Brother to a Dragonfly [Paperback]

Will Campbell (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0826412688 | ISBN-13: 978-0826412683 | Publication Date: August 1, 2000 | Edition: 25th Anniversary

Will CampbellÆs award-winning book shares two interrelated stories. One is of his youth in rural Mississippi and his devotion to his brother whose life ended in seeming tragedy. The other tells of his ordination at age 17 and gradual realization that civil rightsùfor blacks, for women, for gays ùwas an essential part of a ministry that has not yet ended.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"With pure earthy simplicity, Will Campbell has painted a masterpiece."
- Jessi Coulter and Waylon Jennings



"Will Campbell has a Southern capacity for nostalgia, and evokes it delicately but to strong purpose ... The two brothers' lives become mythic for the reader."
- Robert Coles

“Brother to a Dragonfly is a fascinating mix of memories, vivid anecdotes, poignant stories, and portraits of interesting people….Brother to a Dragonfly has lost none of its zip and bravado over the years. Campbell’s memoir is an emotionally charged account of the deep bonds between two brothers and the demons both had to struggle to exorcise. It also presents an idiosyncratic and very needed approach to the spiritual practices of compassion and justice.”
- Reviewed by Cultural Information Service


"Evokes Mark Twain ... Part biography, part philosophy, and in all, an anecdotal feast. Brother to a Dragonfly becomes in the reading of it a factor in all our lives."
- Jules Feiffer



"A very well-written, touching book."
- David Halberstam

"Will Campbell's life has been one of helping us lay down the burden of race ... His spirit and his superb writing make Brother to a Dragonfly stand out among memoirs of the Movement."
- Hon. John Lewis

"A fascinating and important book - a biography, it is as compelling as a fine novel, is packed with deep emotional appeals, strong humor, and convincing characterizations, and more than any other single book I know tells what Southern life is like on the rough side, where the lath and plaster have not been smoothed off, including matters of daily bread, race, and the belief in Jesus Christ." - Robert Penn Warren

Product Details

• Paperback: 288 pages
• Publisher: Continuum; 25th Anniversary edition (August 1, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0826412688
• ISBN-13: 978-0826412683
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
• Shipping Weight: 14.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #203,507 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #39 in Books > Christian Books & Bibles > Protestantism > Baptist

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars poignant reflections by renegade christian, January 17, 2007

By 

Daniel B. Clendenin (www.journeywithjesus.net) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Brother to a Dragonfly (Paperback)

If you were raised in the south as I was, have an interest in the civil rights movement, or want to enjoy one of the most irreverent Christian curmudgeons ever to irritate the church, then read Will Campbell (b. 1924). Campbell was born and raised in the rural and very poor deep south of Amite, Mississippi, "ordained" by family members at a local Baptist church when he was seventeen, and, in a delightfully improbable life, played a central role as an activist and agitator on behalf of African Americans. But to leave it at that would badly misrepresent him.

After World War II Campbell studied at Tulane, Wake Forest, and Yale. He served as Director of Religious life at the University of Mississippi (Ole Miss), but left after two years because his controversial views attracted death threats. He then did a stint for the National Council of Churches where he worked with most of the civil rights luminaries. In 1957, Campbell was one of four people who escorted the nine black students who integrated Little Rock's Central High School; and he was the only white person to attend the founding of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference by the Rev. Martin Luther King, Jr. So, how did he come to sip whiskey with the KKK and get hate mail from the left?

Campbell came to distrust all movements and institutions, especially the church (he once referred to television preachers as liars, frauds, and "electronic soul molesters"). He dismissed all politics as impotent. It was less than Christian, he realized, to agitate for the oppressed but to hate the oppressor. No, one could not preach what Luther called a "fictitious grace." God loves the redneck Klansmen as well as the disinherited blacks. For the most part, Brother to a Dragonfly tells the story of Campbell's deep love for his brother Joe, and how the latter's tragic demise to alcohol, drugs, and domestic violence led to his premature death. But it was through Joe and an overtly pagan family friend that Campbell had a conversion later in life. Without realizing it, he recalls, his twenty years of ministry had become one of "liberal sophistication. An attempted negation of Jesus, of human engineering, of riding the coattails of Caesar, of playing on his ballpark, by his rules and with his ball, of looking to government to make and verify and authenticate our morality, of worshipping at the shrine of enlightenment and academia, of making an idol of the Supreme Court, a theology of law and order and of not only denying the Faith I professed to hold but my history and my people--the Thomas Colemans [who murdered two civil rights workers]. Loved. And if loved, forgiven. And if forgiven, reconciled." There was all the difference in the world, he realized, between being a "doctrinaire social activist," however laudable, and a follower of Jesus. The key? "I came to understand the nature of tragedy. And one who understands the nature of tragedy can never take sides."

Christian renegade, preacher, author of twenty books and plays, farmer, country musician, friend of Thomas Merton, and agent provocateur, Will Campbell loves a good chew of tobacco and will strike many as enigmatic. Not everyone will appreciate his rapier wit. But PBS profiled him in their documentary "God's Will," in 2000 President Clinton honored him with a National Endowment for the Humanities medal, and Brother to a Dragonfly won numerous literary awards.

16 of 16 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The finest coming of age story I have encountered, February 4, 2001

By 

A. Hogan (Brooklyn, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Brother to a Dragonfly (Paperback)

Brother to a dragonfly, Will D Campbell's brilliant,evocative, nostalgic luminous memoir teels the story of his family in the pre-tva rural south. Though much much more then a simple coming of age story,it is the story of 2 brothers,their lives amid the greatest change in this ountry since the civil war. Will D Campbell and his brother Joe stories are told so movingly,and with such deep power that ,by the end it will move you to tears. It is the sory of a man,family,RELIGION,the south,race,addiction,love and death. It will shatter any preconcieved notions and stereotypes,for Will D Campell is a true iconoclast. I run out of superlatives to describe this book. Read it.

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The most profound book I have read. A courageous work., September 5, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Washington State) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Brother to a Dragonfly (Paperback)

No other book that I have read has demonstrated the courage that Campbell took to look at personal family heartache, popular social cause, and politically unpopular issues. Campbell's message tells the reader his struggles, but does not tell the reader what to think. He has had the courage to bare his thoughts.