SOURCE: Ogunyemi, Chikwenye Okonjo. “‘The Old Order Shall Pass’: The Examples of ‘Flying Home’ and ‘Barbados.’” Studies in Short Fiction 20, no. 1 (winter 1983): 23-32.

In the following essay, Ogunyemi assesses Ellison's “Flying Home” and Paule Marshall's “Barbados.”

Let a new earth rise. Let another world be born. Let a bloody peace be written in the sky. Let a second generation full of courage issue forth; let a people loving freedom come to growth. Let a beauty full of healing and a strength of final clenching be the pulsing in our spirits and our blood. Let the martial songs be written, let the dirges disappear. Let a race of men now rise and take control.

—Margaret Walker, 1942

“Flying Home” by Ralph Ellison and “Barbados” by Paule Marshall are two exceptional stories in Langston Hughes' 1967 collection, The Best Short Stories by Negro Writers: An Anthology from 1899 to the Present. The stories...