Blood on the Forge

by William Attaway

Book Overview

First published in 1941, this is a scalding, uncompromising novel of the Great Migration and its impact on the Southern black man. With a new introduction by Nicholas Lemann, author of the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1590171349
• ISBN13: 9781590171349
• Release Date: January 2005
• Publisher: New York Review of Books
• Length: 264 Pages
• Weight: 0.63 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.7" x 5.0" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

Excellent Blood on The Forge

I was very happy to receive this book in good condition because it is a classic and I wanted a good copy for my collection of novels I wish to keep. My favorite English professor is teaching it this semester, and though I'm not in school, I will do the readings to keep up with the class.

'Things ain't right nor wrong, boy. Things jest is.'

After killing a dumb redneck who seemed not to have noticed that slavery had been outlawed half a century earlier Big Mat, together with his two brothers Melody and Chinatown, leave family and sharecropping and make their way to the steel mills of Pennsylvania. Here they metamorphose from `n-----s' into `coloreds' and graft alongside other migrant workers from the Ukraine, Italy and Ireland. It is not a pretty world: dog fights and gang rapes, murders and industrial fatalities; but at least they get money. Unbeknown by his brothers, Melody falls in love with an underage prostitute who instead takes up with the stronger Big Mat, indifferent to his wife back in Kentucky. The brothers, caught up in their own little, world fail to notice significant changes happening around them as their already hard lives tip into the abyss when union-boss conflict divides along racial lines. This book is a superb parable on the northward African-American migration, a social cataclysm that was to change the economic and cultural landscape of the United States and massively contribute to its future world dominance. Attaway was a contemporary of both Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison and was highly regarded by both. Naturalistic, fatalistic, powerful and poignant, Blood on the Forge is the equal in quality to Steinbeck at his best in its description of tough and pitiless migrant lives and is a true twentieth century classic.

A note from his grandson

I have not read my grandfather's books, but i am planning on doing so this summer. I love to write as my grandfather did, i am currently writing a science fiction book,the subject matter is very different to his books, but when i write it remineds my father of his father when his father would write. I never met my grandfather but i feel he is always with me.

Among the Very Best "Unknown" American Novels

William Attaway's BLOOD ON THE FORGE powerfully depicts both the Black migration to the industrial north after WWI and the startling hell-like environment of the vast iron & steel works of the era. No other writer--novelist, sociologist, historian--has ever captured so well the compelling, visceral experience of the humans working these sacrificial jobs. As Attaway walks us through the vast furnace & forge areas of the works, our own skin scorches along with that of his worker-protagonists. We become party to the daily struggle to survive the most appalling working conditions. This novel deserves a place on the highest level of our American esteem. It's tragic Attaway was unable to produce more work, since both his vision of the American experience and his fictive language were intense, revelatory and precious to anyone wishing to know and acknowledge this nation's true industrial and racial history.