Randall Kenan is the author of a novel, A Visitation of Spirits (Grove Press, 1989), and two collections of stories, Let the Dead Bury Their Dead (Harcourt, 1992), which was a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and a New York Times Notable Book, and If I Had Two Wings (W. W. Norton, 2020). He also wrote two works of nonfiction: Walking on Water: Black American Lives at the Turn of the Twenty-First Century (Knopf, 1999), which was nominated for the Southern Book Award, and The Fire This Time (Melville House, 2007). Kenan also edited and wrote the introduction for The Cross of Redemption: The Uncollected Writings of James Baldwin (Pantheon, 2010). He worked on the editorial staff of Alfred A. Knopf, Inc, and taught at Sarah Lawrence College, Columbia University, Duke University, the University of Memphis, Vassar College, and the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill. Kenan’s awards include a Whiting Award in Fiction and Nonfiction, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the North Carolina Award for Literature, and the American Academy of Arts and Letters’ Rome Prize. He passed away in 2020.
-
Let the Dead Bury Their DeadStoriesFrom"Cornsilk"
Am I sitting here amid boxes of chicken and snow-peas, beef and broccoli, gooey rice and the remnants of an eggroll dabbled in mustard and duck sauce, scribbling the thoughts of a madman? Or am I merely depraved? Are these the thoughts of a neurotic? A psychopath? Or am I just more honest than most? Smarter? Am I daring greatly? Or have I been cursed for violating a sacred trust older than Yoruba legend and Nippon lore? Am I the victim of the gods’ own jealous wrath? Eat of any tree in the garden, but you are damned if you eat of the fruit of the One Tree. Double-damned if you enjoy it. Triple-damned if you can’t get enough.
Damn.
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead:Stories -
Let the Dead Bury Their DeadStoriesFrom"Run, Mourner, Run"
The order and rhyme of what happened next ricocheted in a cacophony in Dean’s head even now: Ray blinks awake: Percy: his three sons: the sound snap-click-whurrr, snap-click-whurrr, snap-click-whurrr: dogs yapping: tugging at their leashes: Well, well, well, look-a-here, boys, salt-n-pepper: a dog growls: the boys grin and grimace: Dean jumping up, naked, to run: Get back in that bed, boy: No I—: I said, get back in that bed: snap-click-whurrr, snap-click-whurrr: a Polaroid camera, the prints sliding out like playing cards from a deck: the sound of dogs panting: claws on wooden floors: the boys mumbling under their breath: fucking queers, fucking faggots: damn, out of film.
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead:Stories -
Let the Dead Bury Their DeadStoriesFrom"Let the Dead Bury Their Dead"
…but anyway they took him and they took and named him Pharaoh, that’s where he come to get that name. See, they use to do things like that, take a slave and name him after a king—Caesar, Napoleon, something like that. Thought it was funny, some kind a joke. But this time the joke was on them. They say ole Pharaoh had some plot cooking in his head from day one. See, them Crosses ain’t know nothing bout his history of skipping off cause the man what sold him wont bout to run off at the mouth bout his always getting aloose and being so ornery. So ole Pharaoh played the good slave, Tomming it up, you know. Had him out in the field first, cause he was so big and strong and black. And from the way he worked and behaved you couldn’t a believed this had been the same man. Ah, but he was a man of powerful magic. And somehow or nother he got closer and closer to the house.
Let the Dead Bury Their Dead:Stories
"Insightful, taut, elegantly written . . . One cannot read this book without coming away with feelings of hope. We may continue to stumble at times in what Wynton Marsalis has called this dance we've been doing since the founding of the republic. But reading Randall Kenan, one knows somehow that the dance is worth each step." —The Herald-Sun (Durham, NC) [on The Fire This Time]
“A masterwork . . . a panoramic document of African-American life at the end of the 20th century . . . It is also a labor of love and a majestic offering to the future . . . One of the book's many pleasures is its texture. In one chapter we meet the black owner of a convenience store in Ilewild, Mich. and, in another, Kenan introduces us to a black filmmaker, winner of a MacArthur genius grant.” —Salim Muwakkil, Chicago Tribune [on Walking on Water]
“Randall Kenan’s second work of fiction is nothing short of a wonder-book . . . Fiercely and relentlessly, hilariously and sympathetically, Randall Kenan unfolds layer upon layer of the interlocked existences of his Tims Creek citizens. In Let the Dead Bury Their Dead he has created, in a single obscure hamlet, a deeply and peculiarly American community, as memorable as any I have encountered in recent fiction.” —The New York Times
Selected Works
- Print Books
- Find your local bookstore (via IndieBound)
- Bookshop
