Confronting Racial Difference Issue

The Fall 1990 issue of Ploughshares, guest-edited by James Alan McPherson and DeWitt Henry. Ploughshares, a journal of new writing, is guest edited serially by prominent writers who explore different and personal visions, aesthetics, and literary circles.

Acclaimed author James Alan McPherson and Ploughshares founder and author DeWitt Henry bring together a special edition of Ploughshares titled "Confronting Racial Difference." In James Alan McPherson's essay, "The Done Thing," he writes, "There is much work that all Americans have to do to revitalize our country's spiritual life, to reclaim from the clutches of the domain of law those heartfelt assumptions that are our own. But there is a tremendous amount of work that African Americans have to do to reclaim, perhaps for the entire society, the momentum of the movement toward greater spiritual civility that was the lifework of Dr. Martin King." 

This special edition of Ploughshares brings together writers of many backgrounds and offers, as DeWitt Henry says, "an energy of new voices." In his essay "On My Racism: Notes by a WASP," Henry goes on to say "Here is a largely ignored and unwritten collective experience being voiced, and variously and artistically voiced. This is the news. This is the news of our changing society and world."

This special edition of short stories, memoirs, and essays addressing racial differences in the United States features work by Diana Abu-Jaber, Robert Boswell, Sam Cornish, Kim Edwards, Garrett Hongo, Chris Offutt, George Packer, and Alberto Alvaro Rios.