Nathan Heard
A Cold Fire Burning by Nathan Heard brilliantly depicts an interracial love story amidst the political changes of the early Seventies. Shadow is a working-class black man in the ghetto of Newark, NJ. An affair with Terri, a liberal white woman who works at a storefront drug rehab center, begins to throw his sense of the world into turmoil. When the racial and psychosexual tensions inherent in their relationship finally reach the boiling point, Shadow rejects Terri and everything she represents to him and winds up the leader of a rag-tag band of would-be black nationalist urban guerillas. Tragedy ensues when Shadow tries to transform their revolutionary rhetoric into reality on the harsh streets of Newark.
1-878923-04-8
978-1-878923-04-2
African-American Studies
$ 10.95/Paper
5 x 8
About Nathan Heard
Nathan C. Heard is considered one of the forefathers of "street literature". Heard's first novel Howard Street, published in 1968, depicts the underbelly of inner-city life of Black America. Howard Street sold more than 1 million copies. Heard also wrote five other novels in the Genre. Nathan C. Heard started writing while serving a seven year sentence for armed robbery at New Jersey State Prison in Trenton. After his release, Heard taught creative writing at Rutgers and appeared in several “blaxpoitation" films. During the 1970s Heard wrote a column for the New York Times. Nathan Heard passed away in 2004 at the age of 67.
