Echo Tree: The Collected Short Fiction of Henry Dumas - Henry Dumas

Henry Dumas's fabulist fiction is a masterful synthesis of myth and religion, culture and nature, mask and identity. From the Deep South to the simmering streets of Harlem, his characters embark on real, magical, and mythic quests. With an astonishing ear for language, Dumas creates a mythology of the psychological, spiritual, and political development of African American culture by interweaving Christian metaphor, African cosmologies, music, black diasporan folklore, and America's history of slavery and endemic racism. For the first time, all of his short fiction is gathered here, including several previously unpublished stories.