Black Ink : Literary Legends on the Peril, Power, and Pleasure of Reading and Writing

Spanning more than 250 years, Black Ink traces black literature in America from Frederick Douglass to Ta-Nehisi Coates and Roxane Gay in a masterly collection of twenty-five moving essays on the power of the written word. The book is organized into three sections: The Peril, The Power, and The Pleasure. With an array of contributors both classic (W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, James Baldwin) and contemporary (Toni Morrison, Alice Walker, Marlon James), Black Ink presents the brilliant diversity of black thought in America while underscoring the importance of these writers within the greater context of the nation's literary tradition. This collection guides you through the remarkable experiences of these authors' lifelong pursuits of literacy and literature. Book jacket.