argument, by comparison to biblical characters,
quoting songs, and using visual images.
King closes “Letter” with echoes of hope and
expectations of fulfillment from “Yours for the
cause of Peace and Brotherhood, Martin Luther
King Jr. April 16 1963.” As a result, King “estab-
lished a kind of universal voice, beyond time, be-
yond race. As both humble prisoner and mighty
prophet, as father, harried traveler, and cornered
participant, he projected a character of nearly un-
assailable breadth” (Branch, 740).
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Branch, Taylor. Parting the Waters: America in the
King Years, 1954–63. New York: Simon and Schus-
ter, 1988.
King, Martin Luther, Jr. “Letter from a Birmingham
Jail.” In Martin Luther King, Jr.: I Have A Dream,
Writings and Speeches That Changed the World,
edited by James M. Washington, 83–100. San
Francisco: Harper Collins Publishers, 1986.
Miller, William Robert. Martin Luther King, Jr.: His
Life, Martyrdom and Meaning for the World. New
York: Avon Books 1968.
France A. Davis
Lewis, William Henry (Hank) (1967– )
Although born in his family’s hometown of Den-
ver, Colorado, Hank Lewis, poet and short story
writer, grew up in Chattanooga, Tennessee. He
received a B.A. degree in literature and literary
writing from Trinity College (1989) in Hartford,
Connecticut, and an M.F.A. in fiction from the
University of Virginia (1994). In addition to serv-
ing as Allan K. Smith Assistant Professor of Cre-
ative Writing, Fiction, an endowed chair at Trinity
College, Lewis has taught at the Greater Hartford
Academy of Arts, University of Virginia, Mary
Washington College, Denison University, and the
Hurston/Wright Summer Writing Workshops.
After teaching at the College of the Bahamas and
Centre College for several years, Lewis currently
teaches at Colgate College in New York.
Lewis, whose poetry is included in the anthol-
ogy Beyond the Frontier: African American Poetry
for the 21st Century, has also won accolades for
his short stories, which have been published in
Ploughshares, Callaloo, and African American Re-
view. Lewis’s award-winning short story, “Shades,”
was included in Best American Short Stories of- Narrated from the point of view of a 14-
year-old boy, “Shades” is a bildungsroman. The
nameless protagonist sees his father for the first
time, at age 14, during a neighborhood festival,
when his mother points him out. “There is your
father,” she said. Wishing to know his “real” father,
in place of the one he had imagined, the protago-
nist approaches his father, briefly getting his at-
tention, gesturing to shake his hand. “I arched my
hand out to slide across his palm, but he pulled
his hand back, smiling, a jokester, like he was too
slick for my eagerness.” Though close enough to
engage a conversation, the protagonist’s father fails
to recognize the son he conceived and left behind
more than 14 years before, after making love to the
protagonist’s mother in the midst of the summer
heat. In the end, watching his father walk out of
his life once again, the protagonist is left to imag-
ine the conversation they might have shared and to
complete his rites of passage into manhood with-
out the guidance of his father.
In the Arms of Our Elders (Carolina Wren Press,
1994), Lewis’s first collection of stories, won the
1993 Sonja S. Stone Fiction Contest and earned
rave reviews. Lewis’s one-act play, Peeling Potato,
has been produced at Waldorf College and was
anthologized with Road to the Black Mesa, an-
other one-act play, in Strawberries, Potatoes and
Other Fantasies (Trinity College, 1988). Lewis’s
second collection of short stories, I Got Somebody
in Staunton (2005) registers his commitment to
exploring the complex lives of and giving voice to
African-American males. I Got Somebody received
the Black Caucus of the American Library Associa-
tion (BCALA) Honor Book Award (2006).
Rosemarie Mundy Shephard
Living Is Easy, The Dorothy West (1948)
DOROTHY WEST’s critically acclaimed novel, The
Living Is Easy, takes its title from the hit song,Living Is Easy, The 315