Short Story Criticism | Ellison, Ralph (Vol. 79) - Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (essay date winter 1983)

Chikwenye Okonjo Ogunyemi (essay date winter 1983)

SOURCE: Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. “‘The Old Order Shall Pass’: The Examples of ‘Flying Home’ and ‘Barbados.’” Studies in Short Fiction 20, no. 1 (winter 1983): 23-32.

[In the following essay, Ogunyemi assesses Ellison's “Flying Home” and Paule Marshall's “Barbados.”]

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.

—Margaret Walker, 1942

“Flying Home” by Ralph Ellison and “Barbados” by Paule Marshall are two exceptional stories in Langston Hughes' 1967 collection,...

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