New Book: Soul Cries Now Available!

To buy Soul Cries, click in left-hand column 
or at bottom

T
John Fountain's latest book
here is an American tragedy. A tale of two cities. One ugly. One pretty. It is the story of life and also loss on the other side of the tracks. An American story. One being written daily by news media but often only cursorily as stories of murder, poverty and social decay. But it is more complex story for those who dwell behind the invisible walls of the American Mainstream in neighborhoods where life is fragile and violence an intractable squatter. A place where life can be hard and plain. Where bullets too often rain but where life, love and hope form a wellspring.
Theirs is a story of joy and pain. It is a soul’s song—told in this book through the lens of John W. Fountain, a Chicago native son and veteran journalist who grew up on the West Side, where Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. and his family once lived during his campaign to help the poor.
"My soul cries. It quivers, sometimes like the human body too long exposed to the cold..."

The Chicago Tribune has written of Fountain’s work: It is “stirring, searing poetry of John Fountain, whose pungent words” give “focus and force” and speak of “the cultural glories that African Americans gave to Chicago and the world.”
       This book, in one sense, is an urban opera set in the key of life. One that sings of the ancestral past, of the present and of future struggles, of the triumphs and glories of a people but also of their fears, of the strain, drain and consequence upon their souls.
An award-winning writer and former New York Times national correspondent, John W. Fountain is a contemporary psalmist, born and bred in poverty and redeemed by faith, hope and clarity. “Soul Cries: In Black & White & Shades of Gray” is his inspirational song.
It is a song—a story—that emanates from a place where the voices of those who dwell there often are not heard. We all need to hear them. John W. Fountain presents them in a compelling literary song we won’t soon forget.
Put simply, this book is a literary collection of one man’s reflections on living while black in America. A psalm of the afflictions endured by the black body, and of the resilience of black folks’ souls that have been bathed in the blood, sweat and tears of our ancestors—and that are still tormented at this present time—on this the quadricentennial of our arrival as slaves upon American shores. A compilation of the innermost reflections, thoughts and feelings of the experience of being black and American and of our longing as a people still to someday be free. It is at its core one black man's soul's cry for freedom. A familiar song sung by our ancestors, ringing with the chorus, “Deep in my heart, I do believe, we shall overcome someday.” This is my soul’s cry.
—John W. Fountain


Buy Soul Cries
Autograph Book To: