SOON, ONE MORNING: New Writing by American Negroes 1940-1962

Fiction, essays and poems, about two-thirds of Soon, One Morning is new writing, some of it composed especially for this volume. Perhaps its single most outstanding selection is a very long, formerly unpublished chapter from Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man. A correspondence between James Baldwin and his agent gives something of an inside look at that writer's habits and work methods. Langston Hughes is represented by an amusing memoir about his helping to make a Negro film in Moscow (it never gets made), and Richard Wright by a selection from his last, unfinished novel. The volume demonstrates that Negro writing since 1940 has lessened its concern for protest and social consciousness, to become more aware of the creative act itself in composition. The book maintains a very high level of writing and the stories actually tell stories. Recommended for all collections large or small.