Building a Library: Black American Literature

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To build a contemporary black American library one must look not at who is on the shelf today, but who will still be studied and embraced a century from now. The books of Alice Walker, Walter Mosley, Bell Hooks, Cornel West and Michael Eric Dyson, will all endure. Post-integration accumulation of immigrant cultures contributes a broader understanding of the world beyond black America: look to the work of Paule Marshall, Jamaica Kincaid and Edwidge Danticat. In John Edgar Wideman, former Rhodes Scholar and I think one of the best short story artists alive, we have a buried national treasure. I'm convinced that Wideman, as Zora Neale Hurston has, will rise from the ashes. …