Out There: Mavericks of Black Literature

Darryl Pinckney, the acclaimed author of the novel High Cotton and iconoclast known for his writings in The New York Review of Books, The New Yorker and elsewhere, affirms the literary power of the African Diaspora, in this appreciation of three writers from very different places and times: J. A. Rogers, Vincent O. Carter, and Caryl Phillips. Originally presented as the inaugural Alain LeRoy Locke Lecture Series at Harvard's DuBois Institute, these essays remind us that marginal or neglected writers have a lot to tell us about the history of people who are always "outsiders."