Reluctant Activist: The Spiritual Life and Art of John Howard Griffin

This authorized biography by Robert Bonazzi, executor for the estate of John Howard Griffin (19201980), is based upon Griffins Journals from 19501980. Griffin was blinded in the South Seas during WW II, but regained sight in 1957, after which he wrote the classic Black Like Me (Houghton Mifflin, 1961), now translated into sixteen languages.

During a decade of blindness, Griffin published two novels and many short stories. His third novel, Street of the Seven Angels, was published posthumously by Wings Press (2003). The first two novels, The Devil Rides Outside (a banned best seller that was adjudicated by the Supreme Court not to be pornographic) and Nuni are Wings Press e-books, as is a fiftieth anniversary cloth edition of Black Like Me.

Griffins Encounters with the Other (1997) and Follow the Ecstasy, about Thomas Mertons last years (1983), were published posthumously by Latitudes Press; Follow the Ecstasy: The Hermitage Years of Thomas Merton (1993) and Scattered Shadows: A Memoir of Blindness and Vision (2004) appeared posthumously from Orbis Books.

Author Robert Bonazzi follows Griffin year by year after 1961, when Griffin toured the globe as a lecturer on human rights. In addition to Griffins Journals, Bonazzis sources include Scattered Shadows, interviews with Studs Terkel, Mike Wallace, and other sources, plus the witness of Griffins widow Elizabeth Griffin-Bonazzi. The author completes Griffins story with Griffins photographic portraits of Thomas Merton, among many others, and his musicological essays. See more