A cult has grown up around Henry Dumas--a very
deserved cult... He was brilliant. He was magnetic, and he was an incredible
artist"--Toni Morrison
Henry Dumas
July 20, 1934 - May 23, 1968
Photo courtesy of Joseph D. McNair
http://www2.mdcc.edu/north/asili/volii_3/nu00033.htm
Author of poetry and fiction who wrote about the clash between black and white cultures.
Dumas grew up in Arkansas and in New York City's Harlem. While in the U.S. Air Force (1953-57) he won creative-writing awards for his contributions to Air Force periodicals. He attended City College in New York and Rutgers University (1958-61) and studied with jazz artist-philosopher Sun Ra; he then taught at Hiram College (1967) and Southern Illinois University (1967-68). Religion (especially Christianity), African-American folklore and music, and the civil-rights movement, in which he was active, were important influences on his writing.
The vulnerability of black children amid the Southern white
lynch-mob mentality, a young sharecropper encountering a civil-rights worker, and whites
experiencing the mystical force of black music are among the subjects Dumas examined in
his short stories, many of which were collected in Ark of Bones (1970) and Rope
of Wind (1979). Nature, revolutionary politics, and music are especially frequent
subjects of his poetry, which is noted for its faithfulness to the language and cadence of
African-American speech. Poetry for My People (1970; republished as Play Ebony,
Play Ivory, 1974) is a collection of blues-influenced verse. Dumas, who was murdered
[by a New York City Transit Officer], left an unfinished novel, Jonoah and the Green
Stone, which was published in 1976.
-- Britannica On-line http://www-lj.eb.com:182/blackhistory/micro/727/8.html
Goodbye,
Sweetwater: New and Selected StoriesThese
excellent short stories will introduce the late Dumas, who was killed in 1968 at the age
of 33 by a New York City transit police officer, to a wider audience as a profoundly
gifted and intelligent author. His settings range from the small towns of the rural South
to the explosive streets of Harlem in the late 1960s. The civil rights activist imbues his
stories with myth and folklore, rightful anger and delineation's of the inequities that
exist for blacks in America. The author's invocation of the ethos of his people lends an
honesty to the writings on racial tensions, yet never lapses into narrow-mindedness, and
his trenchant rendering of pain, love, religious and family life is universally appealing.
His rhythmic, eloquent style is both arresting and unique in its capacity to drive home
the prophetic messages that inform his prose. From the young Southern boy named Fish-hound
in the eerie ``Ark of Bones''who is told by an old Noah-like man, ``Son, you are in the
house of generations. Every African who lives in America has a part of his soul in this
ark''to the teenage narrator of ``Strike and Fade''a powerfully sketched glimpse of
inner-city turmoil, who proclaims, ``I'm hurtin too much. I'm lettin my heat go down into
my soul. When it comes up again, I won't be limpin''Dumas never fails to capture the
spirit and collective consciousness of his beloved people. Portions of this book were
previously published in Ark of Bones, Rope of Wind and Jonoah and the Green Stone. (May)
- Publishers Weekly
Outer Space Blues
People, I heard the news the other day
like to scare me half to death
Yeah things happen in this world
like to scare me half to death
TV say a spaceship is comin here
if it do wont be no people left
But I tell you folks, spaceship cant be so bad
Reckon I just fool people,
spaceship cant be too bad
I been on earth all my life,
and all my life I been mad
So when the spaceship land
I aint runnin too fast
I say, I reckon I might not run too fast
I might run over into Mississippi
and you know I cant pass
Hold it people, I see a flying saucer comin
guess I wait and see
Yeah, a spaceship comin
guess I wait and see
All I know they might look just like me
BROWN SOUNDS
brown sound chocolate
memories
like the first time
you saw grapes
and tasted them
and learned the color
blue
brown sound cream milk
echoes
like the first time
you saw bees
and tasted gold
and learned the honey
tongue
brown sound africa
pulses
like the first time
you exploded between legs
and heard drums
and learned the message
of rhythm love
brown sound america
pulses plus pushing
down trees
like the first time
you saw that wild crazy horse
riding through painted deserts
and you learned the grand canyon
red mother
brown sound
black outline
like the first time
like the first time
the first time
is the last time
like that
'Loretta Dumas and Eugene Redmond, 1989/99
Related Links
The
College of Education,
University of Central Arkansas
Encyclopedia Britannica On-line
