Swing Low: Black Men Writing

A companion volume to Carroll's I Know What the Red Clay Looks Like: The Voice and Vision of Black Women Writers published this past fall, Swing Low collects interviews with and excerpts from 16 black male authors. The collection spans a diverse group including seasoned veterans like Henry Louis Gates Jr., Ishmael Reed, playwright August Wilson, and Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Yusef Komunyakaa, as well as newer voices like Trey Ellis, Darryl Pinckney and journalist Nathan McCall. The interviews are similarly various: exceptionally funny and insightful, each author really reveals something about himself, personally or politically, something that helps readers gain new understanding of his work. Refreshingly, few of these authors spew the typical `I was born to write' lines. Instead, they talk about what schooling they had or jobs they took before being published. They also discuss what experiences led them to write, the differences between professional and passionate writing, and how they write. ``The ability to work alone in complete solitude is difficult,'' says Leon Forrest at one point; ``I remember when I first got the notion of writing in my head, I set up my typewriter at the beach thinking that I would be able to write while I socialized and looked at young ladies! But this is not the way of the writer. The solitude and the loneliness are the dues that a writer must pay.'' (Feb.)