A biography for Darryl Pinckneyhasn’t been written yet.
“Once upon a time, I was morbidly sensitive about the impertinence born of sociology. Taxi drivers would not stop for me after dark; white girls jogged to keep ahead of my shadow thrown at their heels by the amber street lamps. Part of me didn't blame them, but most of me was hurt.”
“As long as white newspapers were unwilling or unable to attack 'anti-Negro' forces or to air the views of black reformers, there was a service black newspapers could provide.”
“Eventually, I gave up my sublet in Berlin and stayed in England for a long time - for about 20 years.”
“'Harlem: The Unmaking of a Ghetto' is a surprise and a fresh way of looking at Harlem, connecting the black district with the architecture of its historical past.”
“Novels set in distant places give us expectations not unlike those we have of travel writing, and often the distinctions are blurred, as in, say, the way the low life of Tokyo's Shinjuku Ward is depicted in John David Morley's recent 'Pictures from the Water Trade.'”
“The name James Baldwin had been around the house for as long as I could remember and meant almost as much as that of Martin Luther King.”
“I'd waste a holiday trying to set a story in this new place I'd visit, whereas I would never write a story about Indianapolis.”
“When I was in high school, I looked for the black presence in a British historical tradition - before too much slavery and empire - that would not cost me my self-respect.”
“Frederick Douglass had charged the air with rebellion and redemption, and these in turn had supported him in the heat of abolitionism. But the atmosphere changed to one of repression after the Civil Rights Act of 1875.”
“The novel and the film of 'The Color Purple' are both works of the imagination that make claim to historical truth.”
“When writing on black life, whites have often been unwelcome, usually called upon to give witness or hauled in as the accused.”
“Race pride, socialist ideals, and a sincerity as exalted as that of Carlyle's visionaries coalesced in Asa Philip Randolph.”