William Melvin Kelley

Dis//Integration, a previously unpublished work by William Melvin Kelley, author of A Different Drummer, is a notable and welcome addition to African American literature. The linked "2 novelas, 3 stories, and a little play" that make up DIS//INTEGRATION follow the life journeys of Charles "Chig" Dunford from his Nanny Eva sermonizing from her front porch, when he is only seventeen, to his peripatetic studies in Reupeo (an anagram of Europe) as a college student, to his unsettled bachelorhood as an English professor at a small Vermont college, where he continues to struggle to finish his life-long study of theReupeonese author Dupukshamin and find true love. Along the way, as Chig's sentimental education unfolds, we meet an array of memorable characters: John Hoenir, the Hemingway-esque expatriate novelist who takes Chig under his wing; Wendy Whitman, an actress passing for white, who breaks Chig's heart; Merry, his troubled teen-age niece who Chig, in middle-age, agrees to look after; Raymond Winograd, the villainous department chair; Renka Bravo, the alluring dancer who might just make Chig an honest man; and one hundred Africans mysteriously chained together in the lower decks of Chig's homeward-bound transatlantic liner. DIS//INTEGRATION is an odyssey through time in which past and future combine and re-combine to give the arc of a full life.

An odyssey through time in which past and future combine and re-combine to give the arc of a full life, by the "brilliant" (The New Yorker) author of A Different Drummer. " A] lost giant of American literature." --The New YorkerThe linked "2 novelas, 3 stories, and a little play" that make up DIS//INTEGRATION follow the life journeys of Charles "Chig" Dunford from his Nanny Eva sermonizing from her front porch, when he is only seventeen, to his peripatetic studies in Reupeo (an anagram of Europe) as a college student, to his unsettled bachelorhood as an English professor at a small Vermont college, where he continues to struggle to finish his life-long study of the Reupeonese author Dupukshamin and find true love. Along the way, as Chig's sentimental education unfolds, we meet an array of memorable characters: John Hoenir, the Hemingway-esque expatriate novelist who takes Chig under his wing; Wendy Whitman, an actress passing for white, who breaks Chig's heart; Merry, his troubled teen-age niece who Chig, in middle-age, agrees to look after; Raymond Winograd, the villainous department chair; Renka Bravo, the alluring dancer who might just make Chig an honest man; and one hundred Africans mysteriously chained together in the lower decks of Chig's homeward-bound transatlantic liner.

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. Ride on out with Rab and Turt, two o'New Afriqueque's toughfast, ruefast Texnosass Arangers, as they battle Chief Pugmichillo and ricecure Mr. Charcarl Walker-Rider. Cut in on Carlyle Bedlowe, wrecker of marriage, saver of souls. Or just along with Chig Dunford, product of Harlem and private schools, on the circular voyage of self-discovery that takes him from Europe's Café of One Hand to Harlem's Jack O'Gee's Golden Grouse Bar & Restaurant. Beginning on an August Sunday in one of Europe's strangest cities, Dunfords Travels Everywheres but always returns back to the same point-the "Begending"-where Mr. Charcarl's dream becomes Chig Dunford's reality.

'A master at using humour to underscore the horror of racism, William Melvin Kelley is a writer whose work, decades later, continues to shed light on that which millions of people would rather remain hidden'MATEO ASKARIPOUR, AUTHOR OF BLACK BUCKA 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.

WINNER OF THE AMERICAN BOOK AWARD - 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] lost giant of American Literature." --The New Yorker Ride on out with Rab and Turt, two o'New Afriqueque's toughfast, ruefast Texnosass Arangers, as they battle Chief Pugmichillo and ricecure Mr. Charcarl Walker-Rider. Cut in on Carlyle Bedlowe, wrecker of marriage, saver of souls. Or just along with Chig Dunford, product of Harlem and private schools, on the circular voyage of self-discovery that takes him from Europe's Caf of One Hand to Harlem's Jack O'Gee's Golden Grouse Bar & Restaurant. Beginning on an August Sunday in one of Europe's strangest cities, Dunfords Travels Everywheres but always returns back to the same point--the "Begending"--where Mr. Charcarl's dream becomes Chig Dunford's reality (the "Ivy League Negro" in the world outside the Ivory Tower). "Among the most innovative and exciting novelists in the history of international literature, the opportunity to honor William Melvin Kelley with the American Book Award is a great privilege. Before Columbus Foundation is elated to welcome his work back into print, thanks to Anchor Books. It is a unique thrill to see Dunfords Travels Everywheres now illustrated in it's new edition by Aiki Kelley, whom we also honor with this year's Award. The majesty of William Melvin Kelley's vital contribution to international letters remains urgent and evermore medicinal in its cosmic scope and unifying embrace. The total arc and panorama of human experience, embodied in the mythologies we share from antiquity to the present are fully illuminated in William Melvin Kelley's artistry. An absolute virtuoso of the language, with Dunfords Travels Everywheres, William Melvin Kelley ignites the spiritual imagination, reviving and resuscitating images of our journey with wit and grace. His masterwork is truly a wonder to behold. Vivid, charismatic, mercurial, musical, Dunfords Travels Everywheres stands as one of the great contributions to the art of the novel. Laughing to keep from crying, living life not dying, this new illustrated edition sings a joyous, uplifitng song." --Justin Desmangles, citation from the American Book Award

A collection of seventeen stories, from the author of A Different Drummer.

At the age of five, a blind African-American boy is handed over to a brutal state home. Here Ludlow Washington will suffer for eleven years, until his prodigious musical talent provides him an unlikely ticket back into the world. The property of a band, playing for down-and-outs in a southern dive, Ludlow's pioneering flair will take him to New York and the very top of the jazz scene - where his personal demons will threaten to drag him back down to the bottom. A Drop of Patience is the story of a gifted and damaged man entirely set apart - by blindness, by race, by talent - who must wrestle with adversity and ambition to generate the acceptance and self-worth that have always eluded him.

A lost masterpiece, following in the footsteps of Suite Fran� §aise, Alone in Berlin and Stoner.

The stunning, thought-provoking first novel by a lost giant of American literature (The New Yorker) June, 1957. One hot afternoon in the backwaters of the Deep South, a young black farmer named Tucker Caliban salts his fields, shoots his horse, burns his house, and heads north with his wife and child. His departure sets off an exodus of the state's entire black population, throwing the established order into brilliant disarray. Told from the points of view of the white residents who remained, A Different Drummer stands, decades after its first publication in 1962, as an extraordinary and prescient triumph of satire and spirit.