Countée Cullen's Harlem Renaissance: A Personal History

What People Are Saying"Terrific. It sparkles and snaps like some great jazz riffs, and the personal aspect is very touching." -Sir Stephen HoughLike a good jazz player, Kevin Brown riffs with verve and muscle and without wasting a note. The entwined meditations in this book-on his relationship with his great-grandmother Ida Mae Cullen-Cooper (Countée Cullen's widow) and on the Harlem literati that informed his own literary development-range widely, touching on artists from bluesman Robert Johnson to essayist James Baldwin. Astute and often daring, they offer a fresh and stimulating perspective on African American creativity in the twentieth century."-Yuval Taylor, author of Zora and Langston: A Story of Friendship and BetrayalIlluminations: A Series in American PoeticsEdited by Jon ThompsonDescriptionIn his introduction to Balzac's Lost Illusions, translator Raymond N. MacKenzie says: "Whole family stories emerge across all these works, and the history, politics, and social relations of France are explored and analyzed from what seems like an endless series of varying angles. And allowing the reader to see these numerous characters from different perspectives, sometimes in the background, sometimes in the foreground, and in different situations at different points in their lives, gives them a depth that is unrivaled in fiction." At least twenty-four characters occur and recur in this essay-cycle, many of them outrageous even by Balzac standards.Kevin Anthony Brown's published work may all seem to be about one thing: namely, history; art history; cultural history; Mexican history; or political history. Closer reading reveals that what his books and literary journalism have in common is related but distinct: namely, oral history and its transmission through the generations via elder griots at the intersection of oral and written traditions.About the AuthorAuthor, essayist, literary translator and reviewer Kevin Anthony Brown was born 3 September 1960, in Kansas City, Missouri. He earned his Bachelor's degree from the City University of New York. Kevin A. Brown is a member of the National Book Critics Circle. He currently lives in San Diego. Read more