Cart
Free Shipping in Australia
Proud to be B-Corp

The Wedding Dorothy West

The Wedding By Dorothy West

The Wedding by Dorothy West


$14.49
Condition - Very Good
Only 3 left

The Wedding Summary

The Wedding by Dorothy West

With a new introduction by DIANA EVANS

'Timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender' Emma Garman, Paris Review

Set on a bucolic Martha's Vineyard in the 1950s, THE WEDDING tells the story of life in the Oval, a proud, insular community made up of the best and brightest of the East Coast's black bourgeoisie. Within this inner circle of 'blue-vein society', we witness the prominent Coles family gather for the wedding of their loveliest daughter, Shelby, who could have chosen from 'a whole area of eligible men of the right colors and the right professions.' Instead, she has fallen in love with and is about to be married to Mead Wyler, a white jazz musician from New York. A shock wave breaks over the Oval as its longtime members grapple with the changing face of its community.

Not just the story of one wedding, but of many, this compelling story offers insights into issues of race, prejudice and identity while maintaining its firm belief in the compensatory power of love.

Through a delicate interweaving of past and present, North and South, black and white, THE WEDDING unfolds outward from a single isolated time and place until it embraces five generations of an extraordinary American family. It is an audacious accomplishment, a monumental history of the rise of a black middle class, written by a writer who lived it. Wise, heartfelt, and shattering, it is Dorothy West's crowning achievement.

The Wedding Reviews

In The Wedding, West brilliantly portrays the ferocity of class, race, and gender distinctions within family, groups, and generations - Entertainment Weekly

West published her second novel, The Wedding (1995), at the age of 87. It received an ecstatic reaction ... Set on the Vineyard on a single summer weekend, The Wedding is narrated by an irresistibly droll omniscient voice that veers across centuries to trace the knotty, reverberating heritage of an affluent African American family ... timelessly cinematic, with painterly visual descriptions and pitch-perfect dialogue that ranges across class, region, race, age, and gender - PAris Review

The tranquility of a late summer weekend in 1953 is shattered by a tragic accident in this spare, affecting novel by one of the last surviving members of the Harlem Renaissance ... Through the ancestral histories of the Coles family, West subtly reveals the ways in which color can burden and codify behavior. The author makes her points with a delicate hand, maneuvering with confidence and ease through a sometimes incendiary subject ... a triumph. - Publisher's Weekly

You have only to read the first page to know that you are in the hands of a writer, pure and simple. At the end, it's as though we've been invited not so much to a wedding as to a full-scale opera, only to find that one great artist is belting out all the parts. She brings down the house - New York Times

West is a wonderful storyteller, painting vivid and memorable scenes of the life and plight of African Americans from slavery to the fifties. The Wedding is an engrossing tale - USA Today

About Dorothy West

Dorothy West's career spans eight decades. A leading light of the Harlem Renaissance movement of the 1930s, she founded literary magazines Challenge and New Challenge. Her short stories appear in numerous anthologies of 20th century African-American fiction. She died in 1998

Additional information

GOR010195362
9780349012049
0349012040
The Wedding by Dorothy West
Used - Very Good
Paperback
Little, Brown Book Group
20190822
240
N/A
Book picture is for illustrative purposes only, actual binding, cover or edition may vary.
This is a used book - there is no escaping the fact it has been read by someone else and it will show signs of wear and previous use. Overall we expect it to be in very good condition, but if you are not entirely satisfied please get in touch with us

Customer Reviews - The Wedding