RICHER, THE POORER: Stories, Sketches and Reminiscences

The Paris Review said, 'timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender.' The stories contained here are as American as jazz, and as wise and as multifaceted as their writer. Dorothy West's metier is the unique crucible in which America places its black middle class, but her themes are universal - the daily misunderstandings between young and old, men and women, rich and poor that can lead to tragedy, and the ways in which bonds of family and community can bring us together and tear us asunder. These autobiographical essays explore the poles of West's remarkable life from growing up black and middle-class in Boston to her near-mythic trip to Moscow in 1933 with Langston Hughes and other Harlem Renaissance writers to live on her beloved Martha's Vineyard. A celebrated novelist, short story writer, essayist and editor, this is a collection of her most luminous stories, a world of black people reaching for the American dream in the wake of slavery and often finding themselves betrayed or betraying themselves in their struggle to conform to standards that are only half theirs. She writes like a social historian, capturing significant moments that seem to alter lives forever or change nothing at all. 17 short stories and 13 essays in what may appear to be two books in one by a writer of huge compassion and acute observation. 272pp, paperback.