The Making of a Black Communist

Louis J. Parascandola is professor of English at Long Island University.?He has edited or coedited several collections, including:?Heroine of the Harlem Renaissance and Beyond: Gwendolyn Bennett's Selected Writings; Amy Jacques Garvey: Selected Writings from The Negro World, 1923-1928; A Coney Island Reader: Through Dizzy Gates of Illusion; and?Eric Walrond: The Critical Heritage.?His scholarship has appeared?in Asian American Literature: Discourses and Pedagogies;?Langston Hughes Review;?Afro-Americans in New York Life and History;?Comparative Literature Studies; and more.

"Parascandola provides not only a thorough introduction of Eugene Gordon and his writings, through which readers can glean his importance, but also accessible explanatory notes for each of the writings collected in the volume, which is instructive for the reader who may not be familiar with the historical context(s) in which Gordon was writing. The collection also includes writings that focus on themes that are relevant to our historical moment, including the intersections of race, class, and gender; racial and gender violence; and race and labor." - Charisse Burden-Stelly, author of Black Scare/Red Scare: Theorizing Capitalist Racism in the United States "This new volume helps recover the work of Eugene Gordon, a leading figure of the Black Left in the 1930s who has received little scholarly attention. Parascandola's book does much to correct that." - James Smethurst, author of Brick City Vanguard: Amiri Baraka, Black Music, Black Modernity