Lay Bare the Heart

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lay Bare the Heart: An Autobiography of the Civil Rights Movement is a 1985 non-fiction book by James Farmer, published by Arbor House in 1985. A subsequent edition is published by Texas Christian University Press. It documents his role in the Civil rights movement.

Background

Circa 1966 he began organizing his notes that would be used to make an autobiography.[1]

Content

The book has descriptions of Malcolm X and Martin Luther King.[2]

"Intellectual Coming of Age," the fourth part, describes how the Harlem Renaissance and the Civil rights movement developed creative and intellectual life.[3]

"God and Goddamn," the twelfth chapter, describes how Farmer navigated social life in Washington, DC.[4]

Reception

Reviewer Beth Brown wrote that the work is "highly emotional, yet coolly accurate and objective".[1]

David Levering Lewis of Rutgers University wrote that the book is "strikingly human", and that it has "an appearance of honesty" and "extraordinary eloquence and emotional power."[5]

It won the Lillian Smith Book Award in 1985.[6]

References

Further reading

Loading related searches...

Wikiwand - on

Seamless Wikipedia browsing. On steroids.