Description:
Telling life stories is a cultural heritage that African Americans can trace back hundreds of years, to the West African storytellers-musicians-historians called griots. In The African American Guide to Writing and Publishing Nonfiction, Jewell Parker Rhodes encourages African American writers to be modern-day griots, acquainting themselves with the work of earlier writers and committing their own lives and the lives of others to paper. As with Free Within Ourselves, in which Rhodes focused on fiction writing, it would be a shame for non-African Americans to overlook this book. Rhodes's advice on writing (autobiography, memoir, and personal essays), revising, and getting published is solid, clear, and specific. She manages to make cheery affirmations not seem cloying. And she provides copious excerpts from a compelling African American canon, including longer pieces by Nathan McCall, Maya Angelou, Patrice Gaines, and Lorene Cary. The book concludes with advice from more than 30 black writers, including Pearl Cleage. "Tell the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth," Cleage urges, "especially about the stuff you'd rather lie about." --Jane Steinberg
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