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A Novelist, a Poet, and the Human Experience in All of Its Colors and Formulations

Tess Chakkalakal has written a conventional, if eloquent, biography of Charles W. Chesnutt. Alexis Pauline Gumbs, just as eloquent, has composed a phenomenal work aimed at extending Audre Lorde’s work.

Cleveland Public Library via Wikimedia Commons
Charles W. Chesnutt, circa 1897. Cleveland Public Library via Wikimedia Commons
CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

‘A Matter of Complexion: The Life and Fictions of Charles W. Chesnutt’
By Tess Chakkalakal
St. Martin’s Press, 384 Pages

‘Survival is a Promise: The Eternal Life of Audre Lorde’
By Alexis Pauline Gumbs
Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 528 Pages

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CARL ROLLYSON
CARL ROLLYSON

Mr. Rollyson is the author of The Life of William Faulkner and The Last Days of Sylvia Plath. He has published fourteen biographies and has written about biography for The Wall Street Journal, The Washington, Post, The San Francisco Chronicle, The New Criterion, and other publications.

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