Dorothy West – författare

An Oprah Winfrey Presents Mini-Series on ABC Network Television Starring Halle BerryIn her last novel, Dorothy West, an iconic member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers an intimate glimpse into African American middle class.  Set on bucolic Martha''s Vineyard in the 1950s, The Wedding tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast''s black bourgeoisie.  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.

INTRODUCED BY DIANA EVANS ''A writer of huge compassion and acute observation, and also of dazzling style . . . Her work is more relevant than ever'' DIANA EVANS

''Timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender'' EMMA GARMAN, PARIS REVIEW

''It''s as though we''ve been invited not so much to a wedding as to a full-scale opera . . . She brings down the house'' NEW YORK TIMESYou''re on the brink of turning your back on your family, your community, your race, all for some white-bread fantasy you don''t half understand.

On a summer weekend in 1953, the residents of the Oval - an exclusive middle-class Black community on Martha''s Vineyard - are gathering for the wedding of Shelby Coles. The loveliest daughter of the Oval''s most prestigious family, Shelby could have chosen any number of eligible men ''of the right colours and the right professions''. Instead she has fallen in love with a white jazz musician from New York - creating a shockwave that ripples across five generations of family history.

Weaving together past and present, North and South, black and white, The Wedding is an audacious, wise and shattering portrait of American identity.

''A writer of huge compassion and acute observation, and also of dazzling style . . . Her work is more relevant than ever'' DIANA EVANSAn 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.