Louisiana Black: A Novel - Hardcover

Charters, Samuel Barclay

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0714528552 ISBN 13: 9780714528557

Publisher: Marion Boyars, 1986

Synopsis

Frank Lewis, a complacent, middle-class Black, is roused to action when he recognizes a photograph of a lynched Black man in his son's history book as that of his father

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

When Frank Lewis, a black, middle-aged office worker in New Jersey, comes across an old picture of a lynching in a black history book, he is appalled, never having given much thought to his people's past. His shock multiplies ten-fold when he learns that the lynched man was his father. Reeling from this discovery, Lewis goes down to his family's former hometown in Louisiana with a vaguely articulated plan for exacting revenge from one of the members of the lynch mob. The novel's premise is a good one, an elegant way to encapsulate some of the problems of race in America, but Charters never communicates any real passion or anger, and toward the end the narrative drive eases down to a slow Southern amble. Without the requisite tension, the characters tend to become more symbolic than real.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal:

Frank Lewis is a complacent middle-class black until a photograph of a 1937 Louisiana lynching provokes in him a shock of recognition. Confronting his mother with the picture, he discovers that the victim whom he thought he recognized was indeed his father, about whom he knew little. Lewis travels to the South to identify and confront the gloating whites in the picture, but he finds that people in the New South are complicated and that he cannot purge his anger by a simple act of vengeance. Although Louisiana Black begins slowly and involves too much telling and not enough showing, it is a provocative story that slowly pulls the reader in. For larger fiction collections. Janet Boyarin Blundell, M.L.S., Wanamassa, N.J.
Copyright 1986 Reed Business Information, Inc.

About this edition

• Publisher: Marion Boyars
• Publication date: 1986
• ISBN 10: 0714528552
• ISBN 13: 9780714528557
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 253