Divine Days
Divine Days

Author: Leon Forrest

Publisher: Northwestern University Press

Published: 2023-02-15

Total Pages: 1652

ISBN-13: 0810145715

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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.

There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden
There Is a Tree More Ancient Than Eden

Author: Leon Forrest

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-11

Total Pages: 228

ISBN-13: 9780226257211

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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.

"in the Light of Likeness--Transformed"

Author: Dana A Williams

Publisher:

Published: 2021-01-29

Total Pages: 174

ISBN-13: 9780814257623

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"In the Light of Likeness--Transformed", by Dana A. Williams, looks critically at the work of contemporary African American author Leon Forrest. Not only does she bring to the critical table a well-known but as yet understudied modernist author--an important endeavor in and of itself--but she also explores Forrest's novels' cultural dialogue with black ethnic culture and other African American authors, as well as provides in-depth readings of his prose and interpretations of his narrative style. Highly touted by both his literary forebear Ralph Ellison, who wrote the foreword to Forrest's first novel, and his literary contemporary Toni Morrison, who edited his first three novels and wrote the foreword to his third, Leon Forrest is among the most gifted African American writers of our time. Yet, he is also among our most difficult. Forrest's highly experimental narrative style, his reinterpretation of modernism, and his transformations of black cultural traditions into literary aesthetics often pose challenges of interpretation for the reader and the scholar alike. As the first single-authored book-length study of Forrest's novel, this book offers readers pathways into his fiction. What this culturalist approach to the novels reveals is that Forrest's fiction was foremost concerned with investigating ways for the African American to survive in the contemporary moment. Through a variety of characters, the novels reveal the African American's art of transformation--the ability to find ways to make the wretchedness of the past work in positive ways.

The Bloodworth Orphans
The Bloodworth Orphans

Author: Leon Forrest

Publisher: University of Chicago Press

Published: 2001-12

Total Pages: 420

ISBN-13: 9780226257228

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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.

Leon Gaspard
Leon Gaspard

Author: Forrest Fenn

Publisher: Tia Collection

Published: 2019-01-15

Total Pages: 0

ISBN-13: 9780991479214

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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.

The Scholar Denied
The Scholar Denied

Author: Aldon Morris

Publisher: University of California Press

Published: 2017-01-17

Total Pages: 322

ISBN-13: 0520286766

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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.

Beastly Things
Beastly Things

Author: Donna Leon

Publisher: Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Published: 2012-04-03

Total Pages: 221

ISBN-13: 0802194508

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A New York Times bestseller: The police investigate the death of a veterinarian in Venice, Italy in this “swiftly paced” mystery (The Seattle Times). When the body of man is found in a canal, damaged by the tides, carrying no wallet, and wearing only one shoe, Guido Brunetti has little to work with. No local has filed a missing-person report, and no hotel guests have disappeared. The autopsy shows he had suffered from a rare, disfiguring disease. A shopkeeper tells Brunetti that the man had a kindly way with animals. Finally, the victim is identified as a much-loved veterinarian—and Brunetti’s quest to find the killer will take him on a harrowing journey . . . “All her trademark strengths shine in this swiftly paced, sophisticated tale of greed versus ethics.” —The Seattle Times “Written with such delicacy and emotional force that we can’t help but be reminded of Greek tragedy.” —Booklist, starred review

The New Midwest
The New Midwest

Author: Mark Athitakis

Publisher: Arcadia Publishing

Published: 2017-02-06

Total Pages: 85

ISBN-13: 0997774355

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“Dives deep into Midwestern literature, unpacking the mythology of the region and how today’s writers are complicating our simple idea of the Heartland.” —Huffington Post In the public imagination, Midwestern literature has not evolved far beyond heartland laborers and hardscrabble immigrants of a century past. But as the region has changed, so, in many ways, has its fiction. In this book, the author explores how shifts in work, class, place, race, and culture has been reflected or ignored by novelists and short story writers. From Marilynne Robinson to Leon Forrest, Toni Morrison to Aleksandar Hemon, Bonnie Jo Campbell to Stewart O’Nan this book is a call to rethink the way we conceive Midwestern fiction, and one that is sure to prompt some new must-have additions to every reading list. “Using the lens of novels and short stories published over the past 30 or so years, Athitakis seeks to illuminate the ways we still lean on literary mythology of the Midwest when it comes to defining the region.” —Chicago Tribune “[The New Midwest] rightly praises the Midwestern novels of Marilynne Robinson, Jeffrey Eugenides, Toni Morrison and Jonathan Franzen, but also points out works of comparable merit that warrant rediscovery.” —The Washington Post “The New Midwest is a crisp, engaging tip sheet and guide for further reading.” —Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel “A journey through the Midwest and through some key works by writers [Athitakis] thinks are most effectively using the region in their fiction.” —Kirkus Reviews