With advancement at work, an attractive wife, and a comfortable apartment, he has achieved the 1960s version of the white man s American dream. This dream, however, slowly becomes a nightmare, and Mitchell can t seem to wake up. Mitchell and his wife enact the twists and turns of human relationships in this startling novel about the intersections of race, class, sex, love, and marriage. Packed with irony, dem exposes the complexities of prejudice on a multitude of levels, thereby encouraging readers to examine their own hidden stereotypes. Mitchell s prejudices play themselves out in a variety of ways.
Infidelity is a major thread in the novel.
At the prompting of Caryle, Mitchell claims black roots at a party. From the 1960s through the mid 1970s, a new generation of African American writers, visual artists, dramatists, dance troupes, and musicians formed what came to be called the Black Arts Movement. The tenets of this group included the responsibility of artists to their communities, the union of ethics and aesthetics, and mediation between cultural production and political commitment. The Black Arts Movement included such artists as John A. Williams, Amiri Baraka, Nikki Giovanni, Sonia Sanchez, Clarence Major, and Elizabeth Catlett. William Melvin Kelley s other books include the novels A Different Drummer , A Drop of Patience , Dunfords Travels Everywheres , and the short story collection, Dancers on the Shore .