. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program

. Your purchase supports More Than Words, a nonprofit job training program for youth, empowering youth to take charge of their lives by taking charge of a business. All orders guaranteed and ship within 24 hours.

Light shelfwear; 9.1 X 6.3 X 1.0 inches; 320 pages.

Light shelfwear; 9.1 X 6.3 X 1.0 inches; 320 pages.

New York. 1992. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in

New York. 1992. Farrar Straus Giroux. 1st American Edition. Very Good in Dustjacket. 0374169985. 1st Novel. 309 pages. hardcover. Jacket illustration-detail from 'Dawn in Harlem' by Winold Reiss. keywords: African American Literature America. DESCRIPTION-What is blackness? Is it an enduring legacy based on the truth of struggle, handed down from generation to generation? Or is it socially defined and hence ever-changing? The unnamed narrator of Darryl Pinckney's pointed, hilarious, and provocative novel raises this existential question again and again as he searches for an authentic model for being himself. HIGH COTTON evokes a world that has not often been written about before, and never with such acuity and finesse. It is the world of upper-middle-class blacks, of ‘nice Negroes, ' ‘upper shadies' obsessed with light skin and good hair, exponents of Negro Firsterism and pride in Negro achievement that sometimes turns out to be hypocrisy. Our hero's bumpy progress takes him from a safe childhood in conservative Indianapolis to integration and adolescent Anglophilia, to a brief tenure as minister of information in a local radical organization; later, after student wanderings in Harlem and a tour of duty among the urban proletariat, he gets a taste of the expatriate life in Paris. Yet somehow, as he encounters and tries on various contemporary styles of blackness across the social spectrum, the narrator's imagination is increasingly dominated by the powerful figures of his elderly relations and the lessons of their experiences in the ‘Old Country' of the South-especially his eccentric and incorruptible preacher grandfather Eustace. Rich in irony, powerfully scenic, and inhabited by indelible characters, HIGH COTTON is a brilliant book, elegant, insightful, and remarkably sustained-a debut that establishes Darryl Pinckney as a major writer. inventory #25621.

First edition. Topedge a trifle foxed, else fine in a near fine dust jacket

First edition. Topedge a trifle foxed, else fine in a near fine dust jacket with a short tear on the rear panel. Front flap of dust jacket contains a fourteen-line blurb by Susan Sontag. Author's first book.

First edition. Page edges trifle foxed else fine in fine dust jacket. Nicely

First edition. Page edges trifle foxed else fine in fine dust jacket. Nicely Inscribed on the half-title, quoting a line from the poet Randall Jarrell: "Dear readers, you *was* too few." The author's first book; the dust jacket flaps print blurbs by Jamaica Kincaid and Susan Sontag.