Henderson, Errol A. “Black Nationalism and Rap
Music.” Journal of Black Studies 26, no. 3 (1996):
308–339.
Johnson, Lemuel A. “ ‘Ain’ts,’ ‘Us’ens,’ and ‘Mother-
Dear’: Issues in the Language of Madhubuti,
Jones, and Reed.” Journal of Black Studies 10, no.
2 (1979): 139–166.
“Third World Press: Thirty Years of Book Publish-
ing.” The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education 18
(1997–98): 66–67.
Madhubuti, Haki. Tough Notes: A Healing Call for
Creating Exceptional Black Men. Chicago: Third
World Press, 2002.
Kevin Morgan
Major, Clarence (1936– )
Clarence Major is a poet, novelist, short fiction
writer, visual artist, essayist, lexicographer, editor,
and anthologist. Although known best for his ex-
perimental novels, he has long demonstrated his
versatility in both the artistic forms he uses and
the subject matter he selects. He tests boundaries,
asserting and enacting the freedom of the artist to
explore the full range of human experience. One
source of his versatility was his early exposure
to both the North and the South. Though born
in Atlanta, he moved, at age 10, to Chicago with
his mother after his parents were divorced. A key
Chicago experience for him was exposure to mod-
ern art, especially the impressionists. He studied
briefly at the Chicago Art Institute when he was
- Although he decided to focus his artistic efforts
primarily in writing, he has used his painting and
photography in his fiction, especially Reflex and
Bone Structure (1975) and Emergency Exit (1979).
Much of Major’s work, especially fiction, has
been experimental in that it has broken down con-
ventional assumptions about character, plot, and
narrative voice. His early texts in particular tend
to be fragmentary rather than unified in structure;
likewise, their principal theme is the impossibil-
ity of a coherent identity in contemporary society.
This pattern holds in the two novels mentioned
above, as well as All-Night Visitors (1969), No
(1973), My Amputations (1986), and some of the
stories in Fun and Games (1988). In these works,
Major joins Donald Bartheleme, Thomas Pyn-
chon, and ISHMAEL REED in challenging the view
that fiction either reflects or constructs a meaning-
ful reality. But like Reed, Major also sees cultural
significance in metafictional storytelling. His frag-
mented characters are rootless and often paranoid,
in quest of a meaning that forever eludes them.
In two novels that are more realistic, he exam-
ines the same issue. Such Was the Season (1987)
uses a southern folklike narrative voice that echoes
ERNEST GAINES’s The AUTOBIOGRAPHY OF MISS JANE
PITTMAN and GLORIA NAYLOR’s MAMA DAY in its
down-home wisdom as well as its position as a
moral center by which to judge others. But Major
complicates the narrative by having the character
Annie Eliza draw much of her knowledge not from
traditional black experience but from television
talk shows and soap operas. Similarly, Painted Tur-
tle: Woman with Guitar (1988) tells the experiences
of a Zuni woman who has been forced out of the
tribe because she has worked as a prostitute and
because she questions the traditional ways. She
makes her living as an itinerant folk singer whose
songs become her means of trying to claim an
identity for herself as Zuni. A man who is himself
Hopi-Navajo and thus outside of her experience, as
well as uncertain about his own identity, narrates
the novel. Dirty Bird Blues (1996), with its focus on
the odyssey of a BLUES musician, Manfred Banks,
finds Major returning to his southern roots. Set in
the 1950s, it focuses on the migration of southern
blacks to the North and Midwest and the culture
they brought with them to this new environment.
It also plays out the rootlessness of modern life as
a version of the blues.
Another of the early influences on Major’s writ-
ing was the work of French artists such as Ray-
mond Radiguet and Arthur Rimbaud; his interest
in white European and American literature is re-
flected in many allusions in both his fiction and
poetry. The importance of the Western tradition is
clear in a recent book of poetry, Surfaces and Masks
(1988), which is entirely about the experiences of
Americans in Venice, with literary references toMajor, Clarence 327