y greatest debt is to Louis Parascandola and Carl Wade, experts on Eric Walrond and keepers of the flame. They have been unstintingly generous, providing critical documents and deepening my understanding of the value of Walrond’s writing and life story to scholars and general readers alike. I am grateful to Joan Stewart, granddaughter of Eric Walrond, who provided access to the family papers in the possession of her late mother, Dorothy Stewart. I also wish to thank Dorothy Bone, whose late husband, Robert Bone, conducted extensive research toward a biography of Eric Walrond thirty years ago, without which this book would not be possible. Many people supported this project with interventions and encouragement, including Imani Wilson, Charles Molesworth, David Killingray, John Cowley, Oneka Labennett, A’Lelia Bundles, Shondel Nero, Katherine Zien, Brent Edwards, Nydia Swaby, Laura Lomas, Amy Cherry, Alice Goheneix, Claire Joubert, Emelienne Baneth, Vanessa Perez-Rosario, Michelle Stephens, Tryon Woods, Aaron Jaffe, Jeffrey Perry, Luis Pulido Ritter, Patrick Scarborough, and my colleagues at Radical Teacher magazine and the Professional Staff Congress. For submitting gamely to unannounced interviews in Wiltshire County, UK, I am grateful to John Cottle, Gerald Bodman, and Mary Lane. For their generosity, I wish to thank Melva Lowe de Goodin and Glenroy James of the Society for the Friends of the Afro-Antillean Museum, Panama City. This project benefited from the early support of a National Endowment of the Humanities seminar, led by Carolyn Levander and Rachel Adams, and a fellowship at the Leon Levy Center for Biography, whose founder, Shelby White, deserves thanks. My co-fellows, Ilan Ehrlich, Hyewon Yi, Maryann Weaver, Thulani Davis, and Molly Peacock, were wonderfully supportive, as were the directors David Nasaw and Nancy Milford. I am grateful for the assistance of many archivists: Sara Garrod, George Padmore Institute; Mary Kiffer, Guggenheim Foundation; Lorna Haycock and Bill Perry, Wiltshire Heritage Museum and Library; Claire Skinner and Michael Marshman, Wiltshire and Swindon History Centre; Elspeth Healey, Harry Ransom Research Center, University of Texas; JoEllen El Bashir, Moorland-Spingarn Research Center, Howard University; Andrea Jackson and Kayin Shabazz, Robert W. Woodruff Library, Atlanta University Center; Carol Leadenham, Hoover Institution Archives, Stanford University; Lee Anne Titangos, Bancroft Library, University of California; Christopher Harter, Amistad Research Center, Tulane University; Diana Carey, Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute; and Sherry Warman, Brooklyn College Library. For supporting my research and travel, I thank the Research Foundation of the City University of New York, the Leonard and Claire Tow Faculty Research Fund, and the Brooklyn College School of Humanities and Social Sciences. I would like to acknowledge the encouragement of my colleagues in Brooklyn College’s English Department and American Studies Program, too numerous to name here, and I am especially grateful to Joseph Entin, Ellen Tremper, Prudence Cumberbatch, and Martha Nadell. My students are a source of inspiration, and those in Comp Lit 7701 in Spring 2011 deserve particular recognition for helping me refine my thinking. At Columbia University Press, Whitney Johnson has been enormously helpful, and my outside readers, Gary Holcomb and Michelle Stephens, offered incisive suggestions that dramatically improved the book. My editor, Philip Leventhal, has been unflappable and sagacious at every turn, and I am grateful for his guidance. My family has been stalwart in their support and interest; many thanks to Jane and Rob Madell, to my parents, and most of all to Eva, Rose, and Jody, with great affection.