place from the proceeds of the sale of Naked Came
the Manatee (1997). Thirteen writers penned the
comic thriller. The writers, including Dave Barry,
Carl Hiaasen, and Elmore Leonard, all of whom
had ties to South Florida, each wrote a chapter and
passed on the book to the next contributor.
In 2003 Atria Books published Due’s supernat-
ural novel The Good House, set in a haunted house
in the Pacific Northwest. Due and her husband, the
television and science fiction writer Steven Barnes,
make their home in Longview, Washington. They
married in 1998.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Contemporary Black Biography: Profiles from the In-
ternational Black Community. Vol. 30. Detroit:
Gale Group, 2002.
Jeannine F. Hunter
Dumas, Henry (1934–1968)
Henry Dumas’s preteen years spent in his native
state of Arkansas, combined with his experience of
living in Harlem as a young adult, are key elements
in his work as a writer. But more important to Du-
mas’s legacy is the story of his tragic death at age
33, when he was gunned down by a transit officer
in a New York subway in a reputed case of mistaken
identity. Before his death, Dumas attended Rutgers
University and participated in the CIVIL RIGHTS
MOVEMENT in the South while developing his skills
as a poet and fiction writer. In 1967 Dumas took
a position at Southern Illinois University (SIU),
where he worked in a support service program.
During his brief tenure at SIU, Dumas became a
colleague and friend of fellow teacher and writer
EUGENE REDMOND, who has worked tirelessly since
Dumas’s tragic death to promote his works and
nurture his legacy as a writer.
Although little of his work was published dur-
ing his lifetime, it is due to Redmond’s advocacy
that six books by Dumas have appeared since his
death. The first, Ark of Bones, a short story collec-
tion, appeared in 1970, and a poetry collection,
Poetry for My People, also appeared that year. Both
books were initially published by Southern Illinois
University Press under the editorship of Redmond
and Hale Chatfield, one of Dumas’s professors
at Rutgers, and both were reissued by Random
House in 1974, under TONI MORRISON’s editor-
ship; the book of poems was retitled Play Ebony,
Play Ivory. Redmond also served as editor of two
more Random House publications of Dumas’s
works: Jonoah and the Green Stone, an unfinished
novel (1976), and Rope of Wind and Other Stories
(1979). Dumas’s works were made available for a
new generation of writers in Goodbye, Sweetwater
(1988) and Knees of a Natural Man (1989), both
also edited by Redmond.
“Ark of Bones,” Dumas’s most widely circulated
story, depicts two youths who encounter a myste-
rious “ark” on the Mississippi River. This and other
works of Dumas’s fiction, such as “Rain God,” “Six
Days You Shall Labor,” “Fon,” “The Voice,” and
“A Boll of Roses,” explore African-American life
through the author’s mythic vision. Jonoah and the
Green Stone, similar to “Ark of Bones,” draws on
biblical narratives to comment on the present so-
cial plight of African Americans. Dumas intended
the novel to be part of a trilogy, one that shows a
boy, Jonoah, surviving one of the worst floods of
the Mississippi in memory, becoming involved in
both civil rights and the street life of Harlem in the
North after growing up, and then returning to the
South to aid his adopted family in their struggle
against racial oppression. Dumas’s work is not
limited to southern settings, as several of his bet-
ter stories take place in Harlem. In “The Voice,” for
example, Dumas again addresses the question of
black spirituality by exploring the lives of a group
of urban youths who have lost their leader. The
spiritual power of black music is also the focus in
“Will the Circle Be Unbroken,” but this time the
religious ritual portrayed is not one that shares
any connection with a Judeo-Christian origin; it
is a purely African rite that draws on the cosmic
forces of black music to build a protective wall for
African Americans against the cultural aggressions
of nonblacks.
Various strains of BLUES are found in Dumas’s
poetry, from tightly structured lyrical blues poemsDumas, Henry 153