Dorothy West

In a novel that documents the rise of the black middle class, a racially mixed wedding is about to take place on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s--amidst extreme tension and resistance. Reprint.

The Wedding

Diana Evans

Wedding

In a story that documents the rise of the black middle class, written by a woman who lived it, a racially mixed wedding is about to take place on Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s--amidst extreme tension and resistance.

Morgan Jerkins

Adelaide M. Cromwell

The Living is Easy

Presents the collected short stories and autobiographical writings of the last survivor of the Harlem Renaissance of the twenties and thirties

Stories, Sketches, and Reminiscences

The Richer, the Poorer

Roman, der foregår i 1950'erne i et sort middelklassekvarter i USA. Et bryllup i en af områdets fineste familier er nært forestående, og i tilbageblik fortælles de nærmestes familiehistorier.

In her final novel, “a beautiful and devastating examination of family, society and race” (The New York Times), Dorothy West offers an intimate glimpse into the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's Black bourgeoisie on Martha’s Vineyard in the 1950s. Within this inner circle of "blue-vein society," we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of the loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from "a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions." Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Meade Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community. With elegant, luminous prose, Dorothy West crowns her literary career by illustrating one family's struggle to break the shackles of race and class.

A Novel

Gathers lesser-known writings by the Harlem Renaissance author, featuring pieces that were written for the New York Daily News, the Work Progress Administration's Federal Writer's Project, and an assortment of small journals and magazines. 25,000 first printing.

Selected and Newly Discovered Fiction by the Author of The Wedding

The Last Leaf of Harlem

Zora Neale Hurston

Wallace Thurman

Paul Robeson

Sondra K. Wilson

A selection of writings from "The Messenger," a magazine of the Harlem Renaissance which reflected socialist ideology, includes works by Paul Robeson, Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, and Alice Dunbar-Nelson.

Stories, Poetry, and Essays from The Messenger Magazine

The Messenger Reader

'A writer of huge compassion and acute observation, and also of dazzling style . . . Her work is more relevant than ever' DIANA EVANS An incredible collection of writing - both essays and short stories - spanning the long career of Dorothy West. Includes a new introduction by Diana Evans. 'West's work is timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender' Emma Garman, Paris Review The stories contained here are as American as jazz, and as wise and multifaceted as their writer. Dorothy West's metier is the unique crucible in which America places its black middle class, but her themes are universal: the daily misunderstandings between young and old, men and women, rich and poor that can lead to tragedy; and the ways in which bonds of family and community can bring us together, and tear us asunder. Dorothy West's autobiographical essays explore the poles of her remarkable life - from growing up black and middle-class in Boston to her near-mythic trip to Moscow in 1933 with Langston Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance writers to life on her beloved Martha's Vineyard. They cohere into a beautiful and poignant memoir of a singular American life, a memoir that communicates with her short stories in a host of fertile ways. Taken as a whole, The Richer, The Poorer is a triumphant celebration of the long life and work of one of America's genuine treasures.

Dorothy West

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