Description:
Bursting
with energy and innovation, the second volume in the annual anthology
collects the year's best short stories by African American authors.
Dealing with all aspects of life from the pain of war to the warmth of
family, the superb tales in Best African American Fiction 2010 are a
tribute to the stunning imaginations thriving in today's African
American literary community. Chosen by this year's guest editor, the
legendary Nikki Giovanni, these works delve into international politics
and personal histories, the clash of armies and of
generations—and come from such publications as The New
Yorker, Harper's, The Kenyon Review, and Callaloo.
In "Ghosts," Edwidge Danticat portrays an aspiring radio talk show host
in Bel Air—which some call the Baghdad of Haiti—who
is brutally scapegoated, and in "Three Letters, One Song & a
Refrain," Chris Abani gives a searing account of the violent life of a
thirteen-year-old member of a Burmese hill tribe. Jeffery Renard Allen
dramatizes the mysterious arrival in Harlem of a child's hated
grandmother, and Wesley Brown fictionalizes the life of the great
saxophonist Coleman Hawkins, with cameo appearances by Louis Armstrong,
Fletcher Henderson, and other immortals. John Edgar Wideman contributes
dense and textured "Microstories" that interweave everything from taboo
sex acts to Richard Wright's last works to murder in a modern family.
Desiree Cooper depicts a debutante from Atlanta moving to Detroit, "a
city where there's no place to hide," while in "Been Meaning to Say" by
Amina Gautier, a widower gets an unforgettable holiday visit from his
resentful daughter.
From Africa to Philadelphia, from the era of segregation to the age of
Obama, the times and places, people and events in Best African American
Fiction 2010 reveal inconvenient truths through incomparable fiction.
Best African American Fiction 2010
edited by Gerald Early
ISBN:
9780553385359
ISBN-10: 0553385356
Publisher:
One World/Ballantine Books (Random House)
Publication
Date: 2009
Format:
Trade Paperback, 336
pages, 6.25" x 9.25"
Book
Type:
New
This book is also available in these formats:
Hardcover