Stephanie Brown
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- March 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781604739732
- eISBN:
- 9781604739749
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781604739732.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, African-American Literature
This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but ...
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This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but pry open a space in the critical models available for theorizing postwar African American culture. The end of the Cold War provided cultural historians with both a sense of closure for a long-standing global narrative and a rich source of archival materials from the former Soviet Union and its satellites. The focus has often been on the work of white writers, while black musicians and visual artists have stood in for the cultural production of African Americans more generally. Ralph Ellison provides the single exception.Less
This chapter aims to recreate the conditions of the production of the African American novel between 1945 and 1950. In doing so, it is necessary to not only recover the lost voices of the time but pry open a space in the critical models available for theorizing postwar African American culture. The end of the Cold War provided cultural historians with both a sense of closure for a long-standing global narrative and a rich source of archival materials from the former Soviet Union and its satellites. The focus has often been on the work of white writers, while black musicians and visual artists have stood in for the cultural production of African Americans more generally. Ralph Ellison provides the single exception.
Kimberly Chabot Davis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038433
- eISBN:
- 9780252096310
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038433.003.0004
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
This chapter focuses on the reception of two African American “post-soul” novels that deconstruct essentialist ideas about race. Inviting readers to reconsider binary understandings of blackness and ...
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This chapter focuses on the reception of two African American “post-soul” novels that deconstruct essentialist ideas about race. Inviting readers to reconsider binary understandings of blackness and whiteness, Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2003) focuses on free blacks who own slaves in the antebellum South, while Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) details the coming of age of a mixed-race girl in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s. The chapter examines how the reading of a racially charged text is influenced by the readers' locality and the communities in which they live and participate. It also compares the conversations of racially mixed book clubs to those with all white or all African American members, and analyzes the connections and disjunctions between empathetic reading and the readers' political lives within a metropolitan area with a long history of racial antagonism.Less
This chapter focuses on the reception of two African American “post-soul” novels that deconstruct essentialist ideas about race. Inviting readers to reconsider binary understandings of blackness and whiteness, Edward P. Jones's The Known World (2003) focuses on free blacks who own slaves in the antebellum South, while Danzy Senna's Caucasia (1998) details the coming of age of a mixed-race girl in Boston in the 1970s and 1980s. The chapter examines how the reading of a racially charged text is influenced by the readers' locality and the communities in which they live and participate. It also compares the conversations of racially mixed book clubs to those with all white or all African American members, and analyzes the connections and disjunctions between empathetic reading and the readers' political lives within a metropolitan area with a long history of racial antagonism.
Kimberly Chabot Davis
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- April 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780252038433
- eISBN:
- 9780252096310
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University of Illinois Press
- DOI:
- 10.5406/illinois/9780252038433.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, Film, Media, and Cultural Studies
Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as ...
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Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. This book claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years. The book analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, the book focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change. Its study of ethnographic data from book clubs and college classrooms shows how engagement with African American culture and pedagogical support can lead to the kinds of white self-examination that make empathy possible. The result is a book that challenges the trend of focusing on society's failures in achieving cross-racial empathy and instead explores possible avenues for change.Less
Critics often characterize white consumption of African American culture as a form of theft that echoes the fantasies of 1950s-era bohemians, or “White Negroes,” who romanticized black culture as anarchic and sexually potent. This book claims such a view fails to describe the varied politics of racial crossover in the past fifteen years. The book analyzes how white engagement with African American novels, film narratives, and hip-hop can help form anti-racist attitudes that may catalyze social change and racial justice. Though acknowledging past failures to establish cross-racial empathy, the book focuses on examples that show avenues for future progress and change. Its study of ethnographic data from book clubs and college classrooms shows how engagement with African American culture and pedagogical support can lead to the kinds of white self-examination that make empathy possible. The result is a book that challenges the trend of focusing on society's failures in achieving cross-racial empathy and instead explores possible avenues for change.
