Drylongso: A Self-Portrait of Black America

by John Langston Gwaltney

Overview

In writing his Self-Portrait of Black America, anthropologist, folklorist, and humanist John Gwaltney went in search of "Core Black People"—the ordinary men and women who make up black America—and asked them to define their culture. Their responses, recorded in Drylongso, are to American oral history what blues and jazz are to American music. If the people in William H. Johnson's and Jacob Lawrence's paintings could talk, this is what they would say.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781565840805
Publisher:	New Press, The
Publication date:	04/01/1993
Edition description:	1st New Press ed
Pages:	320
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.25(h) x (d)

About the Author

John Langston Gwaltney was a student of Dr. Margaret Mead, before becoming a Professor of Anthropology. He has taught at the State University of New York at Cortland and at the Maxwell Graduate School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University. He is also a visual artist, with a special interest in ritual carving.

Editorial Reviews

"Powerful, eloquent, and—I hope—disturbing." —Studs Terkel

"This book is terrifying and illuminating. Not since the nineteenth-century slave narratives have so many black Americans told such truths to white America." —Maya Angelou

From the Publisher