friends; however, when he is challenged to choose
between them, he chooses the gang. The novel
ends when Johnny kills Trapp, who has been falsely
accused by the community of molesting a young
girl, while attempting to burn down Trapp’s house
as part of the gang’s rites of passage. At the end of
the novel, David leaves Detroit in search of a better
life; however, the ending gives the impression that
he will never escape the pessimistically determined
life that humans are inevitably bound to suffer, re-
flecting the novel’s naturalistic bend. Demby sug-
gests through his main characters that, irrespective
of this given, everyone must create a meaningful
life, as does Bill Trapp when he leaves his isolated
world and reenters his community.
Set in Rome, The Catacombs, in which death
and resurrection are dominant tropes of the cha-
otic worlds of the characters, is narrated by an ex-
patriate novelist who examines the lives of a nun
and an actress who is romantically involved with
the Count, her aristocratic lover. Similarly, Love
Story Black centers on Edward, a black writer-
professor (also an expatriate and a teacher at New
York City College) as a central character. As critics
point out, the narrator characters of both novels
serve as Demby’s alter ego. They deliver, in the end,
the same message about the inevitable publication
of the great or ideal novel.
Although the critical response to The Cata-
combs was mixed, Demby received international
praise for Bettlecreek, admired because, despite
its black characters, it moved beyond racial issues
and concerns with its focus on William Trapp and
the themes of death, resurrection, youth, and old
age. Critics also lauded its naturalistic and exis-
tential focus.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Hansen, Klaus P. “William Demby’s The Catacombs:
A Latecomer to Modernism.” In The Afro-Ameri-
can Novel Since 1960, edited by Peter Bruck and
Wolfgan Karrer, 1234–1243. Amsterdam: B. R.
Gruner, 1982.
Margolies, Edward. “The Expatriate as Novelist.” In
Native Son: A Critical Study of Twentieth Century
Black American Authors, 173–189. Philadelphia:
Lippincott, 1968.
O’Brien, John. Interviews with Black Writers, 34–53.
New York: Liveright, 1973.
James CelestinoDerricotte, Toi (1941– )
In an interview with Charles Rowell, Toi Derri-
cotte revealed that she “believe[s] we are prisoners
of what we don’t know, of what we don’t acknowl-
edge” (655). Perhaps this is why her poetry gives
voice to experiences that are labeled taboo, such
as the physical aspects of birth, sex, and death.
Through her experimentation with topics and lan-
guage, Derricotte has played a significant role in
the development of African-American literature.
Born in 1941 in Detroit, Michigan, Derricotte
took many years to develop an interest in being
a poet. Married in 1962 to artist Clarence Reese,
Derricotte worked as a teacher for Manpower, an
educational organization established by the federal
government, while completing her B.A. in special
education at Wayne State University. By the time
she received her degree, she was divorced. After
her graduation, Derricotte worked with remedial
readers and emotionally and mentally disabled
students in the Detroit and New Jersey school
systems. In 1967 she married banking consultant
Clarence Bruce Derricotte. She received her M.A.
in English and creative writing from New York
University in 1984.
However, while her professional interest in po-
etry developed slowly, her personal experiences
that were central to her poetry began at a very
young age. For example, Derricotte’s prominent
interest in death, evident in her first collection, The
Empress of the Death House (1978), appears to have
begun with her father’s career as a mortician, her
encounters at a Catholic grade school, and her ex-
periences at her grandparents’ funeral home. The
poems in this collection depict a morbid sense of
death that is often unspoken. Further, the graphic
language she uses in her depictions broke with tra-
ditional expectations for women’s poetry to avoid
explicit sexuality. Derricotte avoids sentimentality,
choosing to use language that allows her to explore
honestly death, violence, sexuality, and racism.136 Derricotte, Toi