William Melvin Kelley – författare

'A master at using humour to underscore the horror of racism, William Melvin Kelley is a writer whose work, decades later, continues to shed light on that which millions of people would rather remain hidden'MATEO ASKARIPOUR, AUTHOR OF BLACK BUCKA searing, provocative satire by one of the most important African-American novelists of the twentieth century that lays bare the abiding racism and the legacy of slavery on the psyche of white America.Mitchell Pierce is a well-off New York ad executive whose marriage is falling apart. He no longer feels any passion for his pregnant wife, Tam, and even feels estranged from his toddler son, Jake. Mitchell is trapped in an unrewarding and loveless life, and though domestic violence isn't in his character, it is never very far away, either.Mitchell's life will irrevocably change one day, though, when a young man appears at his apartment door to pick up the family's black maid, Opal, for a date. Cooley it turns out is not a stranger to the household. The twins that Tam is carrying are a result of superfecundation--the fertilization of two separate ova by two different males. So when one child is born black and the other white, Mitchell goes on a quest to find Cooley and make him take his baby.In the tradition of Brer Rabbit trickster tales, dem enacts a modern-day fable of turning the tables on the white oppressor and inverting the history of miscegenation and subjugation of African Americans.

Dis//Integration, a previously unpublished work by William Melvin Kelley, author of A Different Drummer, is a notable and welcome addition to African American literature.The linked "2 novelas, 3 stories, and a little play" that make up DIS//INTEGRATION follow the life journeys of Charles "Chig" Dunford from his Nanny Eva sermonizing from her front porch, when he is only seventeen, to his peripatetic studies in Reupeo (an anagram of Europe) as a college student, to his unsettled bachelorhood as an English professor at a small Vermont college, where he continues to struggle to finish his life-long study of theReupeonese author Dupukshamin and find true love.Along the way, as Chig's sentimental education unfolds, we meet an array of memorable characters: John Hoenir, the Hemingway-esque expatriate novelist who takes Chig under his wing; Wendy Whitman, an actress passing for white, who breaks Chig's heart; Merry, his troubled teen-age niece who Chig, in middle-age, agrees to look after; Raymond Winograd, the villainous department chair; Renka Bravo, the alluring dancer who might just make Chig an honest man; and one hundred Africans mysteriously chained together in the lower decks of Chig's homeward-bound transatlantic liner.DIS//INTEGRATION is an odyssey through time in which past and future combine and re-combine to give the arc of a full life.

'More than lives up to the hype' Observer'Set to become a publishing sensation' Kirsty Lang, BBC Front Row'An astounding achievement' Sunday Times'The lost giant of American literature' New YorkerJune, 1957. One afternoon, in the backwater town of Sutton, a young black farmer by the name of Tucker Caliban matter-of-factly throws salt on his field, shoots his horse and livestock, sets fire to his house and departs the southern state. And thereafter, the entire African-American population leave with him.The reaction that follows is told across a dozen chapters, each from the perspective of a different white townsperson. These are boys, girls, men and women; either liberal or conservative, bigoted or sympathetic - yet all of whom are grappling with this spontaneous, collective rejection of subordination.In 1962, aged just 24, William Melvin Kelley's debut novel A Different Drummer earned him critical comparisons to James Baldwin and William Faulkner. Fifty-five years later, author and journalist Kathryn Schulz happened upon the novel serendipitously and was inspired to write the New Yorker article 'The Lost Giant of American Literature', included as a foreword to this edition.

'There is no need of prophesying that Mr. Kelley will one day be among the best American short story writers. Dancers on the Shore proves that he already is' New York Herald TribuneIn 1964, two years after the critically lauded release of his debut novel A Different Drummer, William Melvin Kelley published his first collection of short stories, Dancers on the Shore. Reissued in a new edition by riverrun, these seventeen stories expand Kelley's literary world, showcase his limitless imagination and spotlight his inimitable talent.

At the age of five, a blind African-American boy is handed over to a brutal state home. Here Ludlow Washington will suffer for eleven years, until his prodigious musical talent provides him an unlikely ticket back into the world.The property of a band, playing for down-and-outs in a southern dive, Ludlow's pioneering flair will take him to New York and the very top of the jazz scene - where his personal demons will threaten to drag him back down to the bottom.A Drop of Patience is the story of a gifted and damaged man entirely set apart - by blindness, by race, by talent - who must wrestle with adversity and ambition to generate the acceptance and self-worth that have always eluded him.