Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet
by Frank Marshall Davis
Publication Date: Apr 15, 2003
List Price: $29.95
Format: Paperback, 408 pages
Classification: Nonfiction
ISBN13: 9780299135041
Imprint: University of New Orleans Press
Publisher: University of New Orleans Press
Parent Company: University of New Orleans
Frank Marshall Davis was a prominent poet, journalist, jazz critic, and civil rights activist on the Chicago and Atlanta scene from the 1920s through 1940s. He was an intimate of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright and an influential editor at the Chicago Evening Bulletin, the Chicago Whip, the Chicago Star, and the Atlanta World. He renounced his writing career in 1948 and moved to Hawaii, forgotten until the Black Arts Movement rediscovered him in the 1960s.
Because of his early self-exile from the literary limelight, Davis’s life and work have been shrouded in mystery. Livin’ the Blues offers us a chance to rediscover this talented poet and writer and stands as an important example of black autobiography, similar in form, style, and message to those of Langston Hughes and Richard Wright.
“Both a social commentary and intellectual exploration into African American life in the twentieth century.” —Charles Vincent, Atlanta History