This Is Life

Frank London Brown is one of the most important voices in Black Chicago literature. A singer, factory worker, and union organizer, he died of leukemia at the age of 35 in 1962. Brown's 1959 novel Trumbull Park has long been known as a gripping portrait of segregation and white supremacist violence in the urban North. For years, Brown's authorship of "This Is Life," a series of very short stories published in the Chicago Defender, was unknown to devotees of his published work; even his family members didn't know they existed. Trenchant, at times experimental, sometimes sad and often witty, these vibrant vignettes open a window to Black life in mid-century Chicago-one that remains relevant today. The stories, which fell out of copyright and have never before been collected, appear together for the first time in this volume. This Is Life offers an important and timely contribution to the growing reputation of one of Chicago's great writers.