Bird at My Window

"What happens to a dream deferred?" asked Langston Hughes. Bird at My Window answers that question with a psychological study of a black man whose aspirations are subverted by his environment. Wade Williams wakes up in a mental hospital and is told he has assaulted his sister. As he retraces his steps during the course of the novel, the rich complexity of mid-twentieth-century Harlem and its problematic relationship to its residents is revealed in this powerful cultural critique.