Lester, Julius

New York. 1990. Arcade Publishing. 1st Printing. Very Good in Dustjacket. 1559700599. 276 pages. hardcover. Jacket design by Robert Reed. keywords: Literature America African American. FROM THE PUBLISHER - In this work, Julius Lester charts his political and spiritual odyssey over the past decade. Brilliant, provocative, and inevitably controversial, the pieces in this collection are tinged throughout with wry humor and self-deprecation. Julius Lester has sometimes - at least on the surface - been out of step with his times - but never with himself. He was one of the earliest proponents of black pride, and his writings and broadcasts in the 1960s found wide and ready audiences. His LOOK OUT, WHITEY! BLACK POWER'S GON' GET YOUR MAMA was an immediate best-seller and established him as a major voice. But it also soon became apparent that Lester would never fit into any easy category, that he was very much his own person. If whites feared his early militancy on behalf of blacks, he also outraged fellow blacks when he decried their increasing anti-Semitism. When many in the 1960s and 1970s urged violence, he opted for reason and racial tolerance. Such fierce independence informs everything Lester writes, as this important volume attests throughout. His homage to Henry Miller is eloquent and moving. His essay on Thomas Merton attests as much to his own profound spirituality as it does to that of his subject. His pieces on Jesse Jackson and Louis Farrakhan are sure to sow displeasure in certain quarters, as will his loving but not always laudatory assessment of the life and works of James Baldwin. Julius Lester, one senses, never sets out to provoke, yet his own fierce honesty and refusal to accept stereotypical attitudes in any form or phase make controversy his constant companion. inventory #20116 ISBN: 1559700599.