Friday, February 12, 2010

African American Crime Fiction

Probably like most of you, I've been reading detective fiction since I was in my early teens. I think I received the Doubleday collected Holmes stories as a gift from my parents when I was about 16.

Later, I wrote and published one mystery novel, featuring a rural sheriff as the detective.

And I've taught a class on detective fiction a few times. One interesting aspect of such a class is that you get some students who take simply because they have been reading in the genre independent of "school" work. In a sense they are connoisseurs.

Now I'm considering developing a course on African American detective fiction, or at least I'm taking steps toward the consideration. In the process, I discovered a few recent anthologies, including

African American Crime and Mystery Stories, edited by Eleanor Taylor Bland. I'm enjoying it a lot. Here's a link:

anthology

1 comment:

Louis A. Willis said...

SOMEBODY HAS AT LAST RECOGNIZED AFRICAN AMERICANS WRITE CRIME FICTION. THANK YOU.

SOME BOOKS YOU MAY WANT TO READ: "OUT OF THE WOODPILE" BY FRANKIE Y. BAILEY; "SPOOKS, SPIES, AND PRIVATE EYES" BY PAULA L. WOODS; "THE BLUES DETECTIVE" BY STEPHEN F. SOITOS; AND RECENTLY PUBLISHED "BLACK NOIR" A SHORT STORY ANTHOLOGY EDITED BY OTTO PENZLER.