Al encuentro del hombre

“There’s no way out of suffering. But you try all sorts of ways to keep from drowning in despair.” The men and women in these eight stories understand this truth, and their tales illustrate the ingenious and often desperate ways they try to stay afloat. A fading jazz pianist who needs heroin to confront his terror of pouring his life into an inanimate instrument. A God-fearing father who cannot forgive his son for being illegitimate. A Black woman in love with a white man who knows he will abandon her. A racist Southern sheriff’s deputy who has blinded himself to the horrific childhood memory of the day his parents took him to watch a jubilant mob murder a Black man. These are some of the stories collected in this essential volume for understanding the universe of the African-American genius and the central themes of his work: French exile and the fear of returning, the stormy relationship with his father and with religion, hidden or repressed homosexuality, belonging to American culture, the continuous racist threat and the false consciousness that derives from it.