Wednesday, March 5, 2014

A list of short stories by and about black men

By Kenton Rambsy

In light of Barack Obama’s recent of announcement of the “My Brother’s Keeper Initiative,” I have provided a list of short stories that focus on black men and boys from the past 13 decades. Obama’s imitative coincides with some of my own research interests concerning representations of black men. African American male protagonists continually emerge in my studies as I chart the publication histories of short stories by black writers.

1890—Charles Chesnutt “The Wife of His Youth” (1898)
1900—Paul Laurence Dunbar “The Scapegoat” (1904)
1910—W.E.B. Du Bois “Jesus Christ in Georgia” (1911)
1920—Rudolph Fisher “The City of Refuge” (1925)
1930—Richard Wright “Big Boy Leaves Home” (1936)
1940—Ralph Ellison “Battle Royal” (1947)
1950—James Baldwin “Sonny’s Blues” (1957)
1960—Ernest J. Gaines “The Sky is Gray” (1963)
1970—Charles Johnson “The Education of Mingo” (1977)
1980—Amiri Baraka “The New Recreation Program” (1988)
1990—Walter Mosley “Equal Opportunity” (1998)
2000—Edward P. Jones “Old Boys, Old Girls” (2004)
2010—Colson Whitehead “Last Night” (2011)

Related:
15 poems & 15 volumes of poetry about black men  
A notebook on short stories by black writers

2 comments:

Rwashinjr said...

Awesome list. Look forward to engaging with some of these.

er o said...

You left out the best short story writer of them all- James Alan McPherson- ' A Sense Of Story:, "Doc", "Elbow Room", "The Silver Bullet", not to mention William Melvin Kelley or some of Chester Himes great short stories such as Lunching At The Riz , TANG, Cotton Gpnna Kill me Yet!"