucille Clifton.

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was selected as one of Conversations' 25 Summer Reads of 2012 and is available now on Amazon.com. Tony can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents..."A Look at Gayl Jones"

In 1975, Gayl Jones’ first novel Corregidora was published. The heart wrenching work was edited by Toni Morrison. The storyline centers around a family derived from rape, incest, and prostitution. The rawness of the narrative is without equal. In the work, there is a conflict between what is erotica and what is empathetic prose, and this leaves the reader uncertain; either one should be sexually stimulated or cry tears of sorrow, or scream in anger.

The novel opens with the protagonist, Ursa Corregidora, being stalked by a jealous husband who throws her down the stairs and causes her to lose her “womb.” Within the tale Gayl Jones constructs, this introduction is mild compared to the agony and ecstasy that follows. Nothing that occurs in the novel is expected.
  
“I knew you was gonna come out a girl even while you was in me. Put my hand on my belly, and knew you was gonna be one of us. Little long-haired girl on my lap. You come out baldheaded though. They just kept looking at me, Mama and Gram. I knew they hated me then. Cause you come out all baldheaded. White skin before you got the little pigment you got now, and baldheaded. They hated me, but then your hair start to sprout, and get real long. I used to put a little ribbon on your head so people would know you was a girl . . . I knew you’d be a girl. I knew my body would have a girl” (117).

A talent of Gayl Jones’ is to being able to place a reader in the moment of the scene; one is dropped into the life she creates and forced to fin for ones’ self. Corregidora is 185 pages of family trauma, love, sex, and survival.


Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2. 

Tony Lindsay Presents... "A Look at Langston Hughes"

There are not many writers whose careers span literary movements. James Mercer Langston Hughes was a writer whose career did span literary movements including the two major African American movements. It can be argued that since Panther and the Lash was published posthumously (1967) he was not a contributor to the Blacks Arts Movement, but it cannot be argued that his influence on the writers of that period was substantial. Langston Hughes’ writing had the theme of Black is Beautiful and Black Pride before the phrases were coined.

                                    

                                    Me and My Mule

My old mule,

He’s gota a grin on his face.

He’s been a mule so long

He’s forgotten about his race.

I’m like that old mule-

Black – and don’t give a damn!

You got to take me

Like I am.

Hughes’ first work, “The Negro Speaks of Rivers”, was published in The Crisis magazine. He was 19 years old and one of the early contributors to the Harlem Renaissance. Langston Hughes loved being Black and he loved Black people. He took great pride in being part of the Harlem Renaissance and expressed his sadness when the spirit of the period ended.

Harlem

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up

like a raison in the sun?

Or fester like a sore-

And then run?

Does it stink like rotten meat?

Or crust and sugar over-

Like a syrupy sweet?

Maybe it just sags

like a heavy load.

Or does it explode?

The works of Langston Hughes, an African American poet, have and will continue to influence world literature.

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR was selected as one of Conversations' 25 Summer Reads of 2012 and is available now on Amazon.com. Tony can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2. 

Tony Lindsay Presents... "A Look At James Baldwin"

At the pinnacle of his career, and during the height of The Civil Rights Movement, James Arthur Baldwin's 'The Fire Next Time' was published. The book arrived after the success of Go tell on the Mountain, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni's Room. Baldwin had established himself as an essayist, novelist, playwright, and columnist . . . a writer. 'The Fire next Time' had been published in parts in both The New Yorker and the Progressive in 1962. At this point in his career, James Baldwin had America's ear and what he chose to tell her made history.

The work, 'The Fire Next Time' is divided into two parts; the first being a letter of advice to Baldwin's nephew, also named James his namesake, on how to survive within the racist climate of America in 1962. He titled the letter "My Dungeon: Letter to My Nephew on the One Hundredth Anniversary of the Emancipation." What was startling about the letter is that during a period of proposed integration and assimilation Baldwin advises:

If you know whence you came, there is really no limit to where you can go. The details and symbols of your life have been deliberately constructed to make you believe what white people say about you. Please try to remember that what they believe, as well as what they cause you to endure, does not testify to your inferiority but to their inhumanity and fear. Please try to be clear, dear James, through the storm which rages about your youthful head today, about the reality which lies behind the words acceptance and integration. There is no reason for you to try to become like white people and there is no basis whatever for their impertinent assumption that they must accept you. The really terrible thing, old buddy, is that you must accept them. And I mean that very seriously. You must accept them and accept them with love. For these innocent people have no other hope. They are, in effect, still trapped in a history which they do not understand: and until they understand it, they cannot be released from it. They have had to believe for many years, and for innumerable reasons, that black men are inferior to white men. Many of them, indeed, know better, but, as you will discover, people find it very difficult to act on what they know. To act is to be committed, and to be committed is to be in danger. In this case, the danger, in the minds of most white Americans, is the loss of their identity. Try to imagine how you would feel if you woke up one morning to find the sun shining and all the stars aflame. You would be frightened because it is out of order of nature. Any upheaval in the universe is terrifying because it so profoundly attacks one's sense of one's reality. Well, the black man has functioned in the white man's world as a fixed star, as an immovable pillar: and as he moves out of his place, heaven and earth are shaken to their foundations. (8)

One should remember the "letter" was written in 1962. Here Baldwin speaks to the equality of men based on knowing themselves; if his nephew knows from whence he came the lies of white superiority would be of little affect on his development and survival; not bad advice for any man during any time.


Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR is available now on Amazon. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents... "Sterling Plumpp"

To refer to him as a Jazz or Blues poet would limit the scope of his pen; although, he is a Jazz and Blues poet.

To refer to him as a Black Arts Movement poet would restrict poignancy of his prose; although, he is a Black Arts Movement Poet. To say he is English professor would curtail the didactic verbiage he has used to mold the minds of young scribes for decades; although, he is Professor Emeritus from the University of Illinois. Perhaps, Poet in the Greek will do.

Sterling D. Plumpp is called a poet’s poet due to his use of vernacular, syntax, and word choice. A word, a line, a stanza, a poem of Plumpp’s will send a readers mind in various directions.  ‘XVI. Sixteen’ from Ornate With Smoke takes one on such a multi tenet journey.  

XVI. Sixteen
Worlds collide inside my axe
each time
I solo

I learn to speak
tenor on the page

I learn
other saxophone languages
even those from under foot
notes of Tranes
I did not yet ride

So I
come to you asking
if I can be a bird
house boy bumming
rides from your solos in
to kitchen
pots and pans some
body’s great grand
mother played when her sweet
daddy done
done her wrong

Bumming
rides into yesterday
with two or three stops in tomorrow
or bumming through midnight today
with two or three stops into day
breaks a thousand years ago

Can I be a bird
house boy with a pen
to blow his years clear of
the leaves memory sheds in autumn

I play
cynanide rhythms
for hurricanes

I do
rag
I do
rag
I do
rag on line
I do
rag
I do
rag
I do rag time

Because I
con breaks

I
con breaks
I
con breaks
I
con breaks

and
I do
rag
I do
rag
I do
rag time

The dedication of Ornate with Smoke reads, “For Fred Anderson: improviser.” Anderson was a Jazz saxophonist who died in June 24th 2010. The work was published in ’97, Anderson got to appreciate the book and hear the notes Sterling Plumpp wrote for him.

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

Tony Lindsay Presents "A Look At Richard Wright"

Richard Wright’s novel, Native Son, represents a pivotal point in American literature. It is when the “bad nigger” appears in fiction, and his appearance caused white America ask, “Is this our native son? Did we do this?” Not only did the work mark the American canon, it also helped start a renaissance. Not the exotic, fun filled, lyrical one of Harlem, but one labored with the Communist message and the realism of Wright’s societal observations.

To refer to Richard Wright as merely a Chicago writer would limit the range of his life, but his writing career did start in the city of big shoulders. Wright’s early work, including Native Son, is part of the works that initiated the Chicago Renaissance of the 1930s. During this harsh economic period (The Great Depression) few African Americans were able to make a living from writing and those that did were employed by the Federal Writers Project.

From within this hub of writers, Wright’s work gained admiration and respect. His early work was greatly influenced by the Communist Party’s message that the plight American Blacks was analogous to the struggle of the poor American worker. Wright’s work was also influenced by sociologists from the University of Chicago whose studies and reports labeled his own societal observations.

Wright combined the Party’s message with the information from sociological studies that pointed to the damages caused by the racism; through this process he developed a unique writing style. That style attracted writers within the FWP hub. Wright’s style was imitated by Chicago based writers and thus the Chicago Renaissance was born. His most important work of fiction during that period was Native Son and his most memorable character was Bigger Thomas.

Bigger Thomas was the Nat Turner of the 1930s. Wright’s fiction sounded the same alarm within mainstream America as Turner’s South Hampton insurrection; the “negroes” are coming for their due. However, in literature the alarm was a warning of what could in happen, and a reminder that the “bad nigger” is out there and he is closer than one thinks. 

Wright opens the novel with a foreshadowing metaphor,

“Brrrrrrrriiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiinng!

An alarm clock clanged in the dark and silent room. A bed spring creaked. A woman’s voice sang out impatiently:

“Bigger, shut that thing off!”

At the end of Native Son, an inquisitive the reader asks . . . will the alarm be sounded again? Richard Wright caused America to look at its race problem through his prose. His message wasn’t hidden behind exotic narrative, or lyrical dialect. He put Bigger Thomas “all up in America’s face” and sounded the alarm that something was wrong and the problem required immediate attention. The writing of his career was the precursor to the famous Black Arts Movement.   

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2. 

Tony Lindsay Presents "Gwendolyn Brooks: 'A Street In Bronzeville'"

In her first published collection of poetry, 'A Street in Bronzeville', Ms. Brooks transports the reader to the south side of Chicago during the nineteen forties to an area in the city referred to as the "Black Belt." This Black Belt area would give rise to Chicago's culturally rich south side, and later become known as Bronzeville which was where Gwendolyn Brooks lived and wrote.

When "A Street in Bronzeville' was published Ms. Brooks lived at Six Twenty-three East Sixty-Third Street in Bronzeville. From her autobiography, 'Report from Part One,' she writes "If you wanted a poem, you had only to look out of a window."

This farming of poetic material from her Bronzeville community is apparent throughout the collection. She was a poet inspired by her community. A writer is often advised to "write what one knows," Ms. Brooks was the epitome of that advice. She took the everyday people of Bronzeville and the occurrences of their lives and gave them literary merit by representing them in formally structured poetry.

In the heart wrenching poem 'the mother' the reader is forced into the internal sufferings of a mother who has aborted her children.

'the mother'

Abortions will not let you forget.

You remember the children you got that you did not get,

The damp small pulps with little or with no hair,

The singers and workers that never handled the air,

You will never neglect or beat

Them, or silence or buy with a sweet.

You will never wind up the sucking-thumb

Or scuttle off ghosts that come.

You will never leave them, controlling your luscious sigh,

Return for a snack of them, with gobbling mother-eye.

I have heard in the voices of the wind the voices of my dim killed children.

I have contracted. I have eased

My dim dears at the breast they could never suck.

I have said, Sweets, if I sinned, if I seized

Your luck

And your lives from your unfinished reach,

If I stole your births and your names,

Your straight baby tears and your games,

Your stilted or lovely loves, your tumults, you mar-

riages, aches, and your deaths,

If I poisoned the beginnings of your breaths,

Believe that even in my deliberateness I was not deliberate.

Though why should I whine,

Whine that the crime was other than mine?-

Since anyhow you are dead.

Or rather, or instead,

You were never made.

But that too, I am afraid,

Is faulty: oh, what shall I say, how is the truth to be said?

You were born, you had body, you died.

It is just that you never giggled or planned or cried.

Believe me, I loved you all.

Believe me, I knew you, though faintly, and I loved, I

Loved you

All.

In the ballad 'of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery Miller' Ms. Brooks exemplifies the death of "a plain black boy."

'of De Witt Williams on his way to Lincoln Cemetery Miller'

He was born in Alabama

He was bred in Illinois

He was nothing but a

Plain black boy.

Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot.

Nothing but a plain black boy.

Drive him past the Pool Hall.

Drive him past the Show.

Blind within his casket.

But maybe he will know.

Down through Forty-seventh Street:

Underneath the L,

And-Northwest Corner, Prairie,

That he loved so well.

Don't forget the Dance Halls-

Warick and Savoy,

Where he picked his women, where

He drank his liquid joy.

Born in Alabama.

Bred in Illinois.

He was nothing but a

Plain black boy.

Swing low swing low sweet sweet chariot.

Nothing but a plain black boy.

Gwendolyn Brooks was a poet who loved her community, so much so that she made it the center of most of work. Her first published work, 'A Street in Bronzeville' is a must read.

Tony Lindsay is an award-winning author and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. His new book ONE DEAD DOCTOR is available now on Amazon.com. He can be reached at tonylinsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at www.facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

PROFILE: John A. Williams by Tony Lindsay

      

The original copyright date for The Angry Ones is 1960; however, the work was later published under Williams' title, One for New York, in 1975. In 1996 the book's title returned to The Angry Ones, and thirty-five years later new readers became aware of one the most important American novelist this country has produced: John Alfred Williams.

1950s and 1960s were decades of unrest in The United States, largely brought on by discrimination, segregation, and citizens demanding and protesting for civil rights. Many African American novels of the era were coined or labeled as protest novels. However, The Angry Ones (One for New York) not only speaks to the protesting mind set of Americans of the 50s and 60s, but it serves as an essential warning to those attempting to survive the institutional racism of today, and it reminds one of the physical, psychological, and spiritual sacrifices Williams' generation gave for civil rights advances.

Steve Hill, the protagonist of the novel, is engaged in a battle: a fight for his dreams. A World War ll veteran and college graduate, he is unable to find suitable employment. On the surface, his battle appears to be with Jim Crow maintained unemployment, but what John A. Williams offers the reader is a war for a basic human necessity: the ability to dream.

 In the novel, The Angry Ones (One for New York), the American dream was being denied by poor economics brought on by the segregation of the times. The majority of African Americans were forced to live below the standards of white Americans, and such meager existence left little energy to dream.  However, Williams' protagonist, Steve Hill did dare to dream.  He was not willing to accept his unemployment of Los Angeles, and he decided to move to the hopefully fairer New York City.

In New York, he encountered a more subtle but just as restricting and damaging menace: institutional racism. There he was given interviews, but it soon becomes apparent that he would go no further than the interview. Due to legislation of the day, companies had to interview and appear to seriously consider all applicants. But Steve Hill quickly learned that the interviews were a farce:

On the way downtown I thought of what Obie and I had talked about a couple of years before, that as opportunities for Negroes appeared on the surface to be getting better, they would at the same time become subtly worse for some segments. The gains made in blue collar arenas would be balanced by heighted barriers in the white collar fields, and would be the toughest in the professional fields stressing public contact.

In the first agency, tacked on the wall, was a big State Commission Against Discrimination poster. It didn't give me any confidence.

Later in the novel, Steve's friend Obie, who was unemployed due to a magazine folding, comments on the institutional racism he was forced to face, "… this thing is so massive without form, and so rigid without apparent strength."     

However, for Steve Hill the final confirming statements in regard to institutional racism came from an agency owner, Mr. Graff;

"I want to show you something." He brought some cards and placed them on the desk. "Look at these cards," he said. "They're from dead files of an employment agency I worked for years ago. Doesn't matter how long ago-they haven't changed their practices at all."

He took out a pencil and pointed to a space on the cards in which the interviewer's remarks were scribbled in ink. Excellent was the comment on the first card.

"You know what that means, Steve?"

"No."

"It's code. It means Jewish, don't send out. "

"Oh."

He picked up another card and pointed to another comment. "That means Negro, don't send out."

"Do most agencies use codes to get around the law?"

"Most," he said, shuffling the cards back together. "A lot simply file the applications away and forget them. There are codes for Puerto Ricans, Catholics, Orientals and so on."

"Who else is there to discriminate against?"

He laughed. "You would be surprised."

The unharnessed power of institutional racism proved too much for Steve's friend Obie. He eventually took his own life after being denied the right to dream and sustain himself. John A. Williams displays an uncanny ability to illustrate the stressors of that era and yet provide a warning for the readers of the future. The novel does ends on the positive however: Steve proposes to his true love, Mr. Graff has employment leads for him, and the American Dream seems possible with love and suitable employment on the horizon. 

What one leaves the work with is appreciation for past sacrifices, pride in what has been accomplished, and a cautious eye for the future… because history can, and has repeated itself.

Tony Lindsay is a writer and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. He can be reached at tonylindsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tony.linssay2.

PROFILE: "Claude McKay"

by Tony Lindsay

The summer of 1919 was a brutal heartless time for America. James Weldon Johnson labeled it the Red Summer due to the bloodshed that occurred in race riots in Arkansas, Chicago, and DC. In response to the climate of the country, Claude McKay, a recent immigrant from Jamaica wrote 'If We must Die'. The poem was considered one of the initiating pieces of the Harlem Renaissance.

                                                    If We Must Die

 If we must die, let it not be like hogs

Hunted and penned in an inglorious spot.

While round us bark the mad and hungry dogs.

Making their mock at our accursed lot.

If we must die, O let us nobly die,

So that our precious blood may not be shed

In vain; then even the monsters we defy

Shall be constrained to honor us though dead!

O kinsmen! we must meet the common foe!

Though far outnumbered let us show us brave.

And for their blows deal one deathblow!

What though before us lies the open?

Like men we'll face the murderous, cowardly pack,

Pressed to the wall, dying, but fighting back!

The Harlem Renaissance emerged as a social, political, and artistic movement for African Americans, letting America know that there was a New Negro within its mist. A literate, educated Negro who saw the injustice of the nation and was able to speak out against it. Festus Claudius McKay was one of the first to write against the events of the times.      

Tony Lindsay is a writer and adjunct professor at Chicago State University. He can be reached at tonylindsay7045@sbcglobal.net or on Facebook at http://facebook.com/tony.linssay2.