Through the eyes of fiction writers, poets and journalists in 27
Views of Greensboro, we see Greensboro s neighborhoods and the
neighbors who make them what they are including parts of the city
that have fallen on hard times, and ones that have experienced
something of a rebirth. We see the charm of parks and natural areas
that sustain the city dwellers. Michael Parker, the novelist,
enjoys running on the watershed trails just north of the city.
Quinn Dalton, fiction writer, shares her fascination with the two
tigers that live at the Greensboro Science Center near her home and
that seem to think of her children as potential prey. The
incomparable poet and novelist Fred Chappell casts his discerning
eye on the people who take refuge at the Green Valley Grill at the
O. Henry Hotel during an ice storm. Jeri Rowe, a longtime columnist
for the News & Record, tells the What-a-Burger story, and Katie
Saintsing, of Our State magazine, relates how she grew up behind
the counter of Maxie B s bakery.
Admirably, the book confronts head-on the reality that beneath the
placid, white-bread surface, Greensboro has a history that includes
the sit-ins at Woolworth s in 1960 and the Klan-Nazi Massacre in
1979. Another reality is that those events that thrust Greensboro
onto the nation s front pages were not unrelated to the softer,
insidious racial discrimination that was long a way of life in
genteel Greensboro. In Our House Has Two Stories, Allen Johnson,
now the editorial page editor of Greensboro s daily newspaper,
writes matter-of-factly and thoughtfully about the nice white
family that sold a brick home in Woodmere Park to his black parents
when he was 11, because blacks were moving into the neighborhood
and they needed to leave. Linda Beatrice Brown, author of fiction
and nonfiction, titles her essay A Nice Nasty Town. --From
Greensboro.com
Eno publishers has two more city-featured books out in its local
anthology series for residents and visitors alike. 27 Views of
Greensboro: The Gate City in Prose & Poetryfeatures contemporary
writers who create a sense of place (and also explain why
Greensboro is nicknamed The Gate City ). From the iconic civil
rights struggle to the recent revitalization of downtown, the
writers explore Greensboro through the lens of history,
storytelling and memoir. With an introduction by novelist Marianne
Gingher, the book includes works by Allen Johnson, Lorraine Ahearn,
Tina Firesheets, Linda Beatrice Brown, Jeri Rowe, Logie Meachum,
Val Nieman, Diya Abdo, Ann Deagon, Lee Zacharias, Drew Perry, Quinn
Dalton and others. --Carolina Country, July 2015
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