Visible Man: The Life of Henry Dumas

by Jeffrey B. Leak

Henry Dumas (1934–1968) was a writer who did not live to see most of his fiction and poetry in print. A son of Sweet Home, Arkansas, and Harlem, he devoted himself to the creation of a black literary cosmos, one in which black literature and culture were windows into the human condition. While he certainly should be understood in the context of the cultural and political movements of the 1960s―Black Arts, Black Power, and Civil Rights―his writing, and ultimately his life, were filled with ambiguities and contradictions.

Dumas was shot and killed in 1968 in Harlem months before his thirty-fourth birthday by a white transit policeman under circumstances never fully explained. After his death he became a kind of literary legend, but one whose full story was unknown. A devoted cadre of friends and later admirers from the 1970s to the present pushed for the publication of his work. Toni Morrison championed him as “an absolute genius.” Amiri Baraka, a writer not quick to praise others, claimed that Dumas produced “actual art, real, man, and stunning.” Eugene Redmond and Quincy Troupe heralded Dumas’s poetry, short stories, and work as an editor of “little” magazines.

With Visible Man , Jeffrey B. Leak offers a full examination of both Dumas’s life and his creative development. Given unprecedented access to the Dumas archival materials and numerous interviews with family, friends, and writers who knew him in various contexts, Leak opens the door to Dumas’s rich and at times frustrating life, giving us a layered portrait of an African American writer and his coming of age during one of the most volatile and transformative decades in American history.

Genres: Biography, Nonfiction, African American

216 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

Reviews

[Audra · Rating 5 out of 5]

Henry Dumas was gunned down in 1968 by a police officer under circumstances that remain unclear to this day.

He was a writer whose life was indelibly marked by the Great Depression, Jim Crow, and the Civil Rights movement. His writings focused on these things. He wrote about how black life was severely impacted by the violence of the white man. It's ironic that the things he wrote about would also bring about his own demise. His death is a story black people know all too well: dying at the hands of a white police officer.

I'm looking forward to reading his short stories but saddened that his work isn't as well known as it could -- and should -- be. I'm also saddened to know that he never got to enjoy the fruits of his labor of the one passion he had: writing.

[Malik A · Rating 5 out of 5]

I am a true devotee to the work of Henry Dumas. A brilliant, albeit troubled poet, his work is as Amiri Baraka proclaimed, "real, man, and stunning." One need only read his short story "Ark of Bones" to recognize that he or she is in the presence of a true & rare talent. For this reason, I was so pleased to find out that an in depth biography of the author would be published; before this, you could not find much more than a biographical sketch of his life in an article or book blurb. So, I preordered the book and finished it in just a few sittings; more due to my desire to read the life of such a influential artist (on me & my work, at least) than due to the book's revelations. Truth be told, the biographer, Jeffrey B. Leak, was not able to fill in many of the gaps due to the lack of Dumas's correspondence & other personal papers (his wife having burned a number of them after a separation). However, the biographer does his best to fill in those blanks by examining his poetry & fiction in light of the times he lived in a produced his work. For this alone, if nothing else, the biography is well worth the read. It's just disappointing that so much of his story will remain shrouded in mystery, his death especially. With that being said, I highly recommend this book for anyone who is interested in being introduced to a man who possessed so much brilliance, so much promise, and who, even in his short years, as author Toni Morrison said, "completed work, the quality and quantity of which are almost never achieved in several lifetimes." Reading Leak's book Visible Man only further causes me to wonder what great art the world lost on that NYC subway platform in 1968.

[Vanessa · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really enjoyed this book. The writer was open about the difficulty had in gathering information and stories that were factual about Henry Dumas but it was not needed. A lot of information was provided and the story of Henry's life was told with such appreciation and empathy that the book was a steady page turner. Henry was very interesting, times were hard and the foreboding ending to his story was more entertaining than needed. It was hard to feel sorry for Henry yet easy to be prideful of the writing he left behind. Without this book one would never know the person behind the writing. Wrong assumptions would have been made left and right.

[Craig Werner · Rating 3 out of 5]

Henry Dumas is one of the most underrated African American writers. The short stories and poems he wrote during the formative years of the Black Arts Movement--start with "Ark of Bones" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken"--rank at the very top of the literary production of that complicated and chaotic era. Unfortunately, only a few of Dumas's works were published during his lifetime (and then mostly in student magazines from Rutgers University). He's been receiving steady attention from critics of African American literature, thanks in large part to the efforts of Eugene Redmond, and he'll finally receive (much too little) space in the next edition of The Norton Anthology of African American Literature.

With that in mind, Jeffrey Leak's biography is a very welcome addition to the shelf of African American literary biographies. The difficulties Leak faced were immense. It wasn't until the last year of his life--which ended when he was shot by a New York City Transit Policeman after Dumas, who had sunk into drug-induced volatility--that Dumas began to receive any attention at all. So there was no reason for anyone close to him to think of him as a potential subject for a biography. Nonetheless, Leak managed to track down and gain the cooperation of most of the people who knew Dumas best in his adult years--his wife and long-time mistress, his Rutgers friends, and, most importantly Redmond, whose efforts saw Dumas's stories and poetry into press (with the support of Toni Morrison).

Visible Man provides the outline of Dumas's story and more detail than we had any right to hope for. It's not a perfect book. (For one thing, there are a horrendous number of minor stylistic problems and apparent typos that should have been caught in proofing.) Leak's generalizations about the historical contets of Dumas's work are frequently unconvincing--he presents a simplified and at times stereotypical view of the Sixties and of the rise of Black Power. Still, I'm grateful to him for having dedicated the energy it took to tell a story that could easily have been lost.

[M. Abduh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Poet Amiri Baraka described the work of Henry Dumas as "real, man, and stunning." One need only read Dumas’s short story "Ark of Bones" to realize that he was a true & rare talent. For this reason, I was elated when an in-depth biography of the writer was finally published. Before this, one could not find much more than a biographical sketch of his life in an article or a blurb.

I finished the book in just a few sittings, out of a strong desire to learn everything I could about such a influential poet (on me & my work in particular). But truth be told, the biographer, Jeffrey B. Leak, was unable to fill in several gaps in Dumas’s life story. This was due, in part, to the lack of correspondence & personal papers. (Dumas’s wife had burned a number of his letters after a separation). However, the biographer does his best to fill in some of those blanks by examining his poetry & fiction in light of the times in which he lived & produced his work. For this alone, the biography is well worth the read. It is disappointing, however, that so much of his story remains shrouded in mystery—his death especially.

Still, I highly recommend the book for anyone who is interested in learning more about a man who possessed so much brilliance, so much promise, and who, even in his short years, according to Toni Morrison, "completed work, the quality and quantity of which are almost never achieved in several lifetimes."

Reading Leak's book Visible Man, one can only imagine what the world lost on that NYC subway platform in 1968.

[Cardyn Brooks · Rating 5 out of 5]

Jeffrey Leak renders the compelling details of Henry Dumas's life with unsentimental clarity and compassion and bits of ironic humor. This chronology of one man's life during the evolution of the U.S. from Jim Crow to the peak of Civil Rights fervor is so engaging on multiple levels of the personal, societal, political, artistic, and economic circumstances of Dumas as man, artist, soldier, husband, father, student, employee, provocateur, adulterer, friend, mentor, adversary, supplicant. His blackness infuses every facet of his personality and life, but maybe not his death.

Visible Man is about the assertion of identity. In addition to being a fascinating biography about Henry Dumas, it reveals interesting tidbits about Toni Morrison and her use of her position as an editor at Random House to expand mainstream publishing access to ethnic minority writers. It also mentions Malcolm X, Claude and Shelby Steele, the Black Arts Movement, Black Power, and other historical references with intimate details as they directly impacted Dumas, who is a distinctly rendered individual at the same time that his life represents the brilliance and squandered gifts of thousands (millions?) of Black men who died too young during that era.

This beautifully written biography echoes the author's deep appreciation for Henry Dumas as an exceptionally talented, very flawed, mercurial human being.

[Darla · Rating 4 out of 5]

I received this book in the Goodreads First Book giveaway and devoured it in seven days. Knowing the ending made the reading more poignant as I became aware of a vibrant and talented writer whose life was cut short by the turbulent sixties, perhaps contributed to by his use of substances, but certainly by a (SPOILER ALERT)gunshot fired in a Harlem subway station by a white station officer just weeks after the assassination of Dr Martin Luther King. Dr Jeffrey Leak of UNC Charlotte has done an amazing job of bringing Dumas back to life and chronicling his life with careful research and very little archival material. Fortunately, oral history interviews with three key people in his life contributed to a biography that could not have otherwise been written. Had Dumas lived, one can only imagine the four or five more decades of his voice. As it stands, he died at 33, a minor poet with the potential for greatness, and most of his work published posthumously. Leak's book will convince you of how great his loss was to art, and specifically to African-American literature.

[Mills College Library]

biog D8865L 2014