The Living Dead

This edited and annotated book, originally written by my grandfather in 1968, was claimed by him as the memoirs of his life from growing up in the deep south Mississippi in the 1920s to 1940s, to his experience leaving Mississippi to pursue a new life in Detroit, and later moving his family to Ohio. He metaphorically and poetically interprets the birth and death of his spirit and how he came to know God. His beautifully written prose reflects the turmoil in his soul from his struggle with being a light-skinned black child in the south, his grappling with gender roles and the meaning of manhood, his spiritual conflict with the morality of mankind, his understanding of religion, and his inner rationalizations for his menacing and murderous tendencies.

Despite controversies that arose from his baring his personal truths, at least in his own mind, when written in the 1960s, and despite questions that arose about the validity of his professions, including his proclaimed visions of being spoken to by the mother of God, this book is still yet nothing short of a brilliant work of art, an autobiography of perhaps, a madman.

Considered a work of African American history and held in historical collections by major universities and historical societies, offered in the 1960s to be made into a major motion picture if he would agree to call it fiction, but he refused, insisting it was truth in its entirety, much of the story is written in the style of classical literature. I am astonished by the vision and depth of his writing. Truly a moving, yet troubling, piece of literature.