Abstract:This essay focuses on the life and writing of African American novelist, playwright, and activist Julian Mayfield, whose under-studied work and extraordinary life tell a story about race and civil rights in literature that challenges familiar accounts. By analyzing Mayfield’s published novels, The Hit (1957), The Long Night (1958), and The Grand Parade (1961), as well as some of his essays, plays, and other unpublished work written in the 1960s and 1970s after his move from Harlem to Ghana, I describe an “alte… Show more
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