Daryl Keith Middlebrook

In West Africa, the Griot (pronounced gre-o) was the village storyteller, poet, and historian. The Griot told tales of kings and commoners alike. It was his duty to be the voice of the people, the troubadour of truth, the one who kept the spirit of the long-gone elders alive once they had crossed over to the other side. The Urban Griot is a compilation of short stories, flash fiction and poems of African American peoples, not in the Motherland, but whose descendants were captured and taken to a land far away called America. It is here because of hundreds of years of slavery and oppression that our stories ceased to be told. However, slowly but surely new voices, new Griots began to arise. The Urban Griot tells tales of our people, unique to our situations, told with the voices of the streets in the language of our new homeland.