This Is Life

<p class=ql-align-justify>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 <em>Trumbull Park</em> 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. <em>This Is Life</em> offers an important and timely contribution to the growing reputation of one of Chicago's great writers.</p><p><br></p>