Trace’s dreams in TONI MORRISON’s JAZZ, it also
proves to be King Solomon Gillis’s downfall. He
lacks both the wisdom and the understanding to
survive this almost naturalistic, crabs-in-a-barrel
world in which only the fittest survive.
As one critic notes, “A particular concern of
Fisher’s is the transformation of people and cul-
ture that inevitably follows the move from the
rural South to the urban Northeast” (Davis, From
the Dark Tower, 100). Fisher’s short stories were
published in the best-known black journals during
the 1920s, including CRISIS and OPPORTUNITY, but
they were also published in such mainstream ven-
ues as The Atlantic Monthly and Survey Graphic.
Fisher also wrote two novels: The Walls of Jeri-
cho (1928) and THE CONJURE MAN DIES: A MYSTERY
TALE OF DARK HARLEM (1932). Whereas Walls cri-
tiques the well-known obsession of whites, such as
CARL VAN VECHTEN, with Harlem and intraracial
issues of class and color among blacks, exposing,
as Lewis notes, “the cleavages within the Afro-
American world” (230), The Conjure Man holds
the distinction of being the first African-American
detective novel and, for some critics, psychological
thriller. When Harvard-educated N’Gana Frimbo,
an African conjure man who plies his trade in Har-
lem, turns up “dead,” Harlem detective Perry Dart
and John Archer, a physician who assists homicide
detectives, are called in to help solve the case. In
the end, however, Frimbo, who, it is discovered,
is very much alive, helps solve the mystery and
find his would-be killer. The novel’s strengths are
Fisher’s complex characters, his exploration and
presentation of the spectrum of Harlem’s black
community, and each character’s committed quest
for wholeness.
For the most part, The Conjure Man was well
received. Sterling Brown described it as “a plot of
classic suspense.” ARNA BONTEMPS and COUNTEE
CULLEN adapted it for the stage as a Federal The-
atre Project. It is considered a forerunner to the
detective novels of CHESTER HIMES. Fisher died
in 1934 at age 37 from complications related to
abdominal cancer. His stories were collected and
published posthumously as The City of Refuge:
The Collected Stories (1987) and The Short Fiction
of Rudolph Fisher (1987).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Davis, Arthur P. From the Dark Tower, Afro American
Writers 1900–1960. Washington, D.C.: Howard
University Press, 1974.
Fisher, Rudolph. “The City of Refuge.” In The New
Negro, edited by Alain Locke, 57–74. New York:
Atheneum, 1968. First published by Albert &
Charles Boni, 1925.
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue.
New York: Oxford University Press, 1979.
Wilfred D. SamuelsFlowers, Arthur (1950– )
Arthur Flowers was born on July 30, 1950, in Nash-
ville, Tennessee; at the time, his father was enrolled
in Meharry Medical School. However, Flowers calls
Memphis, the city in which he was raised and edu-
cated, home. Memphis is also the place, along with
the rest of the Mississippi Delta, Flowers has la-
beled as “African American holyground,” a title he
has given to the region that gave birth to new cul-
tural forms, including BLUES and jazz, while rede-
fining existing cultural practices, such as hoodoo.
Flowers honed his writing skills, his “literary
hoodoo,” as he calls it, under the tutelage of JOHN
OLIVER KILLENS, cofounder of the Harlem Writers’
Guild, a writer’s workshop that also helped nurture
NIKKI GIOVANNI and TERRY MCMILLAN. Although
Killens earned two Pulitzer Prize nominations,
Flowers bemoans the fact that Killens’s literary tal-
ents are today largely “unprecedented and unsung”
(Gilyard). But Flowers never fails to salute his men-
tor at the beginning of each new work. At the onset
of Another Good Loving Blues, he writes, “I am
Flowers of the Delta clan Flowers and the line of
O. Killens.” Beyond invoking his mentor’s name, he
also pays homage to Killens in celebrating black ex-
pressive culture within his work, as did Killens. Ac-
cording to Flowers, “Blues novels, jazz novels and
hip-hop novels are all attempts to bring the African
vernacular to literature” (Edelstein). On the dust
jacket for the original hardcover edition of Another
Good Loving Blues, Terry McMillan noted Flowers’s
skill with vernacular speech. She wrote, “[He] has
captured the soul and sound of southern folk in the186 Flowers, Arthur