Romare Bearden in the Homeland of His Imagination: An Artist's Reckoning with the South

Inspiring...an insightful biography of one of the twentieth century's most preeminent artists, whose powerful, intimate work illuminates the beauty and resilience of the human spirit."-Foreword Reviews

A thoughtful, illuminating investigation of Bearden's place in-and shaping of-20th-century American art...incisive."-Kirkus Reviews

Like Bearden's art, Gilmore's biography pulses with energy and will resonate with readers of Isabel Wilkerson's The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America's Great Migration."-Library Journal

A powerful volume...Bearden's work is evidence that one can go home, if only in memory."-INDY Week

To say that I was completely enchanted by Glenda Gilmore's new book on the late artist Romare Bearden is an understatement . . . [Gilmore] invites the reader to consider the ways in which we all construct our past by some strange alchemy of memory and creativity, filling in the gaps with stories we have heard or things we have dreamed or imagined. Does this make the past any less real? Does it make the people who inhabit it any less alive?"-Wiley Cash, The Assembly

[In this] careful study [that feels] like a poignant dedication...Gilmore sets a timeline, critiques some striking artworks, and leaves the reader wondering why hardly anyone writes about art this succinctly...By contextualizing Bearden's art within larger critiques of a bourgeois industry, she does what all great art writing should do: re-politicize what has always been political."-Billie Anania, Jacobin