Pow Wow

de Ishmael Reed

Using the yardstick that a short story is any fiction under 15,000 words, Ishmael Reed-with the assistance of Carla Blank-has assembled an anthology that includes work ranging from bear stories of the Tlingits to African-American folklore to the hip-hop writings of Kevin Powell. Pow-Wow is the sequel to Reed’s From Totems to Hip-Hop: A Multicultural Anthology of Poetry Across the Americas, 1900-2002, a volume that included both Tupac Shakur and T. S. Eliot, and was named one of the best poetry anthologies of 2003 by Library Journal. Its fiction-focused follow-up will once again demonstrate Reed’s broad range, from such stellar names as Erskine Caldwell, Toni Cade Bambara, Langston Hughes, and Alejandro Murguia to newly discovered writers of all races, genders, and backgrounds.