Faculty

Darryl Pinckney

Darryl Pinckney was born in Indianapolis, Indiana, in 1953 and attended Columbia University. In 1977, he began to write for the New York Review of Books. Pinckney's High Cotton, published in 1992, is a coming -of-age novel that depicts a young Black man's futile attempts to escape from old and new styles of Black identity, as defined by his grandfather's generation and his own militant contemporaries. Pinckney is currently working on Sold and Gone, a collection of essays about African-American literature in the 20th century that examines black writers from Charles Chesnutt to Edward P. Jones. According to the publisher's description of the book, "Pinckney describes the changing cultural influences on black writers and in this book asserts that there are myriad forms evident in African American literary narrative." He questions the place accorded to folklore and the oral tradition and looks at Black literature as belonging to specific literary traditions. Pinckney has recently completed a monologue about Mary Queen of Scots, Mary Said What She Said, for a Robert Wilson production in Luxembourg starring Jeanne Moreau.

Recent Presentations/Exhibits