Long Old Road: Back to Black Metropolis

ISBN-13: 9781412811217 / Angielski / Miękka / 2010 / 412 str.

Horace R. Cayton

Opis

From the time that he ran away to sea at sixteen, until he graduated from the University of Washington, Horace R. Cayton was a messman on a freighter, an unknowing handyman in an Alaskan brothel, a juvenile delinquent and inmate of a reform school, a dock worker and steward on a passenger liner, and a deputy in the sheriff's office of King County, Washington. Born in Seattle, a city then uniquely free from racial tensions and prejudices, Cayton found the privileged, secure, middle-class position of his well-to-do parents ineffectual against the gradual spread of racism that was sweeping America. His disarmingly honest autobiography is the ever-absorbing record of an intelligent, sensitive, and proud man's attempts to find identity in a confusing and conflicting chaos of black and white, in a nation that, although dedicated to equality, somehow managed to deny this ideal by almost every action. Although his turbulent life was complicated by the color barrier--often resulting in reverses and frustrations that have rendered him close to a breakdown--this alone is not what makes Cayton's book such captivating reading. Wholly lacking in self-pity or special pleading, Horace Cayton has written a personal narrative of unfailing interest on any number of scores, a book that ranks with the best of American autobiographical writing. For it manages to remain highly critical without once resorting to bitterness; to be filled with hope, though not always hopeful; and brims with compassion and bemused and acute insights into a troubled society. It is a telling, almost poetic tribute to the resiliency of black culture.

Spis treści

1: Childhood in the West; 2: The Die Is Cast; 3: A Boys Reformation; 4: Labor Pains; 5: Deputy to the Sheriff of King County; 6: Marriage and Career; 7: To Be in Chicago in the Thirties; 8: Tuskegee Was Quite a Place; 9: Escape to Europe; 10: Back to Black Metropolis: Race Leader, Race Man; 11: The Dark Inner Landscape; 12: In Fear and Trembling; 13: A Picnic with Sinclair Lewis; 14: The Crack-up; 15: Blood Makes Good Paint; 16: The World Is Now the Scene; 17: The Battle Is Being Won

O autorze

Horace Cayton