Making Callaloo : 25 Years of Black Literature, 1976-2001

by Rowell, Charles Henry; Everett, Percival; Phillips, Carl

• ISBN13: 9780312288983
• ISBN10: 0312288980
• Edition: 1st
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-01-12
• Publisher: St. Martin's Griffin

Summary

This important book collects a wide range of fiction and poetry that first appeared in the pages of Callaloo, the premier literary journal devoted to African-diaspora literature and to Black literary and cultural studies. Founded twenty-five years ago-and still edited-by Charles Henry Rowell (Texas A&M University, College Station), Callaloo is both national and international in terms of scope and readership. It is also, as Henry Louis Gates, Jr., observed, "without doubt, the most elegantly edited journal of African and African-American literature [of] today." This anthology, ideally suited for all readers studying modern Black literature, includes the work of Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, Rita Dove, Yusef Komunyakaa, Lucille Clifton, Terry McMillan, Ai, Nathaniel Mackey, John Edgar Wideman, Michael S. Harper, Charles Johnson, Thylias Moss, and many other disntinguished authors.

Author Biography

Charles Henry Rowell is the editor and founder of Callaloo and a professor of English at Texas A&M University (College Station). His poems, interviews, and scholarly articles have appeared in a variety of periodicals, including The Southern Review and Agni. He is the editor of Ancestral House: The Black Short Story in the Americas and Europe (1995) and coeditor (with Bruce Morrow) of Shade: An Anthology of Fiction by Gay Men of African Descent (1996). He lives in Bryan, Texas.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	xiii
Foreword
Percival Everett	xv
Introduction	xix
Charles Henry Rowell
FICTION
Almanzar, Jose Alcantara: ``My Singular Irene''	3	(8)
Butler, Octavia E.: ``The Evening and the Morning and the Night''	11	(26)
Conde, Maryse: ``The Breadnut and the Breadfruit''	37	(12)
Danticat, Edwidge: from The Journals of Water Days 1986	49	(8)
Delany, Samuel R.: from Shoat Rumblin	57	(15)
Ellison, Ralph: ``Cadillac Flambe''	72	(17)
Everett, Percival: ``Meiosis''	89	(19)
Forrest, Leon: ``Sugar Groove''	108	(14)
Glave, Thomas: ``Whose Song?''	122	(13)
Harris, Wilson: from Jonestown	135	(12)
Johnson, Charles: from Rutherford's Travels	147	(16)
Jones, Gayl: from The Machete Woman	163	(9)
Kenan, Randall: ``Now Why Come That Is?''	172	(21)
Lee, Helen Elaine: ``Silences''	193	(11)
Mackey, Nathaniel: ``Atet A.D.''	204	(20)
McCluskey, John, Jr.: from The River People	224	(11)
McMillan, Terry: ``Ma'Dear''	235	(11)
Phillips, Caryl: from Cambridge	246	(8)
Wideman, John Edgar: ``Ascent by Balloon from the Yard of Walnut Street Jail''	254	(9)
POETRY
Ai: ``Blue Suede Shoes''	263	(6)
Alexander, Elizabeth: ``The Venus Hottentot''	269	(5)
Barrax, Gerald: ``An Audience of One'' and ``All My Live Ones''	274	(4)
Berrouet-Oriol, Robert: ``Dissidence, I''	278	(4)
Brathwaite, Edward Kamau: from ``Clips''	282	(4)
Cassells, Cyrus: ``Sally Hemings to Thomas Jefferson''	286	(4)
Clifton, Lucille: ``The Times'' and ``Lazarus''	290	(3)
Derricotte, Toi: ``The Promise'' and ``Holy Cross Hospital''	293	(6)
Dixon, Melvin: ``Heartbeats'' and ``Climbing Montmartre''	299	(4)
Dove, Rita: ``Straw Hat,'' ``Motherhood,'' ``Headdress,'' and ``Heroes''	303	(6)
Edwards, Brent Hayes: ``Middle Ear Recitation''	309	(6)
Ellis, Thomas Sayers: ``Fatal April'' and ``A Kiss in the Dark''	315	(3)
Etienne, Phebus: ``A Ride to the Wedding''	318	(2)
Hamer, Forrest: ``Goldsboro Narratives''	320	(3)
Harper, Michael S.: ``Modulations on a Theme: For Josephus Long''	323	(6)
Harris, Claire: ``Mysteries'' and ``Framed''	329	(3)
Hayes, Terrance: ``Touch''	332	(2)
Jackson, Angela: ``The Love of Travellers''	334	(2)
Jackson, Major L.: ``Some Kind of Crazy''	336	(2)
Komunyakaa, Yusef: ``Venus's-flytraps,'' ``Red Pagoda,'' ``Birds on a Powerline,'' and ``Slam, Dunk, & Hook''	338	(7)
Lorde, Audre: ``Fishing the White Water'' and ``Jessehelms''	345	(4)
Major, Clarence: ``Difficulty with Perspective'' and ``Unwanted Memory''	349	(5)
Mitchell, Karen: ``Country After Country'' and ``Forgiveness''	354	(4)
Morejon, Nancy: ``Richard Brought His Flute''	358	(7)
Moss, Thylias: ``One for All Newborns'' and ``Holding''	365	(3)
Mullen, Harryette: ``Fable'' and ``Unspoken''	368	(4)
Osbey, Brenda Marie: ``Setting Loose the Icons''	372	(5)
Pereira, Edimilson de Almeida: ``Calunga Lungara''	377	(2)
Phillips, Carl: ``Moving Target'' and ``The Clearing''	379	(5)
Roberson, Ed: ``Elegy for a White Cock''	384	(5)
Roy, Lucinda H.: ``Book Review''	389	(5)
Sanchez, Sonia: ``A Poem for My Father'' and ``Sequences''	394	(3)
Strange, Sharan: ``Childhood'' and ``Offering''	397	(2)
Trethewey, Natasha: ``Letter Home'' and ``Vignette''	399	(4)
Walker, Alice: ``On Stripping Bark from Myself''	403	(2)
Welburn, Ron: ``Yellow Wolf Spirit''	405	(2)
Wright, Jay: ``Naming the Asturian Bird'' and ``The Economy of Power''	407	(5)
Young, Kevin: ``The Escape Artist'' and ``Cassius Clay by Basquiat''	412	(5)
Afterword	417	(4)
Carl Phillips
Contributors	421