Winds Can Wake up the Dead: An Eric Walrond Reader

Eric Walrond (1898-1966), a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement, is a seminal writer of Black diasporic life, but much of his work is not readily available. This new anthology brings together a broad sampling of Walrond's writings, including not only selections from his celebrated Tropic Death (1926) but also other stories, essays, and reviews. Louis J. Parascandola's introduction to the collection provides the most complete description to date of Walrond's life and work. It brings together previously undocumented biographical information that situates him in the context of his times, and it offers both an overview and a renewed appreciation of his writings. This book restores Walrond to his proper place in the history of African American and Caribbean literature and is an essential reader for students of Black culture.

Eric Walrond (1898-1966), a significant figure in the Harlem Renaissance and New Negro Movement, is a seminal writer of Black diasporic life, but much of his work is not readily available. This new anthology brings together a broad sampling of Walrond's writings, including not only selections from his celebrated Tropic Death (1926) but also other stories, essays, and reviews.

Born in British Guiana in 1898 and raised in Barbados and Panama, Walrond arrived in the U.S. in 1918 when the wave of West Indian immigrants was reaching its peak. He worked as an editor for Marcus Garvey's Negro Worm and Charles S. Johnson's Opportunity but moved on to Europe after ten years. This anthology retraces Walrond's migratory life by focusing on key periods of his work.

Examples of his apprentice writing document his early encounters with racial prejudice and his ambivalence toward the Garveyites, while a second section focuses on his involvement with the New Negro Movement and reflects both his emphasis on racial pride and interest in literary aesthetics. A third section contains impressionistic stories from Tropic Death, which vividly depicts the lives and culture of Caribbean Blacks and still holds a unique place in Black literature. A final section samples Walrond's work from England, much of it unknown today, where he continued to write on the themes of migration, discrimination, and racial pride until his death in London in 1966.

Louis J. Parascandola's introduction to the collection provides the most complete description to date of Walrond's life and work. It brings together previously undocumented biographical information that situates him in the context of his times, and it offers both anoverview and a renewed appreciation of his writings. This book restores Walrond to his proper place in the history of African American and Caribbean literature and is an essential reader for students of Black culture.

Library Journal

Editor Parascandola has done an excellent job of providing introductory material and notes as well as selections from the writings of Eric Walrond. The introduction places Walrond in the pantheon of African American and Afro-Caribbean writers, as well as among his contemporaries in the Harlem Renaissance. Walrond was born in Guyana, grew up in Barbados and Panama, spent his early adulthood in the United States, and lived the remainder of his life in Europe. His peripatetic lifestyle not only affected his writing but was in many ways its subject. These selections provide a good mixture of Walrond's journalism--some of which appeared in Marcus Garvey's Negro World and Charles S. Johnson's Opportunity--as well as his fiction. Though some of Walrond's writing is more functional than literary, there is much in this collection of literary and historical interest. Recommended wherever there is an interest in African American literature and essential for most academic libraries. [Parascandola is an LJ reviewer.--Ed.]--Denise Johnson, Bradley Univ. Lib., Peoria, IL

Louis J. Parascandola is an associate professor of English at Long Island University.