The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams

Another neglected novel whose author was once mentioned in the same breath as Ellison and Baldwin is The Man Who Cried I Am by John A. Williams, which I began to read shortly after seeing John A. Williams's obituary this month in the NYT, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/07/art...

Like No No Boy, The Man Who Cried I Am hit way too close to the bone to be embraced by white readers in its time, and it is now out of print. Reviews of the novel and of Williams at the height of his career as a novelist, often use the term "angry" to describe both Williams and his work. The "angry black man" label is an all too familiar way that authors become sidelined or deflected from their personal truths by a predominantly white critical reading audience. The critical reception of The Man Who Cried I Am reminds me of the intense scrutiny Ta-Nehisi Coates is receiving from white critics, after the publication of his most recent book, Between the World and Me. In critical reviews of the book, Coates's straight words about his personal experience living as a black man in America are taken somehow as offensive to whites, a feeling that in turn leads to a preachier-than-usual David Brooks scolding Coates in Brooks's July 17 2015 New York Times column:

http://www.nytimes.com/2015/07/17/opi...