Most critical attention on Kelley’s work has fo-
cused on the rebellion of a Negro farmer named
Tucker Caliban who salts his fields, slaughters his
cattle, and marches out of state. As every other
Negro in the fictional, unnamed state follows him,
the novel is a magic-realist parable of boycotts and
black pride: a resolution of the MALCOLM X/MAR-
TIN LUTHER KING, JR. binary. Like much of Kelley’s
work, Drummer expresses the urgent appeal for
social justice and black pride of the BLACK ARTS
MOVEMENT through modernist (and specifically
Faulknerian) fictional techniques. The novel dem
has been reissued by Coffee House Press’s Black
Arts Movement series. It is dedicated to “The
black people in (not of ) America” and marshals
satirical modes associated with Nathanael West,
John Hawkes, and ISHMAEL REED in its treatment
of “dem” white people. Mitchell Pierce is a white
man in a Madison Avenue advertising agency
whose home life falls apart in a phantasmagoric
and irrealistic mixture of dream, parody, and real-
ity. His wife gives birth to twins, one white and one
black—suggesting one of many infidelities: His
wife may or may not have had an affair with the
maid’s boyfriend. Pierce watches his life change
from the definition of success to something alto-
gether more confusing.
A Drop of Patience tells the coming-of-age story
of Ludlow Washington, a jazz musician who is
blind since birth and grows up in a state home.
Washington struggles and prevails; he eventually
becomes a visionary leader within the New York
jazz world. As in A Different Drummer and dem,
Kelley’s main theme is moral blindness, and in this
work he literalizes and deepens the metaphor.
Like many other African-American writers who
were celebrated as African-American writers, Kel-
ley often expressed annoyance at being read as a
black American first and as an artist second. He
develops artistic experimentalism to a peak in
Dunsfords Travels Everywheres, a three-part novel
that reflects the artistic freedom of Joyce’s Finni-
gans Wake. This novel does not abandon race as
a theme—it demands a “unmisereaducation” and
follows two characters, one a Harlem black and
one a Harvard black, through a grand tour—but
the Joycean language accomplishes a displacement
of sorts, and race is effectively de-emphasized. Kel-
ley lives in Harlem and teaches in the creative writ-
ing program at Sarah Lawrence College and at the
Taos Institute of Art.BIBLIOGRAPHY
Gayle, Addison. The Way of the New World: The Black
Novel in America. New York: Anchor, 1975.
Klotman, Phyllis. “Examination of the Black Confi-
dence Man in Two Black Novels: The Man Who
Cried I Am and dem.” American Literature 44 (Jan-
uary 1973): 596–611.
John Whalen-BridgeKenan, Randall Garrett (1963– )
As part of a new generation of African-Ameri-
can writers, Randall Kenan combines realistic
detail with surreal narrative to create a southern
fictional world. In his fiction, he depicts Tims
Creek, North Carolina, as a space occupied by
demons and ghosts as well as the ordinary lives
of its residents. Through this portrayal, he reveals
the difficult and sometimes tragic experiences of
homosexual young men. At the same time, his sto-
ries do not fit the conventional modes of either
racial or gay fiction.
Though born in Brooklyn, at the age of six
weeks Kenan was taken by his paternal grandfa-
ther to Wallace, North Carolina, and then to Chin-
quapin in rural Duplin County, to be raised by his
father’s relatives. The name “Kenan” has long been
associated with the area, specifically with a white
immigrant slave owner. Some of his slaves were
apparently the ancestors of the author. The black
Kenans were prosperous farmers with a staunchly
conservative religious faith. Formal schooling
came at a segregated kindergarten and then at in-
tegrated public schools. Kenan’s interest in science
led him to major in physics when he enrolled at the
University of North Carolina. In addition to sci-
ence courses, he took classes in African-American
studies and, in his sophomore year, signed up for
a creative writing class. This combination led himKenan, Randall Garrett 297