Forrest, Leon

▪ 1998

      U.S. novelist, journalist, and educator (b. Jan. 8, 1937, Chicago, Ill.—d. Nov. 6, 1997, Evanston, Ill.), used folklore, history, legend, and realism to create epic novels that explored African-American life and teemed with richly drawn characters. In his works, set in Chicago, Forrest County was the fictional name he used for the city where he was reared and educated—at Roosevelt University and the University of Chicago. After U.S. Army service he returned to his hometown, wrote for and edited neighbourhood newspapers, and served (1969-73) as a reporter and then editor of Muhammad Speaks, the Nation of Islam's popular national weekly newspaper. Meanwhile, he was writing the novel There Is a Tree More Ancient than Eden, in which he drew on his upbringing in Baptist and Roman Catholic churches, on jazz and blues music, and on works by authors as diverse as Ralph Ellison, William Faulkner, and James Joyce. It was published in 1973, the year he began teaching at Northwestern University, Evanston; in 1985 he became chairman of the university's African-American studies department. Between the publication of his next two novels, The Bloodworth Orphans (1977) and Two Wings to Veil My Face (1983), in which a former slave relates her life story to her great grandson, Forrest wrote the libretto for T.J. Anderson's opera Soldier Boy, Soldier (1982). His final novel, Divine Days (1992), was his largest and most ambitious work, weaving together bawdy comedy and tragedy in a playwright's search for a charismatic, manipulative evangelist; a slaveholder's tangled relationships with his black consort and mulatto children; the suicide of a brilliant young woman artist; and the doings of the denizens of a neighbourhood tavern. In a collection of essays, Relocations of the Spirit (1994), Forrest examined literary and jazz figures, wrote lyrically about African-American churches, and showed acute insight into Elijah Muhammad and the Nation of Islam.

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▪ American writer

born Jan. 8, 1937, Chicago, Ill., U.S.

died Nov. 6, 1997, Evanston, Ill.

      African-American author of large, inventive novels that fuse myth, history, legend, and contemporary realism.

      Forrest attended the University of Chicago and served in the U.S. Army before beginning his career as a writer. From 1965 to 1973 Forrest worked as a journalist for various papers, including the Nation of Islam's weekly Muhammed Speaks. He also published excerpts from his first novel, There Iis a Tree More Ancient than Eden, which was issued in book form in 1973, the year he began teaching English and African-American studies at Northwestern University.

      Forrest's works were influenced by those of William Faulkner and Ralph Ellison. There Is a Tree portrays the tangled relationships between the illegitimate offspring of a onetime slave-owning family; several of the book's distinctive characters reappear in subsequent Forrest novels. Echoes of Greek and Latin mythology are present in The Bloodworth Orphans (1977), about the search by three orphaned siblings for roots and understanding amid turmoil. In Two Wings to Veil My Face (1983) an ex-slave tells her life story to her great-grandson, in the process changing his life. Forrest's ambitious novel, Divine Days (1992), was set in Chicago in 1966 and concerns the efforts of an African-American playwright to investigate the disappearance of a fellow black. A book of collected essays, Relocations of the Spirit, was published in 1994.

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