Howard, Ravi 1975(?)-

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Howard, Ravi 1975(?)-

PERSONAL:

Born c. 1975 in Montgomery, AL; married, wife's name Laura (a pediatrician). Education: Howard University, B.A., 1996; University of Virginia, M.F.A., 2001.

ADDRESSES:

Home—Mobile, AL. E-mail—ravi. [email protected].

CAREER:

Writer, novelist, commentator, and television producer. National Football League (NFL) Films, writer and producer, 2001-05. Guest on radio programs, including All Things Considered, National Public Radio (NPR).

AWARDS, HONORS:

Hurston/Wright Award for College Writers, University of Virginia, 2001; Sports Emmy, for Inside the NFL, Home Box Office (HBO).

WRITINGS:

Like Trees, Walking, Amistad (New York, NY), 2007.

Contributor to anthologies, including Gumbo: A Celebration of African-American Writing.

Contributor to periodicals, including Callaloo and Massachusetts Review. Meridian, former editor.

SIDELIGHTS:

Ravi Howard is an Emmy-award-winning writer and producer who once created sports programming for NFL Films. In his debut novel, Like Trees, Walking, Howard explores a 1981 episode of deadly racial violence that occurred in Mobile, Alabama. Using the real-life lynching as background for his fictional work, he delves into the effects of the shocking event on the characters of his novel and on the country as a whole.

Seventeen-year-old Roy Deacon and his brother Paul are the sons of a prominent mortician in Mobile. Paul has already decided not to take up the family business, and Roy is struggling with the conflicts brought on by pressure from his father to become a mortician and his own desire to pursue a different path in life. The Deacon brothers' lives are devastated, and the peaceful atmosphere of their home town is shattered, when a friend of Paul's is found lynched, apparently the victim of racial hatred by the Ku Klux Klan. Paul himself discovers the body, a devastating experience. It falls to Roy to prepare the body for burial, and all around him the city of Mobile hums with racial tension as the residents struggle with the prospect that racial progress and modern-day tolerance are easily discarded illusions. At first, a trio of drug abusers is accused of the crime, and the hanging is characterized as a drug deal gone horribly wrong. However, the case against the men is blatantly transparent, and it is clear that local Klansmen are the ones responsible for the hanging. Justice, however, is slow to come, and the case drags on for years. Meanwhile, Roy continues to struggle with his sense of family duty at the funeral parlor, made even stronger in the wake of the racial threat from outside.

In his novel, Howard "reveals an amazing facility to create language and imagination that will leave readers to witness, to feel and to explore the past as present," commented Steven G. Fullwood in the Black Issues Book Review. "This is a gripping tale of evil and injustice, and a fine debut from a talented writer," remarked Marilyn Dahl on Shelf Awareness. A Kirkus Reviews contributor stated that "Howard has a nice ear for dialogue and generates a cast of sympathetic secondary characters" in his work. Booklist reviewer Vanessa Bush noted that "Howard's debut novel offers a subtle and stirring look at the complexities of racial hatred and family obligations." In the end, pointed out a Publishers Weekly reviewer, Howard asserts that "even with justice, there are some stains that will never be erased by time."

BIOGRAPHICAL AND CRITICAL SOURCES:

PERIODICALS

Black Issues Book Review, March-April, 2007, Steven G. Fullwood, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 24.

Booklist, December 1, 2006, Vanessa Bush, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 22.

Kirkus Reviews, February 1, 2007, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 92.

Library Journal, November 15, 2006, Edward B. St. John, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 57.

Publishers Weekly, August 14, 2006, Hilary S. Kayle, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 87; December 11, 2006, review of Like Trees, Walking, p. 45.

USA Today, February 14, 2007, biography of Ravi Howard.