Hubert Fichte - The Black City

The Black City is a portrait of New York written by Hubert Fichte between 1978 and 1980. Fichte researched the city as the center of the African diaspora, conducting interviews and composing essays about syncretism in culture and the arts, material living conditions in the city, and political and individual struggles based on race, class, and sexuality. His interview partners include Michael Chisolm, arts educator and coordinator of the Black Emergency Cultural Coalition; German emigre and artist Lil Picard; photographer Richard Avedon; Leopold Joseph, publisher of the exile newspaper Haiti Observateur; and Teiji Ito, composer and Vodou initiate. The last chapter of the book is a self-reflective literary analysis of Herodotus, the first white European to write extensively of his travels and (desirous) encounters in Africa.