An introduction to africanamericanliterature.net

My homepage about African American literature and culture so far consists of two series, Reading Black and Random Notes (more series are planned).

At 75, encouraged by friends and family (none of whom, by the way, are readers of African American literature) I have been persuaded to share my thoughts and knowledge about some of the books that I have been reading for over half a century now. 

Content. It is not a news column. As a starting point, it is simply notes on some of the books – new or old –  I have read since the beginning of this year, 2019. Some entries go beyond the particular book I am writing about, but I try to keep it down to a single page or two (printed out), and I will not go beyond three!

Later on, I might take on whatever book I have read in the past.

Chronological lists and index. The date at the bottom of the page of the Reading Black series is the date I finished reading the book in question (not the date I wrote the review), whereas the date at the bottom of the Random Notes is actually the date I wrote the article.

There is a chronological list for the Reading Black series, and one for the Random Notes series; and an index covering both series, a list of authors, editors, artists, titles, and subjects, with the date under which you will find the article.  New 2022: An Overview of articles, by genre.

I hope that you will enjoy reading these notes as much as I enjoyed writing them. And that they will be so much easier for you to read than it was for me to write them!  

Contact. If you want to give me feedback, you can do so by mailing me at udsfischer@yahoo.dk. Please let me know if I can use your feedback, and if I can edit it, in some future 'random note', or attached to the relevant article. Any factual errors in my articles will be corrected.

This, of course, is not a condition for your writing back to me, nor is it a promise that I will use your feedback on the website. It might prove to be too time consuming.

After all, I want go on reading other books already published or forthcoming, like Vincent O. Carter’s autobiographical The Bern Book (finally coming out in a paperback edition), Bob Kaufman’s Collected Poems, and The Romare Bearden Reader, edited by Robert G. O’Meally, books that I am looking forward to be reading and writing about. Wish me a long life!  

The editor. My name is Uffe Dan Sparre Fischer (UFI). A retired journalist and teacher of Danish to immigrants and refugees between the ages of 18 and 81, a few even older, I taught my last class in October, 2017. I live in Bagsvaerd, a suburb to Copenhagen, Denmark.

PS! A short autobiographical sketch on how I came to be a reader of African American literature may be forthcoming – if I can get it right!