What differentiates Dumas's "modernism" most clearly from that of his Euro-American antecedents--the Joyce who described the mythological impoverishment underlying the paralysis of his Dubliners would be the closest parallel--is his recognition of the practical imperatives of mythological awareness. Providing realistic and accessible images of the attempt to revive the African "King ... fossilized in our brains" ("Saba: The Lost Diadem" Play Ebony 124), Dumas's short stories continually assert the need for, and possibility of, bringing myth to life, and life to myth. In "Ark of Bones," the protagonist Headeye leads the narrator to an awareness of the physical suffering--the experience of the countless black victims of white racism--which gives meaning to Afro-American Christianity. Dumas presents the "call of the Lord" as an immersion in black experience, a way of bringing the fossilized African mythology back to life. And lived myth, rather than myth conceived in abstract or literary terms, is the primary concern of Dumas's fiction. In "Echo Tree," "Will the Circle Be Unbroken?", "Devil Bird," and "The Voice," Dumas focuses repeatedly on a basic theme: that the type of myth one lives depends on choice, not conscious choices focusing explicitly on mythological issues, but the daily choices which determine the values by which one lives. Attempting to inspire an actual transformation of Afro-American life, Dumas poses a choice between two groups of values, associated--in the specific circumstances confronting the majority of the Afro-American community--with different sets of myths: the values of presence, relation, and respect associated with African mythologies or the corrupt values of individuality, abstraction, and pride enforced by the uncritical acceptance of the myths of Europe. Ultimately, the creation of myths capable of inspiring the Afro-American community cannot be separated from the willingness, the courage to live out the implications of the African myths. At the conclusion of the "Saba" beginning "we weep that our heroes have died / in our memories," Dumas negotiates the mythological challenge of "the devils / who came in Jesus ships from Europe." Celebrating the Afro-American myths, which provided the driving impulse of the Black Arts Movement, Dumas concludes the "Saba" by celebrating a lived immersion which is powered by, and empowers, ascents . . . .