List of Works

Middle Passage

Dreamer

Oxherding Tale

Black Men Speaking

Faith and the Good Thing

The Sorcerer's Apprentice

Soulcatcher and Other Stories

Being and Race: Black Writing Since 1970

Black Humor

Half-Past Nation Time

Africans In America

Turning the Wheel: Essays on Buddhism and Writing

(not a complete list)

"I looked at Black-American literature and I didn't see many philosophical writers. I saw three, principally: Wright, Ellison, and Toomer. So there was this void, not only in America in terms of the philosophical novel, but also in Black-American literature. With my background in philosophy, I thought that I could fill that void. So I wrote the first novel."

Rutherford Calhoun in Middle Passage: "If this weird, upside-down caricature of a country called America, if this land of refugees and former indentured servants, religious heretics and half-breeds, whoresons and fugitives...was all I could rightly call home, then aye: I was of it...Do I sound like a patriot? Brother, I put it to you: What Negro, in his heart (if he's not a hypocrite), is not?"