The Hidden Wound

<b>An impassioned thoughtful and fearless essay on the effects of racism on the American identity by one of our country&#146;s most humane literary voices.</b><br><br>Acclaimed as &#147;one of the most humane honest liberating works of our time&#148; (<i>The Village Voice</i>) <i>The Hidden Wound</i> is a book-length essay about racism and the damage it has done to the identity of our country. Through Berry&#146;s personal experience he explains how remaining passive in the face of the struggle of racism further corrodes America&#146;s great potential. In a quiet and observant manner Berry opens up about how his attempt to discuss racism is rooted in the hope that someday the historical wound will begin to heal. Pulitzer prize-winning author Larry McMurtry calls this &#147;a profound passionate crucial piece of writing . . . Few readers and I think no writers will be able to read it without a small pulse of triumph at the temples: the strange almost communal sense of triumph one feels when someone has written truly well . . . The statement it makes is intricate and beautiful sad but strong.&#148;<br><br><b>&#147;Mr. Berry is a sophisticated philosophical poet in the line descending from Emerson and Thoreau. &#8213;<i>The Baltimore Sun</i></b><br><br><b>[Berry&#146;s poems] shine with the gentle wisdom of a craftsman who has thought deeply about the paradoxical strangeness and wonder of life. &#8213;<i>The Christian Science Monitor</i></b><br><br><b>Wendell Berry is one of those rare individuals who speaks to us always of responsibility of the individual cultivation of an active and aware participation in the arts of life. &#8213;<i>The Bloomsbury Review</i></b><br><br><b>&#147;[Berry&#146;s] poems novels and essays . . . are probably the most sustained contemporary articulation of America&#146;s agrarian Jeffersonian ideal.&#148; &#8213;<i>Publishers Weekly</i></b>