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Bird
at My Window
ROSA
GUY
"This
book was welcomed when it was first published in 1966.
Its brave examination of a loving, yet painful, relationship
between a Black mother and her son is even more important
today. Rosa Guy is a fine writer and she continually
gives us new issues to contemplate. Welcome Bird
at My Window." - Maya Angelou
Rosa Guy's powerful first
novel follows Wade Williams, a young and brilliant black
man who wakes in a mental hospital and is told he has
assaulted his sister. Unable to recall the circumstances
that brought him to commit this unthinkable act, Wade
retraces his steps and reveals the rich complexity of
mid-twentieth-century Harlem and its mothers, sons,
and daughters whose aspirations prevail and perish within
both white and black America. An engrossing personal
story and a razor-sharp cultural critique, Bird at My Window is the third title in Coffee
House Press’s acclaimed Black
Arts Movement Series.
Bird at My Window
draws our attention to an important phenomenon of recent
national history. The energetic and highly self-conscious
Black Arts Movement accompanied and fostered an explosion
of urban black popular culture of the 1960s and 1970s.
Its long-term influence is evident today in, for example,
the strength and popularity of Hip Hop culture. The
Black Arts Movement’s legacy includes performance poetry
and streetcorner rapping, avant-garde "free jazz,"
and independent cinema focused on streetlife and the
politics of urban, inner-city life.
In an innovative partnering with African American scholars and authors,
Coffee House Press has created an editorial panel to
guide selection of titles for this series. Editorial
board member John Wright, associate professor of Afro-American
Studies, African Studies, and English at the University
of Minnesota, Twin Cities Campus, says, "we have
chosen work that is masterful, and that deserves another
chance and other audiences, to keep the windows to the
future open."
Rosa Guy’s vibrant A Bird at My Window is an eye-opening addition
to the BAM series, and dissects the complexity of white-on-black
as well as black-on-black racism.
Novels
available in the Coffee House Press Black Arts Movement
Series:
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