Happy Birthday, Albert Murray
Born May 12, 1916, Nokomis, AL | Died August 18, 2013 (age 97), Harlem, NY
Essayist, novelist, music critic, and poet Albert Murray’s first nonfiction book, The Omni-Americans, was praised by Walker Percy as “the most important book on black-white relations in the United States, indeed on American culture, published in this generation." Today, the Best American Essays newsletter celebrates the 109th anniversary of Murray’s birth.
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"I think a writer’s individuality, his originality, and his achievement of self-hood are all determined by what he accepts of what he inherits, as well as by that which he rejects."

“Protest literature is a form of discourse all right, but only a genius can make it work by going beyond what it’s designed to do. At its best, I suppose that protest literature could be close to the function of very important satire—in terms of dynamics. You know, spoofing something that is really out there at the time, And if you’re good enough, it’ll go beyond that. But it’s got to go beyond that in order to be literature. Otherwise, it’s just campaign sloganeering, it seems to me. If you’re interested in the human predicament and human possibilities on the earth, you’re concerned with something more fundamental than a structure that might change in two, four, or six years, depending on who gets into office.”
First published essay:
“The Problem is Not Just Black and White." Life Magazine, July 3, 1964. A review of seven books. Reprinted in Library of America’s Collected Essays & Memoirs
Select Nonfiction Bibliography:
Albert Murray: Collected Essays & Memoirs. (Library of America, 2016).
Conversations with Albert Murray, edited by Roberta S. Maguire (University Press of Mississippi, 2010).
See also, works by authors whose essays have appeared/been listed in Notables in The Best American Essays series:
By Clifford Thompson:
"Our Hero and His Blues: Celebrating Albert Murray." Los Angeles Review of Books, May 2016
By Henry Louis Gates Jr.:
“Unlocked,” The New Yorker, August 2013.
“King of Cats." The New Yorker, March 1996.
By James Marcus:
"Home Truths," Columbia Journalism Review, May 2013.
By Darryl Pinckney:
"Riffs," The New York Review of Books, January 2001.
By Sanford Pinsker,:
"Albert Murray: the Black Intellectuals' Maverick Patriarch." Virginia Quarterly Review, 1996.
Watch Hyphens, Heroes, and Dragons: Conversation with Albert Murray, Auburn University, 2008.
Watch Albert Murray Interview by Monk Rowe, 1997.
Listen to Albert Murray Talks Music, 2016.
Best American Essays editorial assistant Cheyenne Paterson contributed to this post.