The Art of John A. Williams
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"My family now has accepted my being a writer; it did not at first. They seemed to feel that writing was like a bad cold and soon would pass. In a family where everyone for generations had earned their bread with muscle and sweat, as I once earned mine, I felt I had become a freak....
Young black writers will go through the same thing until we have established as a race, here in America, a tradition of books, literature, and writing. Once in this nation, it meant death for a black man to even learn to read; but we are freeing ourselves of this fear."