The Life of Randall Kenan essays

The Life of Randall Kenan essays Randall Kenan was born in Brooklyn, New York in 1963. However, he spent most of his childhood in Chinquapin, North Carolina. He graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill where he received a B.A. in English in 1985. From 1985 to 1989, he worked in the editorial staff of Alfred A. Knopf, publishers. He now teaches at the University of Memphis where he serves as a thesis director. Kenan is known for his work and his definition of black in America. Growing up in North Carolina with skin the color of coffee without cream made it hard for Kenan to succeed. On his road to success, he came across Gabriel Garcia Marquez, an author whose work influenced him to write. Marquez was an enormous influence on Kenans state of being and his way of looking at the world. Kenan said that black is a true ghost of the mind. He believed that within certain segments of the African-American community, there could be certain attitudes that somebody is blacker than another person is. He realizes that being black means something different to each person. He finds that the historical imprint of oppression is a common element, which some recognize and some block out. With this attitude and kind of influence, his passion for the world and writing expanded. Kenan is famous for writing A Visitation of Spirits, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead, and Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twentieth Century. All of his work is based on the same philosophy. They deal with the political, economic, and social issues of being black. His first novel, A Visitation of Spirits was published in 1989. It vividly portrays four generations of a Southern black family in rural North Carolina. In this novel, Kenan speaks eloquently and with a great deal of courage about personal and communal strife within the black community. Three years after the publication of h ...