Collections
- Hue and Cry (1969)
- Elbow Room (1977)
Non fiction
- Crabcakes (1998)
- Fathering Daughters (1998)
- A Region Not Home (2000)
Collections Book Covers
Non fiction Book Covers
James Alan McPherson Books Overview
Hue and Cry
Hue and Cry is the remarkably mature and agile debut story collection from James Alan McPherson, one of America’s most venerated, most original writers. McPherson’s characters gritty, jazzy, authentic, and pristinely rendered give voice to unheard struggles along the dividing lines of race and poverty in subtle, fluid prose that bears no trace of sentimentality, agenda, or apology. First published in 1968, this collection includes the Atlantic Prize winning story ‘Gold Coast’ selected by John Updike for the collection Best American Short Stories of the Century and introduced America to McPherson’s unforgettable, enduring vision and distinctive artistry.
Elbow Room
A beautiful collection of short stories that explores blacks and whites today, Elbow Room is alive with warmth and humor. Bold and very real, these twelve stories examine a world we all know but find difficult to define. Whether a story dashes the bravado of young street toughs or pierces through the self deception of a failed preacher, challenges the audacity of a killer or explodes the jealousy of two lovers, James Alan McPherson has created an array of haunting images and memorable characters in an unsurpassed collection of honest, masterful fiction.
Crabcakes
With the same grace and lyrical precision that distinguish his vibrant short stories, James McPherson surveys the emotional upheaval of his last twenty one years. From Baltimore, Maryland, to Cambridge, Massachusetts, to Iowa and Japan, Crabcakes witnesses McPherson’s confrontation with the past, and his struggle to make sense of it and to bind it, peacefully, to the present. His elliptical search for meaning and his ultimate understanding of what makes us human finds in Crabcakes a powerful and enduring voice.
Fathering Daughters
A landmark collection of original essays that fills the void of writing by men about their daughters. Contributors include Phillip Lopate, Rick Bass, Gerald Early, Gary Soto, Scott Sanders, Nicholas Delbanco, and Alan Cheuse.
A Region Not Home
For two decades following his winning the Pulitzer Prize for Elbow Room, James Alan McPherson retreated from the literary world while he held a teaching position at the University of Iowa Writers’ Workshop. Written during this time spent teaching, A Region Not Home: Reflections from Exile is a deft collection of McPherson’s brilliantly composed essays that cover a broad spectrum of his intellectual pursuits. They offer poignant and lively interpretations of life that, placed side by side, create a medium through which the sublime speaks to the ordinary and the ordinary to the sublime. McPherson writes of the longing of the human soul by unifying thoughts of his deep affection for his daughter and the meaning of Disneyland; transcendental meanings in life and the tedium of long waits in airports; coming to self knowledge and the cruel rituals of fraternity pledge week. McPherson combines his past with his present by writing of such people and places as Ralph Ellison, a friend and source of inspiration; James O. Freedman, former president of Dartmouth College and crusader against the conservative Dartmouth Review; Rachel, his daughter; Morris Brown College, his alma mater; El Camino Real, the main thoroughfare of affluent Palo Alto, California; and Iowa City, a place he holds close to his heart. McPherson’s prose uncovers his profound understanding of the ebb and flow of life’s sorrows and delights and reveals his search for connections between everyday drudgery and a greater sense of purpose. Reaching every note on the register of human emotions, A Region Not Home is a meditation on what it means to be human an enlightening and soulful work reaching to the core of suffering and joy.
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