Anthologies of African American Writing

From the Ashes: Voices of Watts

"From the Ashes: Voices of Watts" . Ed. Budd Schulberg. New York: New American Library, 1967. x+277 pp.

Introduction / Budd Schulberg -- I remember Papa. Will there be another riot in Watts? The sand-clock day. Crazy nigger. Losers weepers / Harry Dolan -- Morality. Indictment. Black power. To Mr. Charles and Sister Annie. Watts / Alvin A. Saxon -- Listen, America, ebony middle-class is talking. The house on Mettler Street. The stake-out / Jeanne Taylor -- The workin' machine. The world is ready to explode. As bald as she could be. My beard. I'm here! Negro history. Sammy Lee. This is the home of my fathers. Race compliments / Jimmie Sherman -- To save a tear. Jealousy. The law. Brief thought before dawn. The shoe shine. What is. Suppression. Existence. The jewel / Guadalupe De Saavedra -- The Coming of the hoodlum. India. The suicide note. Hush. Bad news. Attention. The fish party. Jeremy. Intent. Chaos in a gehtto alley. Black consciousness. Alan Paton will die. Long live the Peace Corps of America. Watts, 1966 / Johnie Scott -- Another day. Love of a woman. My black man's togetherness was called revolt / Vallejo Ryan Kennedy -- Life, a gamble / Ernest A. Mayhand, Jr. -- Reveille. Shade of darkness. Jean. Some notes on the Frederick Douglass Writers' House / James Thomas Jackson -- The realization of a dream deferred. Lullaby, my son / Fannie Carole Brown -- Consequence / David Reese Moody -- A deep blue feeling / Edna Gipson -- Love or life. A serpent smiles. In the name of God / Emmery Evans -- Black phoenix. What can I say? Tomorrow. Christmas in the ghetto / Blossom Powe -- Watts-little Rome / Sonora McKeller -- Memoirs of a shoeshine boy / Harley Mims -- Infinite, Me-I'm black. You and I. Who's life? One, two, three. Insanity. The question. Who's the man asleep? / Leumas Sirrah -- A black mother's plea. The promise of strangers / Birdell Chew -- Appendix : The trial of T.

• n/a

• "Selected writings, including autobiographical essays, poems and stories, by eighteen contributors to the Watts Writers Workshop, founded in South Los Angeles after the riots of 1965" (WorldCat).
• "One immediate result [in the wake of the Watts riots of 1965] was the establishment of the Watts Writers Workshop by white novelist and screenwriter Budd Schulberg, who wanted to do something positive in the aftermath of the Watts uprising. The workshop brought older and younger apprentice authors, some of whom, notably Quincy Troupe, Harry Dolan, and Johnie Scott, went on to some considerable success as authors and screenwriters. It gained regional and national attention largely through a 1966 NBC documentary, 'The Angry Voices of Watts' (directed by Schulberg's brother Stuart), through its high-profile regional readings, and through its publications, especially its 1967 anthology "From the Ashes", the first Black Arts literary anthology" (James Smethurst and Howard Rambsy II. "Reform and Revolution, 1965-1976: The Black Aesthetic at Work." "The Cambridge History of African American Literature". Ed. Maryemma Graham and Jerry W. Ward, Jr. Cambridge: Cambridge UP, 2011. 443).

Kinnamon 1997: 468]

A0076