A Drop of Patience - by William Melvin Kelley (Paperback)
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<p/><br></br><p><b> About the Book </b></p></br></br>"One of the great jazz novels of any era, A Drop of Patience tells the story of a blind horn player's journey through the themes of race, blindness, and music.At the age of five, Ludlow Washington is given up by his parents to a brutal white-run state institution for blind African American children, where everyone is taught music--the only trade by which they are expected to make a living. Ludlow is a prodigy on the horn and at fifteen is "purchased" out of the Home by a bandleader in the fictive Southern town of New Marsails. By eighteen he is married with a baby daughter, but as his reputation spreads he seeks to grow musically, leaving his budding family for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New York City. Navigating the worlds of music and race and women, Ludlow's career follows an arc towards collapse, a nervous breakdown, recovery, a long-delayed public recognition, only for him to finally abandon the spotlight and return to his roots and find solace in the black church. A Drop of Patience is a brilliant portrayal of a jazz musician. It stands apart as an exemplary parable of African American history, of racial politics, and of musical creative genius." --Provided by publisher.<p/><br></br><p><b> Book Synopsis </b></p></br></br><b>One of the great jazz novels of any era, <i>A Drop of Patience</i> tells the story of a blind horn player's journey through the themes of race, blindness, and music.</b> <p/>At the age of five, Ludlow Washington is given up by his parents to a brutal white-run state institution for blind African American children, where everyone is taught music--the only trade by which they are expected to make a living. Ludlow is a prodigy on the horn and at fifteen is purchased out of the Home by a bandleader in the fictive Southern town of New Marsails. <p/>By eighteen, he is married with a baby daughter, but as his reputation spreads, he seeks to grow musically, leaving his budding family for a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity in New York City. Navigating the worlds of music and race and women, Ludlow's career follows an arc towards collapse, a nervous breakdown, recovery, a long-delayed public recognition, only for him to finally abandon the spotlight and return to his roots and find solace in the black church. <br><i><br>A Drop of Patience</i> is a brilliant portrayal of a jazz musician. It stands apart as an exemplary parable of African American history, of racial politics, and of musical creative genius.<p/><br></br><p><b> Review Quotes </b></p></br></br><br><i>A Drop of Patience</i> is a moving, painful, and stinging experience. --<i>The New York Times Book Review</i> <p/>William Melvin Kelley . . . brought a fresh, experimental voice to black fiction in novels and stories that used recurring characters to explore race relations and racial identity in the United States. --William Grimes, <i>The New York Times</i> <p/>[A] stylistic triumph . . . considerably more than a story about jazz, Negroes, and the fringe of society. On any level, this is quite an achievement --<i>Library Journal</i><br><p/><br></br><p><b> About the Author </b></p></br></br>WILLIAM MELVIN KELLEY was born in New York City in 1937 and attended the Fieldston School and Harvard. The author of four novels and a short story collection, he was a writer in residence at the State University of New York at Geneseo and taught at The New School and Sarah Lawrence College. He was awarded the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award for lifetime achievement and the Dana Reed Prize for creative writing. He died in 2017. In 2014 Kelley was officially credited by the <i>Oxford English Dictionary</i> with coining the political term woke, in a 1962 <i>New York Times</i> article entitled If You're Woke You Dig It.
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