Korie L. Edwards
- Published in print:
- 2008
- Published Online:
- September 2008
- ISBN:
- 9780195314243
- eISBN:
- 9780199871810
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195314243.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
In a race sensitive society, how people racially identify and the salience of these identities influence their associations, including the churches they to choose to attend. This chapter explores the ...
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In a race sensitive society, how people racially identify and the salience of these identities influence their associations, including the churches they to choose to attend. This chapter explores the racial identities of interracial church attendees, and the role of racial identity for explaining who attends interracial churches.Less
In a race sensitive society, how people racially identify and the salience of these identities influence their associations, including the churches they to choose to attend. This chapter explores the racial identities of interracial church attendees, and the role of racial identity for explaining who attends interracial churches.
Dan P. McAdams
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195176933
- eISBN:
- 9780199786787
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195176933.003.0008
- Subject:
- Psychology, Social Psychology
Bringing together psychological research on life stories and generativity in African-American men and women with a reading of African-American autobiographies, folk tales, and 19th century slave ...
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Bringing together psychological research on life stories and generativity in African-American men and women with a reading of African-American autobiographies, folk tales, and 19th century slave narratives, this chapter examines the relationships between race, generativity, and narrative identity in American life. Like their Euro-American counterparts, highly generative African-American adults, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, tend to construct highly redemptive life narratives. Their life stories, however, tend to draw from a rich storehouse of images and tropes favored in African-American psycho-literary traditions, stories about life that privilege the discourse of personal (and societal) liberation and underscore such themes as “early danger” and the role of a moral “opponent”.Less
Bringing together psychological research on life stories and generativity in African-American men and women with a reading of African-American autobiographies, folk tales, and 19th century slave narratives, this chapter examines the relationships between race, generativity, and narrative identity in American life. Like their Euro-American counterparts, highly generative African-American adults, such as Martin Luther King Jr, Frederick Douglass, and Harriet Tubman, tend to construct highly redemptive life narratives. Their life stories, however, tend to draw from a rich storehouse of images and tropes favored in African-American psycho-literary traditions, stories about life that privilege the discourse of personal (and societal) liberation and underscore such themes as “early danger” and the role of a moral “opponent”.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0003
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter traces the black discourse on African identity that Wheatley and Sancho unknowingly initiated into the first generation of slave autobiographers. Most of the men who wrote these ...
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This chapter traces the black discourse on African identity that Wheatley and Sancho unknowingly initiated into the first generation of slave autobiographers. Most of the men who wrote these narratives had lived in African villages or in slave communities in the plantation regions of America, experiences foreign to both Wheatley and Sancho. Perhaps as a result, when they asserted African identities in their narratives, they confronted ethnic division more directly. The most celebrated among them was Equiano, who used that confrontation to develop a mythic vision of an African unity that predated the ethnic division that haunted Africa in the age of the slave trade. He and Cugoano, his collaborator, sought a way to recreate the unity among sub-Saharan Africans that they perceived to have been broken in postbiblical times.Less
This chapter traces the black discourse on African identity that Wheatley and Sancho unknowingly initiated into the first generation of slave autobiographers. Most of the men who wrote these narratives had lived in African villages or in slave communities in the plantation regions of America, experiences foreign to both Wheatley and Sancho. Perhaps as a result, when they asserted African identities in their narratives, they confronted ethnic division more directly. The most celebrated among them was Equiano, who used that confrontation to develop a mythic vision of an African unity that predated the ethnic division that haunted Africa in the age of the slave trade. He and Cugoano, his collaborator, sought a way to recreate the unity among sub-Saharan Africans that they perceived to have been broken in postbiblical times.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This introductory chapter opens with the brief story of the origins of Ira Aldridge, the black actor known throughout Europe as the “African Roscius”. This story is then linked to the issue of ...
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This introductory chapter opens with the brief story of the origins of Ira Aldridge, the black actor known throughout Europe as the “African Roscius”. This story is then linked to the issue of African identity. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.Less
This introductory chapter opens with the brief story of the origins of Ira Aldridge, the black actor known throughout Europe as the “African Roscius”. This story is then linked to the issue of African identity. An overview of the succeeding chapters is presented.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter shows how Wheatley and Sancho, having been labeled “African” writers, accepted that label and subtly altered what it meant to be “African” by what they wrote. Neither Africa nor African ...
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This chapter shows how Wheatley and Sancho, having been labeled “African” writers, accepted that label and subtly altered what it meant to be “African” by what they wrote. Neither Africa nor African identity plays a central role in their texts, but the identity is present and acknowledged. Both were aware of ethnic diversity on the continent and understood that it undercut any notion of an indigenous “African” identity. Both responded by creating a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora rather than from conditions on the continent, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage.Less
This chapter shows how Wheatley and Sancho, having been labeled “African” writers, accepted that label and subtly altered what it meant to be “African” by what they wrote. Neither Africa nor African identity plays a central role in their texts, but the identity is present and acknowledged. Both were aware of ethnic diversity on the continent and understood that it undercut any notion of an indigenous “African” identity. Both responded by creating a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora rather than from conditions on the continent, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0004
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter traces the rise of the African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia, one of the early churches to describe itself as “African”, and the progenitor of black Baptist churches in Canada, ...
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This chapter traces the rise of the African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia, one of the early churches to describe itself as “African”, and the progenitor of black Baptist churches in Canada, Sierra Leone, and much of the British Caribbean. The chapter then considers two institutions founded by black New Englanders at roughly the same time — African Freemasonry and the African Union Societies of Newport and Providence, Rhode Island — and traces their distinct but parallel efforts to build “African” institutions and identities. Leaders of these institutions sought to reconcile their deep faith in a Christian God with the prevalence of “paganism” in Africa, reaching toward a belief that American slavery represented God's plan for bringing the light of true religion to the Dark Continent. This conviction gave all three groups a shared stake in the efforts of those Black Loyalists who would move to Sierra Leone in 1792.Less
This chapter traces the rise of the African Baptist Church of Savannah, Georgia, one of the early churches to describe itself as “African”, and the progenitor of black Baptist churches in Canada, Sierra Leone, and much of the British Caribbean. The chapter then considers two institutions founded by black New Englanders at roughly the same time — African Freemasonry and the African Union Societies of Newport and Providence, Rhode Island — and traces their distinct but parallel efforts to build “African” institutions and identities. Leaders of these institutions sought to reconcile their deep faith in a Christian God with the prevalence of “paganism” in Africa, reaching toward a belief that American slavery represented God's plan for bringing the light of true religion to the Dark Continent. This conviction gave all three groups a shared stake in the efforts of those Black Loyalists who would move to Sierra Leone in 1792.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.001.0001
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
The first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as “African” but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. This book reveals how an African identity emerged in the late 18th-century Atlantic ...
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The first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as “African” but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. This book reveals how an African identity emerged in the late 18th-century Atlantic world, tracing the development of “African” from a degrading term connoting savage people, to a word that was a source of pride and unity for the diverse victims of the Atlantic slave trade. The book first examines the work of black writers — such as Ignatius Sancho in England and Phillis Wheatley in America — who created a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage, allowing people of various ethnic backgrounds to become “African” by virtue of sharing the oppression of slavery. It looks at political activists who worked within the emerging antislavery moment in England and North America in the 1780s and 1790s; it describes the rise of the African church movement in various cities — most notably, the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as an independent denomination — and the efforts of wealthy sea captain Paul Cuffe to initiate a black-controlled emigration movement that would forge ties between Sierra Leone and blacks in North America; and it examines in detail the efforts of blacks to emigrate to Africa, founding Sierra Leone and Liberia.Less
The first slaves imported to America did not see themselves as “African” but rather as Temne, Igbo, or Yoruban. This book reveals how an African identity emerged in the late 18th-century Atlantic world, tracing the development of “African” from a degrading term connoting savage people, to a word that was a source of pride and unity for the diverse victims of the Atlantic slave trade. The book first examines the work of black writers — such as Ignatius Sancho in England and Phillis Wheatley in America — who created a narrative of African identity that took its meaning from the diaspora, a narrative that began with enslavement and the experience of the Middle Passage, allowing people of various ethnic backgrounds to become “African” by virtue of sharing the oppression of slavery. It looks at political activists who worked within the emerging antislavery moment in England and North America in the 1780s and 1790s; it describes the rise of the African church movement in various cities — most notably, the establishment of the African Methodist Episcopal Church as an independent denomination — and the efforts of wealthy sea captain Paul Cuffe to initiate a black-controlled emigration movement that would forge ties between Sierra Leone and blacks in North America; and it examines in detail the efforts of blacks to emigrate to Africa, founding Sierra Leone and Liberia.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter traces the demise in black discourse on African identity through the 1820s. As black American antislavery activists became increasingly convinced that the ACS served slaveholders' ...
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This chapter traces the demise in black discourse on African identity through the 1820s. As black American antislavery activists became increasingly convinced that the ACS served slaveholders' interests and that asserting an “African” identity played into the Society's efforts to portray Africa as the natural home for black Americans, fewer and fewer blacks referred to themselves as Africans. “Colored” institutions began to supplant “African” ones. Orators insisted that free blacks living in the United States were “Americans” rather than “African”, and that their futures lay in the New World rather than the Old.Less
This chapter traces the demise in black discourse on African identity through the 1820s. As black American antislavery activists became increasingly convinced that the ACS served slaveholders' interests and that asserting an “African” identity played into the Society's efforts to portray Africa as the natural home for black Americans, fewer and fewer blacks referred to themselves as Africans. “Colored” institutions began to supplant “African” ones. Orators insisted that free blacks living in the United States were “Americans” rather than “African”, and that their futures lay in the New World rather than the Old.
Sean Hawkins and Philip D. Morgan
- Published in print:
- 2006
- Published Online:
- October 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780199290673
- eISBN:
- 9780191700569
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780199290673.003.0001
- Subject:
- History, World Modern History
This chapter outlines five themes. First, it sketches some of the salient spatial and temporal dimensions of the black experience to give a sense of geography and chronology. Next, it probes the ...
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This chapter outlines five themes. First, it sketches some of the salient spatial and temporal dimensions of the black experience to give a sense of geography and chronology. Next, it probes the nature of this empire, particularly the relation between imperial centre and colony, and the opportunities it provided for blacks to turn the idea and rhetoric of the British empire against the British even as those ideas ensnared them. Third, it examines the contradictions between the inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of the British empire, between the idea of empire as a community of loyal British subjects, and the idea of empire as an arena for the oppression and suppression of blacks. The fourth theme is how subjecthood changed for all blacks, looking specifically at the effects of emancipation in the Caribbean and Indirect Rule in Africa. It highlights the centrality of labour to the black experience and the importance of labour struggles to black negotiations within the empire. Finally, the British empire was an important crucible in which blacks created dynamic and syncretic cultures, distinct for their high degree of hybridity and invention, fusing many different elements together, yet using common forms, such as the English language. The shared forms ultimately provided the basis for a Pan-African identity that challenged the idea of black loyalty to the British empire. Across the linked territories, blacks produced modes of expression that resonated throughout the empire.Less
This chapter outlines five themes. First, it sketches some of the salient spatial and temporal dimensions of the black experience to give a sense of geography and chronology. Next, it probes the nature of this empire, particularly the relation between imperial centre and colony, and the opportunities it provided for blacks to turn the idea and rhetoric of the British empire against the British even as those ideas ensnared them. Third, it examines the contradictions between the inclusionary and exclusionary aspects of the British empire, between the idea of empire as a community of loyal British subjects, and the idea of empire as an arena for the oppression and suppression of blacks. The fourth theme is how subjecthood changed for all blacks, looking specifically at the effects of emancipation in the Caribbean and Indirect Rule in Africa. It highlights the centrality of labour to the black experience and the importance of labour struggles to black negotiations within the empire. Finally, the British empire was an important crucible in which blacks created dynamic and syncretic cultures, distinct for their high degree of hybridity and invention, fusing many different elements together, yet using common forms, such as the English language. The shared forms ultimately provided the basis for a Pan-African identity that challenged the idea of black loyalty to the British empire. Across the linked territories, blacks produced modes of expression that resonated throughout the empire.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0005
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
This chapter follows the story of the Loyalists — who came to call themselves “Nova Scotians” — in their exodus to an African promised land. It traces their efforts to put into practice the ...
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This chapter follows the story of the Loyalists — who came to call themselves “Nova Scotians” — in their exodus to an African promised land. It traces their efforts to put into practice the transformative project that Gustavus Vassa had outlined at the conclusion of his Interesting Narrative. In these settlers' struggles with the Sierra Leone Company, which governed the colony, and their efforts to forge relationships with the Koya Temne people who surrounded the colony, the Nova Scotians confronted some of the inherent complexities in the emerging diasporic vision of African identity. In the process they, and some black New Englanders who hoped to follow them, began to forge an alternate way to think about the links connecting “Africans” to one another.Less
This chapter follows the story of the Loyalists — who came to call themselves “Nova Scotians” — in their exodus to an African promised land. It traces their efforts to put into practice the transformative project that Gustavus Vassa had outlined at the conclusion of his Interesting Narrative. In these settlers' struggles with the Sierra Leone Company, which governed the colony, and their efforts to forge relationships with the Koya Temne people who surrounded the colony, the Nova Scotians confronted some of the inherent complexities in the emerging diasporic vision of African identity. In the process they, and some black New Englanders who hoped to follow them, began to forge an alternate way to think about the links connecting “Africans” to one another.
James Sidbury
- Published in print:
- 2007
- Published Online:
- September 2007
- ISBN:
- 9780195320107
- eISBN:
- 9780199789009
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- Oxford University Press
- DOI:
- 10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195320107.003.0009
- Subject:
- History, American History: early to 18th Century
The epilogue looks ahead to the reemergence of black discussions of African identity and black emigrationism during the 1850s. It examines the efforts of Martin R. Delany, sometimes called the ...
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The epilogue looks ahead to the reemergence of black discussions of African identity and black emigrationism during the 1850s. It examines the efforts of Martin R. Delany, sometimes called the “father of African nationalism”, to encourage black emigration from the United States during the 1850s, and to the sense of African identity that he articulated while advocating emigration. The epilogue suggests the persistence of many ideas initially offered by the first generations of self-styled “Africans”, and some of the costs of the demise of the remarkable vision that activists like Equiano, Allen, Coker, and Cuffe had developed.Less
The epilogue looks ahead to the reemergence of black discussions of African identity and black emigrationism during the 1850s. It examines the efforts of Martin R. Delany, sometimes called the “father of African nationalism”, to encourage black emigration from the United States during the 1850s, and to the sense of African identity that he articulated while advocating emigration. The epilogue suggests the persistence of many ideas initially offered by the first generations of self-styled “Africans”, and some of the costs of the demise of the remarkable vision that activists like Equiano, Allen, Coker, and Cuffe had developed.
Simon Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813036021
- eISBN:
- 9780813038636
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813036021.003.0002
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
This chapter examines readings of Chinua Achebe with Conrad, Cary, and Emecheta, showing the complexity of Achebe's own historical, cultural, political, and literary interventions, and indicating the ...
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This chapter examines readings of Chinua Achebe with Conrad, Cary, and Emecheta, showing the complexity of Achebe's own historical, cultural, political, and literary interventions, and indicating the continuity of West African-British writing from the abolitionist generation of Equiano and Gronniosaw to the postindependence generation of Achebe and Emecheta. This chapter is an attempt that opens Achebe himself to ideological critiques that examine the overt anticolonialism and nationalism of his work from perspectives of which he himself may not have been conscious.Less
This chapter examines readings of Chinua Achebe with Conrad, Cary, and Emecheta, showing the complexity of Achebe's own historical, cultural, political, and literary interventions, and indicating the continuity of West African-British writing from the abolitionist generation of Equiano and Gronniosaw to the postindependence generation of Achebe and Emecheta. This chapter is an attempt that opens Achebe himself to ideological critiques that examine the overt anticolonialism and nationalism of his work from perspectives of which he himself may not have been conscious.
Carol Bunch Davis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802989
- eISBN:
- 9781496803023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802989.003.0002
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter offers a reading of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, arguing that it foregrounds the necessity for racial uplift ideology in the Younger family's pursuit of the ...
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This chapter offers a reading of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, arguing that it foregrounds the necessity for racial uplift ideology in the Younger family's pursuit of the American Dream, culminating in the occupancy of their new home in the all-white enclave of Clybourne Park. Hansberry also sketches the postblack ethos in her representation of Beneatha Younger, the younger sister of the play's protagonist, Walter Lee Younger, and her allusion to intraracial debates about the false opposition between intellectual and corporeal freedom. In her interrogation of racial uplift ideology and the patriarchy that often underwrites it, Beneatha offers an alternative mode of self-representation built upon the pursuit of intellectual freedom. The chapter highlights the issue at the core of Hansberry's representation: race-based oppression and how it impacts concerns of equal housing access, economic enfranchisement, and African American identity politics.Less
This chapter offers a reading of Lorraine Hansberry's 1959 play A Raisin in the Sun, arguing that it foregrounds the necessity for racial uplift ideology in the Younger family's pursuit of the American Dream, culminating in the occupancy of their new home in the all-white enclave of Clybourne Park. Hansberry also sketches the postblack ethos in her representation of Beneatha Younger, the younger sister of the play's protagonist, Walter Lee Younger, and her allusion to intraracial debates about the false opposition between intellectual and corporeal freedom. In her interrogation of racial uplift ideology and the patriarchy that often underwrites it, Beneatha offers an alternative mode of self-representation built upon the pursuit of intellectual freedom. The chapter highlights the issue at the core of Hansberry's representation: race-based oppression and how it impacts concerns of equal housing access, economic enfranchisement, and African American identity politics.
Edward L. Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- January 2016
- ISBN:
- 9781628461558
- eISBN:
- 9781626740839
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781628461558.003.0008
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
“‘Of Remarkable Omens in My Favor’: Olaudah Equiano, Two Identities, and the Cultivation of a Literary Economic Exchange” by Edward L. Robinson Jr., explores the The Interesting Narrative of the Life ...
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“‘Of Remarkable Omens in My Favor’: Olaudah Equiano, Two Identities, and the Cultivation of a Literary Economic Exchange” by Edward L. Robinson Jr., explores the The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) as a work that seeks to “ingeniously” cultivate a relationship between two identities and two audiences—African and European. “For Equiano,” Robinson writes in his essay, “the narrative stands as a careful negotiation of the complexities that are critical in cultivating socio-political and economic capital in the commercial Atlantic.” Again the past, real or imaginary, plays an important role in seeking legitimacy with multiple audiences. As a way to connect with his European audiences, Equiano scripted an African past,— adopted the European name Gustavus Vassa in reference to Swedish King Gustav I, and succeeded in combining both narratives. Imbued with the values and ideals representative of both communities in the Atlantic, his narrative becomes a voice against racial injustice and slavery.Less
“‘Of Remarkable Omens in My Favor’: Olaudah Equiano, Two Identities, and the Cultivation of a Literary Economic Exchange” by Edward L. Robinson Jr., explores the The Interesting Narrative of the Life of Olaudah Equiano, or, Gustavus Vassa, the African (1789) as a work that seeks to “ingeniously” cultivate a relationship between two identities and two audiences—African and European. “For Equiano,” Robinson writes in his essay, “the narrative stands as a careful negotiation of the complexities that are critical in cultivating socio-political and economic capital in the commercial Atlantic.” Again the past, real or imaginary, plays an important role in seeking legitimacy with multiple audiences. As a way to connect with his European audiences, Equiano scripted an African past,— adopted the European name Gustavus Vassa in reference to Swedish King Gustav I, and succeeded in combining both narratives. Imbued with the values and ideals representative of both communities in the Atlantic, his narrative becomes a voice against racial injustice and slavery.
Carol Bunch Davis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802989
- eISBN:
- 9781496803023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802989.003.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that ...
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This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.Less
This book challenges the cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle era that hinges on a master narrative focused on the “heroic period” of the Civil Rights Movement. It argues that this narrative limits the representation of African American identity within the Civil Rights Movement to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest leadership in the segregated South and casts Malcolm X's advocacy of black nationalism and the ensuing Black Power/Arts Movement as undermining civil rights advances. Through an analysis of five case studies of African American identity staged in plays between 1959 and 1969, the book instead offers representations that engage, critique, and revise racial uplift ideology and reimagine the Black Arts Movement's sometimes proscriptive notions of black authenticity as a condition of black identity and cultural production. It also posits a postblack ethos as the means by which these representations construct their counternarratives to cultural memory and broadens narrow constructions of African American identity shaping racial discourse in the U.S. public sphere of the 1960s.
Carol Bunch Davis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802989
- eISBN:
- 9781496803023
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802989.001.0001
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This book explores the tensions between cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle and representations of African American identity staged in five plays between 1959 and 1969 during the ...
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This book explores the tensions between cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle and representations of African American identity staged in five plays between 1959 and 1969 during the civil rights era. Through close readings of the plays, their popular and African American print media reviews, and the cultural context in which they were produced, the book shows how these representations complicate narrow ideas of blackness, which often limit the freedom struggle era to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest and cast Malcolm X's black nationalism as undermining the Civil Rights Movement's advances. These five plays strategically revise the rhetoric, representations, ideologies, and iconography of the African American freedom struggle, subverting its dominant narrative. This revision critiques racial uplift ideology's tenets of civic and moral virtue as a condition of African American full citizenship. The dramas also reimagine the Black Arts Movement's restrictive notions of black authenticity as a condition of racial identity, and their staged representations construct a counter-narrative to cultural memory of the freedom struggle during that very era. In their use of a “postblack ethos” to enact African American subjectivity, the plays envision black identity beyond the quest for freedom, anticipating what blackness might look like when it moves beyond the struggle. Finally, the book discusses recent revivals, showing how these 1960s plays shape dimensions of modern drama well beyond the decade of their creation.Less
This book explores the tensions between cultural memory of the African American Freedom Struggle and representations of African American identity staged in five plays between 1959 and 1969 during the civil rights era. Through close readings of the plays, their popular and African American print media reviews, and the cultural context in which they were produced, the book shows how these representations complicate narrow ideas of blackness, which often limit the freedom struggle era to Martin Luther King's nonviolent protest and cast Malcolm X's black nationalism as undermining the Civil Rights Movement's advances. These five plays strategically revise the rhetoric, representations, ideologies, and iconography of the African American freedom struggle, subverting its dominant narrative. This revision critiques racial uplift ideology's tenets of civic and moral virtue as a condition of African American full citizenship. The dramas also reimagine the Black Arts Movement's restrictive notions of black authenticity as a condition of racial identity, and their staged representations construct a counter-narrative to cultural memory of the freedom struggle during that very era. In their use of a “postblack ethos” to enact African American subjectivity, the plays envision black identity beyond the quest for freedom, anticipating what blackness might look like when it moves beyond the struggle. Finally, the book discusses recent revivals, showing how these 1960s plays shape dimensions of modern drama well beyond the decade of their creation.
Simon Lewis
- Published in print:
- 2011
- Published Online:
- September 2011
- ISBN:
- 9780813036021
- eISBN:
- 9780813038636
- Item type:
- book
- Publisher:
- University Press of Florida
- DOI:
- 10.5744/florida/9780813036021.001.0001
- Subject:
- Literature, World Literature
African identities have been written and rewritten about in both British and African literature for decades. These revisions have opened up new formulations of what it really means to be British or ...
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African identities have been written and rewritten about in both British and African literature for decades. These revisions have opened up new formulations of what it really means to be British or African. By comparing texts by authors from African and British backgrounds across a wide variety of political orientations, the book analyzes the deeper relationships between colonizer and colonized. It brings issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality into the analysis, providing new ways for cultural scholars to think about how empire and colony have impacted one another from the late eighteenth century through the decades following World War II. In these comparisons, the book focuses on commonalities rather than differences. By examining the work of writers including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, T. S. Eliot, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zoe Wicomb, Yvette Christianse, and Chris van Wyk, the book demonstrates how Britain's former African colonies influence British culture just as much as African culture was influenced by British colonization. The book brings a uniquely informed perspective to the topic, having lived in South Africa, Tanzania, and Great Britain, and having taught African literature for over a decade. The book demonstrates expert knowledge of local cultural history from 1945 to the present, in both Africa and Britain.Less
African identities have been written and rewritten about in both British and African literature for decades. These revisions have opened up new formulations of what it really means to be British or African. By comparing texts by authors from African and British backgrounds across a wide variety of political orientations, the book analyzes the deeper relationships between colonizer and colonized. It brings issues of race, gender, class, and sexuality into the analysis, providing new ways for cultural scholars to think about how empire and colony have impacted one another from the late eighteenth century through the decades following World War II. In these comparisons, the book focuses on commonalities rather than differences. By examining the work of writers including Chinua Achebe, Wole Soyinka, T. S. Eliot, Abdulrazak Gurnah, Zoe Wicomb, Yvette Christianse, and Chris van Wyk, the book demonstrates how Britain's former African colonies influence British culture just as much as African culture was influenced by British colonization. The book brings a uniquely informed perspective to the topic, having lived in South Africa, Tanzania, and Great Britain, and having taught African literature for over a decade. The book demonstrates expert knowledge of local cultural history from 1945 to the present, in both Africa and Britain.
Carol Bunch Davis
- Published in print:
- 2015
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9781496802989
- eISBN:
- 9781496803023
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University Press of Mississippi
- DOI:
- 10.14325/mississippi/9781496802989.003.0005
- Subject:
- Society and Culture, Media Studies
This chapter frames Alice Childress's 1969 teleplay Wine in the Wilderness, as a counternarrative to cultural memory's master narrative of the African American Freedom Struggle era. Childress ...
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This chapter frames Alice Childress's 1969 teleplay Wine in the Wilderness, as a counternarrative to cultural memory's master narrative of the African American Freedom Struggle era. Childress explores the intersections of class, race, and gender in Wine in the Wilderness's representations, situating the Harlem Civil Disturbance of 1965 during which the play takes place as a site enabling productive reflection on and reconsideration of the rhetorical and representational strategies underwriting some Black Arts cultural expression and, by extension, African American identity. The chapter argues that Wine in the Wilderness troubles blackness and disrupts the standard ideas associated with it, consequently creating a new meaning. The play's counternarrative constitutes black solidarity and black consciousness through its critique of the sometimes reductive gender and class ideologies underwriting certain strains of the Black Arts Movement's cultural production alongside an alternate history of black protest led by African American fraternal organizations.Less
This chapter frames Alice Childress's 1969 teleplay Wine in the Wilderness, as a counternarrative to cultural memory's master narrative of the African American Freedom Struggle era. Childress explores the intersections of class, race, and gender in Wine in the Wilderness's representations, situating the Harlem Civil Disturbance of 1965 during which the play takes place as a site enabling productive reflection on and reconsideration of the rhetorical and representational strategies underwriting some Black Arts cultural expression and, by extension, African American identity. The chapter argues that Wine in the Wilderness troubles blackness and disrupts the standard ideas associated with it, consequently creating a new meaning. The play's counternarrative constitutes black solidarity and black consciousness through its critique of the sometimes reductive gender and class ideologies underwriting certain strains of the Black Arts Movement's cultural production alongside an alternate history of black protest led by African American fraternal organizations.
Amanda J. Baugh
- Published in print:
- 2016
- Published Online:
- May 2017
- ISBN:
- 9780520291164
- eISBN:
- 9780520965003
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of California Press
- DOI:
- 10.1525/california/9780520291164.003.0005
- Subject:
- Religion, Religion and Society
Chapter 4 focuses on a Faith in Place bible study on food and faith held at an African American church. This bible study was one of Veronica Kyle’s first sustained recruitment efforts and through the ...
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Chapter 4 focuses on a Faith in Place bible study on food and faith held at an African American church. This bible study was one of Veronica Kyle’s first sustained recruitment efforts and through the group she developed her approach for attracting other African Americans to Faith in Place. Rather than conforming to the norms of religious environmental ideology that developed through the work of white scholars and activists, this chapter demonstrates, Kyle helped the women cultivate an awareness of and language about the environment through a distinctive focus on the history and current circumstances of African Americans.Less
Chapter 4 focuses on a Faith in Place bible study on food and faith held at an African American church. This bible study was one of Veronica Kyle’s first sustained recruitment efforts and through the group she developed her approach for attracting other African Americans to Faith in Place. Rather than conforming to the norms of religious environmental ideology that developed through the work of white scholars and activists, this chapter demonstrates, Kyle helped the women cultivate an awareness of and language about the environment through a distinctive focus on the history and current circumstances of African Americans.
Zandria F. Robinson
- Published in print:
- 2014
- Published Online:
- September 2014
- ISBN:
- 9781469614229
- eISBN:
- 9781469614243
- Item type:
- chapter
- Publisher:
- University of North Carolina Press
- DOI:
- 10.5149/northcarolina/9781469614229.003.0002
- Subject:
- History, African-American History
This chapter considers the ways in which the South has been represented by and through several publics, from academics to rappers to filmmakers. It begins with a discussion of the place of region in ...
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This chapter considers the ways in which the South has been represented by and through several publics, from academics to rappers to filmmakers. It begins with a discussion of the place of region in African American identity, and then uncovers the discursive black South as it has been produced and consumed by myriad publics, especially African American publics. By traversing the black South(s) popularized in the American imagination by literature, art, dance, film, music, and television, the chapter elucidates the narratives emergent from and in the name of the black South and the function of such narratives for black identities historically and contemporarily. Finally, it shows how processes of place accomplishment and regional representation inform post-soul southern identity.Less
This chapter considers the ways in which the South has been represented by and through several publics, from academics to rappers to filmmakers. It begins with a discussion of the place of region in African American identity, and then uncovers the discursive black South as it has been produced and consumed by myriad publics, especially African American publics. By traversing the black South(s) popularized in the American imagination by literature, art, dance, film, music, and television, the chapter elucidates the narratives emergent from and in the name of the black South and the function of such narratives for black identities historically and contemporarily. Finally, it shows how processes of place accomplishment and regional representation inform post-soul southern identity.
