Sippi: A Novel By John Oliver Killens

Current racial conditions are the central concern of a novel set in Mississippi and New York

Terri

You never know what you’ll find in a second hand bookshop when you’re traveling the world. I found this gem in Antigua, Guatemala and I’m so glad now that I picked it up.
Written over 50 years ago but just as important now as it would have been then this tracks the childhood and young manhood of a character destined to change the world he grew up in. It’s of it’s time but still so powerful.
Ellen Morris Prewitt

I'm in the midst of reading Black Mississippi fiction authors. Killens doesn't qualify, but this story is set in Mississippi during the civil rights years. (Primarily, it was for sale in the bookshop of the Mississippi Civil Rights Museum so I bought it.) It wasn't exactly what I was expecting. Much of it is wonderfully written, but is a different style of writing from what I'm used to today (it was published in 1967) with a good bit of repetition. Still, the author made the characters so real. The story allows the young narrator to be confused initially about how to navigate the white world and takes us through his eye-opening experiences. And the author doesn't succumb to giving us a happy ending to his stories but sticks with the truth of what Mississippi was.