Relocations of the Spirit: Essays

About this book

In this collections opening autobiographical essay entitled "In the Light of Likeness - Transformed" Leon Forrest tells us that he came from a lower-middle-class Negro household on the South Side of Chicago. My father was a bartender on the Santa Fe Railroad and Daddy would read to me and my mother when he was at home. My mother read to me constantly. My great-grandmother lived with us until I was ten and I used to read the Bible to her mainly the Old Testament". Leon Forrests lifetime love of words shines forth in the essays articles and book reviews that comprise this volume. We share his fine-tuned careful perceptions in essays on the moment of epiphany in the black Baptist church on Michael Jordan on Toni Morrisons novel Sula on William Faulkner on Billie Holiday on the sculptor Richard Hunt among many others. Book reviews address James Baldwins Just Above My Head Joyce Carol Oates Son of the Morning Rita Mae Browns Six on One and The Book of Sand by Jorge Luis Borges. In each we learn something new about literature about life about ourselves. The pieces in Relocation of the Spirit traverse twenty years in American culture. Leon Forrest was there as witness - and we are wiser for his observations.