Swing Low: Black Men Writing - Softcover

Rebecca Carroll

2.83

6 ratings by Goodreads

9780517883242: Swing Low: Black Men Writing

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0517883244 ISBN 13: 9780517883242

Publisher: Crown Trade Paperbacks, 1995

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In a companion volume to I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like, Rebecca Carroll presents candid, powerful, sometimes humorous interviews with 17 of America's best black male novelists, poets, journalists, and playwrights. They talk about their individual experience as black men and as black writers in America. Each interview has been shaped into a single-voice narrative and is accompanied by a brief biography, a full-page photograph of the author, and an excerpt from his work.

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From Publishers Weekly:

A companion volume to Carroll's I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like: The Voice and Vision of Black Women Writers published this past fall, Swing Low collects interviews with and excerpts from 16 black male authors. The collection spans a diverse group including seasoned veterans like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ishmael Reed, playwright August Wilson, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as newer voices like Trey Ellis, Darryl Pinckney and journalist Nathan McCall. The interviews are similarly various: exceptionally funny and insightful, each author really reveals something about himself, personally or politically, something that helps readers gain new understanding of his work. Refreshingly, few of these authors spew the typical 'I was born to write' lines. Instead, they talk about what schooling they had or jobs they took before being published. They also discuss what experiences led them to write, the differences between professional and passionate writing, and how they write. "The ability to work alone in complete solitude is difficult," says Leon Forrest at one point; "I remember when I first got the notion of writing in my head, I set up my typewriter at the beach thinking that I would be able to write while I socialized and looked at young ladies! But this is not the way of the writer. The solitude and the loneliness are the dues that a writer must pay."
Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

John Edgar Wideman, Leon Forrest, Henry Louis Gates, Jr., Trey Ellis, Ishmael Reed, and 11 others--any collection that boasts so impressive a lineup of writers is worth serious consideration. The 16 interviews presented here provide a fine forum on black male writers. Accompanying the interviews, which are presented by editor Carroll as seamless narratives, are excepts from the subjects' works. Though primarily from published works, these excerpts--fiction, poetry, and nonfiction--will be familiar to many readers. Also accompanying the interviews are a full-page photo of each author and a short biography. From Ishmael Reed's scathing and inflammatory comments about the New Yorker to Caryl Phillips' pointed accounts of what it means to be a black British man in the U.S. to John Wideman's merciful and acute perception of the falseness of "race," the voices heard here are insightful, funny, often outrageous. Above all, though, these writers share a commitment to the real work of writing. This beautiful book is a companion piece to Carroll's earlier I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like: The Voice and Vision of Black Female Writers. Greg Burkman

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