Busted in New York and Other Essays

An essay collection that “places a historical lens on the most pivotal moments in black America. . . . [from] one of the most vital intellectuals of our time” (Candace McDuffie, The Christian Science Monitor).

In these twenty-five essays, Darryl Pinckney gives us a view of our recent racial history that blends the social and the personal and wonders how we arrived at our current moment. Busted in New York and Other Essays traces the lineage of black intellectual history from Booker T. Washington through the Harlem Renaissance, to the Black Panther Party and the turbulent sixties, to today’s Afro-pessimists, and celebrated and neglected thinkers in between.

These are capacious essays whose topics range from the protests in Ferguson, Missouri, to the eighteenth-century Guadeloupian composer Joseph Bologne, from an unsparing portrait of Louis Farrakhan to the enduring legacy of James Baldwin. The essays themselves are a kind of record, many of them written in real-time, as Pinckney witnesses the Million Man March, experiences the highs and lows of Obama’s first presidential campaign, explores the literary black diaspora, and reflects on the surprising lesson he learned about the changing urban fabric of New York.

“A companionable guide to this difficult era. . . . There wasn’t a critic in America who could speak with equal measures of warmth and intelligence like Baldwin until Pinckney emerged in his full power in the 1990s." ?John Freeman, The Boston Globe

"A deeply satisfying, beautifully crafted collection of work by a writer of uncommon excellence and humanity." ?Kirkus Reviews, starred review

"[Pinckney] reveals himself to be a skillful chronicler of black experience in literary criticism, reportage and biography." ?Lauretta Charlton, The New York Times Book Review