John Langston Gwaltney (1928 - 1998) was an African-American writer and anthropologist focused on African American culture[1][2], best known for his book Drylongso: A Self Portrait of Black America.[3][4]
Contents |
Gwaltney earned a BA from Upsala College in 1952, an 1957 MA from the New School for Social Research in 1957, and a Ph.D. in anthropology from Columbia University in 1967. He was a professor of anthropology at the University of Syracuse in New York.
Drylongso is a collection of Gwaltney's transcriptions of oral interviews with who he described as "core black people", ordinary men and women who made up black America. In the interviews, he asked people to define their culture. The book includes a glossary of African American terms, and interviews with 42 people from the Northeast United States. The title is from an African-American word, "drylongso", which is used to mean "ordinary", in reference to the social status of the interviewees. In a terse introductory statement chosen by Gwaltney from an interviewee not included in the broader text, factory worker Othman Sullivan says "I think this anthropology is just another way to call me a nigger." The New York Times described it as "The most expansive and realistic exposition of contemporary mainstream black attitudes yet published."