Available Light

Culled from previously unpublished material, this collection of writing and photography by John Howard Griffin was taken from the period during which he was writing and revising what would be his most famous book, the bestselling Black Like Me. Living in exile in Mexico at the time, along with his young family and aging parents, Griffin had been forced from his home town of Mansfield, Texas, by death threats from local white racists. Knowing that he would become a controversial public figure once he returned to the states, he kept an intimate journal of his ethical queries on racism and injustice—and to escape from his worries he also immersed himself in the culture of the Tarascan Indians of Michoacan. Accordingly, Robert Bonazzi's introduction contains substantial unpublished portions of the journals, and the main body of the book is made up of three essays by Griffin—one on photography and two about trips he made to photograph rural Mexico.