Collected essays & memoirs - Albert Murray

Editors Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Paul Devlin present a definitive edition of Albert Murray's collected nonfiction, including his 1971memoir South to a Very Old Place, inspiration for Imani Perry's South to America.

In his 1970 classic The Omni-Americans, Albert Murray(1916-2013) took aim at protest writers and social scientists whoaccentuated the "pathology" of race in American life. Againstnarratives of marginalization and victimhood, Murray argued thatblack art and culture, particularly jazz and blues, stand at the veryheadwaters of the American mainstream, and that much of whatis best in American art embodies the "blues-hero tradition"-a heritage of grace, wit, and inspired improvisation in the face ofadversity. Murray went on to refine these ideas in The Blue Devilsof Nada and From the Briarpatch File, and all three landmark collectionsof essays are gathered here for the first time, togetherwith Murray's memoir South to a Very Old Place--inspiration for Imani Perry's South to America, his brilliantlecture series The Hero and the Blues, his masterpiece of jazz criticism Stomping the Blues, and eight previously uncollected pieces.

LIBRARY OF AMERICA is an independent nonprofit cultural organization founded in 1979 to preserve our nation's literary heritage by publishing, and keeping permanently in print, America's best and most significant writing. The Library of America series includes more than 300 volumes to date, authoritative editions that average 1,000 pages in length, feature cloth covers, sewn bindings, and ribbon markers, and are printed on premium acid-free paper that will last for centuries.