Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind is a book written in the style of memoir essays for which the author of Dreams of the Immortal City Savannah has become well known. This literary approach allows him to share with readers compelling stories in which he explores the impact of works by celebrated authors James Alan McPherson, John Berendt, and Flannery O’Connor upon himself, and, the cultural biases which have prompted millions of Americans to take to the streets in protest of the same. The first Special Edition (ISBN 978-1-71668-481-4) of the title also features on its covers original artwork by Aberjhani.

Questions in Search of Answers

The stories pose timely questions like these:

• Does what many interpret as overt racism in writings by classic authors like O’Connor detract from the writings’ value as world literature for contemporary readers?
• To what degree are such characterizations of O’Connor’s classic works accurate or erroneous?
• Why did America’s first African-American winner of the Pulitzer Prize for fiction exile himself from his hometown of Savannah, Georgia, and what does that say about the complex nature of race relations in the city?
• How and why did “Midnight madness” come to have such a powerful effect on the city of Savannah following the publication of Berendt’s Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil?

Various observers have presented some provocative thoughts on the above issues.  A major difference between them and Aberjhani, however, is the latter’s connection to the subject authors not only as someone––like O’Connor and McPherson––born in Savannah, but as a fellow author included with them and Berendt in the celebrated travel anthology Literary Savannah.  While seeking answers over a period of decades across America and around the world, he draws inspiration from some unexpected sources. They include: an “intuited conversation” with O’Connor herself, reggae music pioneer Bob Marley, Sufi educator and poet Jalaluddin Rumi, and authors Alice Walker, George Dawes Green, Ntozake Shange, and Toni Morrison. 

A Book for Our Changing Times

​The publication of Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind comes at a time when citizens of the U.S. are reevaluating the roles which concepts of race, gender, and nationality have played in America’s history and are likely to play in its future. The three authors on which this volume focuses each addressed these subjects in their own stylistic ways long before the United States arrived at the boiling point it reached in 2020. As has been well-documented in mainstream media and on social media, the country reached that point following a series of events which resulted in disruptions of daily life as Americans knew it on a scale not seen in a century. 

The first event was the stunning deadly impact of the COVID-19 coronavirus pandemic. Next came announcements of a succession of police-related killings which ignited mass protests all over the globe; namely, the shooting deaths of: Ahmaud Arbery, George Floyd, Breonna Taylor, Rayshard Brooks, and Elijah McClain. The question of “Where do we go from here?” is one which has been frequently asked following these history-altering events and Greeting Flannery O’Connor at the Back Door of My Mind helps inspire the kinds of reflections capable of providing important answers.

​Bright Skylark Literary Productions Booknotes