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American Negro Short Stories
The success of John Henrik Clarke's American Negro Short Stories, first published in 1966, affirmed the vitality and importance of black fiction. Now this expanded edition of that best-selling book, with a new title, offers the reader thirty-one stories included in the original—from Charles W. Chesnutt and Paul Laurence Dunbar in the late nineteenth century to the rich and productive work of the Harlem writers like Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright; the World War II accomplishments of Chester Himes, Frank Yerby, and many others; and the later fiction of James Baldwin, Paule Marshall, and LeRoi Jones (Imamu Amiri Baraka). Seven additional contributions round out a century of great stories with the work of Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Eugenia Collier, Jennifer Jordan, James Allan McPherson, Rosemarie Robotham, and Alice Walker. Dr. Clarke has included a new introduction to this 1993 edition, and a short biography of each contributor.
374 pages, Paperback
Published January 1, 1966
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Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews
November 21, 2020
Like the best anthologies, the stories selected form a kind of dialogue with themselves. It's notable how the voice of the stories move from a dialect reminiscent of minstrelsy - in two cases filtered through a nominally white narrator - to a more nuanced expression: attempts to capture Black Southern inflections or reflect the slang of hustlers and musicians. The rural South and urban North dominate as settings, though one very interesting story takes place on a French steamer stopping at ports along the African coast. There are a variety of situations described, some stories set in purely Black milieus, others involving the mostly antagonistic relations of whites and blacks in the US; one story humorously depicts the white fetishization of Black music.
The Lynching of Jube Benson - Paul Laurence Dunbar - A white doctor recounts an incident in which a man was lynched. Victorian sentimentality and "faithful darky" stereotype.
On Being Crazy - W. E. B. Du Bois - More an editorial than a story, on the daily discrimination encountered by the author.
The Goophered Grapevine - Charles Waddell Chesnutt - A white narrator recounts the story of a cursed NC vineyard as told by a former slave in heavy dialect.
The City of Refuge - Rudolph Fisher - A southern Black seeks refuge in Harlem after killing a white man; dope-selling and betrayal.
The Overcoat - John P. Davis - A short but emotionally complex tale from the POV of a very young boy at his mother's funeral, his emotions and memories a mix of guilt, naivety, and resentment of white oppression.
Truant - Claude McKay - A dining-car waiter tires of work and family responsibilities.
A Summer Tragedy - An elderly, lame sharecropper and his blind wife prepare for a journey in their Model T.
The Gilded Six-Bits - Zora Neale Hurston - A tale of working-class adultery, told in straightforward style, but with overblown transitions ("... the challenging sun flung a flaming sword from east to west across the trembling water.")
Bright and Morning Star - Richard Wright - A Tennessee widow and her Communist son deal with the problems caused by an infiltrator. By far the most violent of the stories.
The Boy Who Painted Christ Black - John Henrik Clark - To me, the unmentioned oddity is how all the viewers, adults and children, whites and blacks recognize the subject of the painting, though no specific iconography is described.
One Friday Morning - Langston Hughes - A scholarship promised to a high school senior
So Peaceful in the Country - Carl Ruthven Offord - A married woman who takes a summer job as cook in the country house of a white couple becomes uncomfortable when left alone with the husband.
And / Or - Sterling Brown - Voter suppression in Alabama. Bitterly ironic.
Fighter - John Caswell Smith - A violent parolee tries to survive on the mean streets. Very well done.
The Homecoming - Frank Yerby -A WWII combat veteran can no longer go along with the conventions of the Jim Crow South.
How John Boscoe Outsung the Devil - Arthur P. Davis - A folktale-like narrative told in very light dialect.
Solo on the Drums - Ann Petry - On stage, a drummer goes through emotional turmoil, entertains violent revenge fantasies: another brilliant performance. (From the year before Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours.)
Mama's Missionary Money - Chester Himes - A child discovers a purse full of money in various denominations in his parents' bedroom. Humor, POV reinforced with mild dialect.
See How They Run - Mary Elizabeth Vroman -A new, idealistic schoolteacher deals with a third grade class in the course of a year.
Exodus - James Baldwin - Two scenes: a mother remember the day her plantation was liberated by Union forces, her daughter leaves her home in the South, abandoning her mother and brother for what is intended to be a permanent exodus to New York.
God Bless America - John O. Killens - A married soldier departing for Korea
Train Whistle Guitar (The Luzana Cholly Kick) - Albert Murray - A slangy, impressionistic flashback to an Alabama childhood in a minor port / railroad town. Two boys admire an itinerant gambling guitar player and plan to take to the rails in his company.
The Senegalese - Hoyt W. Fuller - A break from the themes and milieus of the other stories. Set on a French steamer sailing the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Africa, the story presents relations between Europeans, Africans, and African-Americans in the context of an Africa gradually becoming a continent of post-colonial independent countries.
A Matter of Time - Frank London Brown -A furloughed mill-worker suffers a heart attack. Description rather than narrative.
Cry for Me - William Melvin Kelley - A laborer who migrates from the South to New York City becomes a popular folk singer. Humor, told from the POV of the singer's nephew, who is not a fan of the music.
Reena - Paule Marshall -An examination of the professional and social situation of liberal, educated Black women, couched as a dialogue.
The Convert - Lerone Bennett, Jr. -An undertaker has to decide on how he will testify in the case of a Black preacher murdered by a white sheriff.
The Wind of Change - Loyle Hairston - An unemployed drummer gets an image of Black power watching the negotiations of African delegations at the U. N. Jive talk, Black hair as political statement.
The Screamers - LeRoi Jones - Wild headlong prose, from a fire hose. What the hell is going on? Nightclub, music, horns, dancing, lust, despair, ecstasy, violence. The bacchanal spills into the streets, stops traffic, somebody called the riot squad.
Sarah - Martin J. Hamer - A single mother invites a co-worker in whom she has a romantic interest to join her and her sisters for Thanksgiving dinner; conflicts abound.
The Sky Is Grey - Ernest J. Gaines -The narrator, a young boy, travels with his mother from rural Louisiana to a nearby small town to have a tooth extracted. A slow moving story in which much is implied, with subtlety, about the situation of African-Americans. Dialect defines voice.
The Lynching of Jube Benson - Paul Laurence Dunbar - A white doctor recounts an incident in which a man was lynched. Victorian sentimentality and "faithful darky" stereotype.
On Being Crazy - W. E. B. Du Bois - More an editorial than a story, on the daily discrimination encountered by the author.
The Goophered Grapevine - Charles Waddell Chesnutt - A white narrator recounts the story of a cursed NC vineyard as told by a former slave in heavy dialect.
The City of Refuge - Rudolph Fisher - A southern Black seeks refuge in Harlem after killing a white man; dope-selling and betrayal.
The Overcoat - John P. Davis - A short but emotionally complex tale from the POV of a very young boy at his mother's funeral, his emotions and memories a mix of guilt, naivety, and resentment of white oppression.
Truant - Claude McKay - A dining-car waiter tires of work and family responsibilities.
A Summer Tragedy - An elderly, lame sharecropper and his blind wife prepare for a journey in their Model T.
The Gilded Six-Bits - Zora Neale Hurston - A tale of working-class adultery, told in straightforward style, but with overblown transitions ("... the challenging sun flung a flaming sword from east to west across the trembling water.")
Bright and Morning Star - Richard Wright - A Tennessee widow and her Communist son deal with the problems caused by an infiltrator. By far the most violent of the stories.
The Boy Who Painted Christ Black - John Henrik Clark - To me, the unmentioned oddity is how all the viewers, adults and children, whites and blacks recognize the subject of the painting, though no specific iconography is described.
One Friday Morning - Langston Hughes - A scholarship promised to a high school senior
So Peaceful in the Country - Carl Ruthven Offord - A married woman who takes a summer job as cook in the country house of a white couple becomes uncomfortable when left alone with the husband.
And / Or - Sterling Brown - Voter suppression in Alabama. Bitterly ironic.
Fighter - John Caswell Smith - A violent parolee tries to survive on the mean streets. Very well done.
The Homecoming - Frank Yerby -A WWII combat veteran can no longer go along with the conventions of the Jim Crow South.
How John Boscoe Outsung the Devil - Arthur P. Davis - A folktale-like narrative told in very light dialect.
Solo on the Drums - Ann Petry - On stage, a drummer goes through emotional turmoil, entertains violent revenge fantasies: another brilliant performance. (From the year before Preston Sturges' Unfaithfully Yours.)
Mama's Missionary Money - Chester Himes - A child discovers a purse full of money in various denominations in his parents' bedroom. Humor, POV reinforced with mild dialect.
See How They Run - Mary Elizabeth Vroman -A new, idealistic schoolteacher deals with a third grade class in the course of a year.
Exodus - James Baldwin - Two scenes: a mother remember the day her plantation was liberated by Union forces, her daughter leaves her home in the South, abandoning her mother and brother for what is intended to be a permanent exodus to New York.
God Bless America - John O. Killens - A married soldier departing for Korea
Train Whistle Guitar (The Luzana Cholly Kick) - Albert Murray - A slangy, impressionistic flashback to an Alabama childhood in a minor port / railroad town. Two boys admire an itinerant gambling guitar player and plan to take to the rails in his company.
The Senegalese - Hoyt W. Fuller - A break from the themes and milieus of the other stories. Set on a French steamer sailing the Mediterranean and Atlantic coasts of Africa, the story presents relations between Europeans, Africans, and African-Americans in the context of an Africa gradually becoming a continent of post-colonial independent countries.
A Matter of Time - Frank London Brown -A furloughed mill-worker suffers a heart attack. Description rather than narrative.
Cry for Me - William Melvin Kelley - A laborer who migrates from the South to New York City becomes a popular folk singer. Humor, told from the POV of the singer's nephew, who is not a fan of the music.
Reena - Paule Marshall -An examination of the professional and social situation of liberal, educated Black women, couched as a dialogue.
The Convert - Lerone Bennett, Jr. -An undertaker has to decide on how he will testify in the case of a Black preacher murdered by a white sheriff.
The Wind of Change - Loyle Hairston - An unemployed drummer gets an image of Black power watching the negotiations of African delegations at the U. N. Jive talk, Black hair as political statement.
The Screamers - LeRoi Jones - Wild headlong prose, from a fire hose. What the hell is going on? Nightclub, music, horns, dancing, lust, despair, ecstasy, violence. The bacchanal spills into the streets, stops traffic, somebody called the riot squad.
Sarah - Martin J. Hamer - A single mother invites a co-worker in whom she has a romantic interest to join her and her sisters for Thanksgiving dinner; conflicts abound.
The Sky Is Grey - Ernest J. Gaines -The narrator, a young boy, travels with his mother from rural Louisiana to a nearby small town to have a tooth extracted. A slow moving story in which much is implied, with subtlety, about the situation of African-Americans. Dialect defines voice.
February 16, 2013
My favorite stories: See How They Run, Mary Elizabeth Vroman, later made as the film Bright Road with Dorothy Dandridge; The Gilded Six-Bits, Zora Neale Hurston; Cry for Me, Williiam Melvin Kelley; Reena, Paule Marshall; How John Boscoe Outsung the Devil, Arthur P. Davis; The Winds of Change, Loyle Hairston; The Convert, Lerone Bennett, Jr.; Exodus, James Baldwin; The Goophered Grapevine, Charles Waddell Chesnutt; A Summer Tragedy, Arna Bontemps.
Happy Black History Month, 365 days a year!
Happy Black History Month, 365 days a year!
March 12, 2025
This is an important anthology of Black short story writers from the 60's, with some of the stories dating back some, with a good variety of stories dealing with the struggles the characters had to endure in living, and just getting by.
September 5, 2024
I love an anthology! Great stories and incredible to hear the words of such admirable writers!
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August 14, 2025Been reading on and off all summer. Wide ranging. Enjoyed the early 1900 stuff the most I think. Arna Bontemps writing is haunting.
September 12, 2011
Why haven't I read these authors before? Oh, sure, Richard Wright, Zora Neal Hurston, and a select few others that college textbooks deigned to include (probably under pressure). Actually, I didn't become aware of Zora Neal Hurston until a grad school course in Women Writers. This paperback was published in 1966. Feeling like I got half of an education in American Literature.
Each story in the collection is a gem, ranging from a Southern farm hand's flight to Harlem and his amazement at seeing a Black man directing traffic (even the Whites stop their cars on his command), to an eight-year-old boy's view of a cold, gray trip to town to have a tooth pulled, with a LeRoi Jones piece in between that reads like fine jazz sounds.
Each story in the collection is a gem, ranging from a Southern farm hand's flight to Harlem and his amazement at seeing a Black man directing traffic (even the Whites stop their cars on his command), to an eight-year-old boy's view of a cold, gray trip to town to have a tooth pulled, with a LeRoi Jones piece in between that reads like fine jazz sounds.
August 10, 2015
A great collaboration with the authors of the Harlem renaissance.
Displaying 1 - 7 of 7 reviews