Black Writers, White Publishers

Black Writers, White Publishers PDF Author: John Kevin Young
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 160473549X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
Jean Toomer's Cane was advertised as a book about Negroes by a Negro, despite his request not to promote the book along such racial lines. Nella Larsen switched the title of her second novel from Nig to Passing, because an editor felt the original title might be too inflammatory. In order to publish his first novel as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection Richard Wright deleted a scene in Native Son depicting Bigger Thomas masturbating. Toni Morrison changed the last word of Beloved at her editor's request and switched the title of Paradise from War to allay her publisher's marketing concerns. Although many editors place demands on their authors, these examples invite special scholarly attention given the power imbalance between white editors and publishers and African American authors. Black Writers, White Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century African American Literature examines the complex negotiations behind the production of African American literature. In chapters on Larsen's Passing, Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Gwendolyn Brooks's Children Coming Home, Morrison's Oprah's Book Club selections, and Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, John K. Young presents the first book-length application of editorial theory to African American literature. Focusing on the manuscripts, drafts, book covers, colophons, and advertisements that trace book production, Young expands upon the concept of socialized authorship and demonstrates how the study of publishing history and practice and African American literary criticism enrich each other. John K. Young is an associate professor of English at Marshall University. His work has appeared in journals such as College English, African American Review, and Critique.

Black Writers, White Publishers

Black Writers, White Publishers PDF Author: John Kevin Young
Publisher: Univ. Press of Mississippi
ISBN: 160473549X
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 242

Get Book

Book Description
Jean Toomer's Cane was advertised as a book about Negroes by a Negro, despite his request not to promote the book along such racial lines. Nella Larsen switched the title of her second novel from Nig to Passing, because an editor felt the original title might be too inflammatory. In order to publish his first novel as a Book-of-the-Month Club main selection Richard Wright deleted a scene in Native Son depicting Bigger Thomas masturbating. Toni Morrison changed the last word of Beloved at her editor's request and switched the title of Paradise from War to allay her publisher's marketing concerns. Although many editors place demands on their authors, these examples invite special scholarly attention given the power imbalance between white editors and publishers and African American authors. Black Writers, White Publishers: Marketplace Politics in Twentieth-Century African American Literature examines the complex negotiations behind the production of African American literature. In chapters on Larsen's Passing, Ishmael Reed's Mumbo Jumbo, Gwendolyn Brooks's Children Coming Home, Morrison's Oprah's Book Club selections, and Ralph Ellison's Juneteenth, John K. Young presents the first book-length application of editorial theory to African American literature. Focusing on the manuscripts, drafts, book covers, colophons, and advertisements that trace book production, Young expands upon the concept of socialized authorship and demonstrates how the study of publishing history and practice and African American literary criticism enrich each other. John K. Young is an associate professor of English at Marshall University. His work has appeared in journals such as College English, African American Review, and Critique.

Redlining Culture

Redlining Culture PDF Author: Richard Jean So
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231552319
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 155

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Book Description
The canon of postwar American fiction has changed over the past few decades to include far more writers of color. It would appear that we are making progress—recovering marginalized voices and including those who were for far too long ignored. However, is this celebratory narrative borne out in the data? Richard Jean So draws on big data, literary history, and close readings to offer an unprecedented analysis of racial inequality in American publishing that reveals the persistence of an extreme bias toward white authors. In fact, a defining feature of the publishing industry is its vast whiteness, which has denied nonwhite authors, especially black writers, the coveted resources of publishing, reviews, prizes, and sales, with profound effects on the language, form, and content of the postwar novel. Rather than seeing the postwar period as the era of multiculturalism, So argues that we should understand it as the invention of a new form of racial inequality—one that continues to shape the arts and literature today. Interweaving data analysis of large-scale patterns with a consideration of Toni Morrison’s career as an editor at Random House and readings of individual works by Octavia Butler, Henry Dumas, Amy Tan, and others, So develops a form of criticism that brings together qualitative and quantitative approaches to the study of literature. A vital and provocative work for American literary studies, critical race studies, and the digital humanities, Redlining Culture shows the importance of data and computational methods for understanding and challenging racial inequality.

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms

The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms PDF Author: N. K. Jemisin
Publisher: Orbit
ISBN: 0316075973
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
After her mother's mysterious death, a young woman is summoned to the floating city of Sky in order to claim a royal inheritance she never knew existed in the first book in this award-winning fantasy trilogy from the NYT bestselling author of The Fifth Season. Yeine Darr is an outcast from the barbarian north. But when her mother dies under mysterious circumstances, she is summoned to the majestic city of Sky. There, to her shock, Yeine is named an heiress to the king. But the throne of the Hundred Thousand Kingdoms is not easily won, and Yeine is thrust into a vicious power struggle with cousins she never knew she had. As she fights for her life, she draws ever closer to the secrets of her mother's death and her family's bloody history. With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, Yeine will learn how perilous it can be when love and hate -- and gods and mortals -- are bound inseparably together.

Letting Go of Literary Whiteness

Letting Go of Literary Whiteness PDF Author: Carlin Borsheim-Black
Publisher: Teachers College Press
ISBN: 0807777625
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 161

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Book Description
Rooted in examples from their own and others’ classrooms, the authors offer discipline-specific practices for implementing antiracist literature instruction in White-dominant schools. Each chapter explores a key dimension of antiracist literature teaching and learning, including designing literature-based units that emphasize racial literacy, selecting literature that highlights voices of color, analyzing Whiteness in canonical literature, examining texts through a critical race lens, managing challenges of race talk, and designing formative assessments for racial literacy and identity growth. “Sophia and Carlin’s book is startling in how openly and honestly it takes up the problem of how to teach about racism, using literature, in White schools. As I read, I kept marveling at how courageous and direct and clear their writing is.” —From the Foreword by Timothy J. Lensmire, University of Minnesota “Letting Go of Literary Whiteness unpacks the necessary responsibility of exploring race for all teachers. Borsheim-Black and Sarigianides center this work in English classrooms, exploring the kinds of literature, discussions, and difficult instructional decisions that teachers make every day. This book emphasizes that racial justice is a shared responsibility for teachers today and, through myriad practical examples, offers guidance for centering equity in schools.” —Antero Garcia, Stanford Graduate School of Education

The Bones of Ruin

The Bones of Ruin PDF Author: Sarah Raughley
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1534453571
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 512

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Book Description
An African tightrope walker who can’t die gets embroiled in a secret society’s deadly gladiatorial tournament in this “bloodily spectacular” (Chloe Gong, New York Times bestselling author of These Violent Delights) historical fantasy set in an alternate 1880s London, perfect for fans of The Last Magician and The Gilded Wolves. As an African tightrope dancer in Victorian London, Iris is used to being strange. She is certainly an unusual sight for leering British audiences always eager for the spectacle of colonial curiosity. But Iris also has a secret that even “strange” doesn’t capture…​ She cannot die. Haunted by her unnatural power and with no memories of her past, Iris is obsessed with discovering who she is. But that mission gets more complicated when she meets the dark and alluring Adam Temple, a member of a mysterious order called the Enlightenment Committee. Adam seems to know much more about her than he lets on, and he shares with her a terrifying revelation: the world is ending, and the Committee will decide who lives…and who doesn’t. To help them choose a leader for the upcoming apocalypse, the Committee is holding the Tournament of Freaks, a macabre competition made up of vicious fighters with fantastical abilities. Adam wants Iris to be his champion, and in return he promises her the one thing she wants most: the truth about who she really is. If Iris wants to learn about her shadowy past, she has no choice but to fight. But the further she gets in the grisly tournament, the more she begins to remember—and the more she wonders if the truth is something best left forgotten.

Journalism and Jim Crow

Journalism and Jim Crow PDF Author: Kathy Roberts Forde
Publisher: University of Illinois Press
ISBN: 0252053044
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 534

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Book Description
Winner of the American Historical Association’s 2022 Eugenia M. Palmegiano Prize. White publishers and editors used their newspapers to build, nurture, and protect white supremacy across the South in the decades after the Civil War. At the same time, a vibrant Black press fought to disrupt these efforts and force the United States to live up to its democratic ideals. Journalism and Jim Crow centers the press as a crucial political actor shaping the rise of the Jim Crow South. The contributors explore the leading role of the white press in constructing an anti-democratic society by promoting and supporting not only lynching and convict labor but also coordinated campaigns of violence and fraud that disenfranchised Black voters. They also examine the Black press’s parallel fight for a multiracial democracy of equality, justice, and opportunity for all—a losing battle with tragic consequences for the American experiment. Original and revelatory, Journalism and Jim Crow opens up new ways of thinking about the complicated relationship between journalism and power in American democracy. Contributors: Sid Bedingfield, Bryan Bowman, W. Fitzhugh Brundage, Kathy Roberts Forde, Robert Greene II, Kristin L. Gustafson, D'Weston Haywood, Blair LM Kelley, and Razvan Sibii

The Accidental Diva

The Accidental Diva PDF Author: Tia Williams
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 1101210311
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
From the New York Times bestselling author of the Reese Witherspoon Book Club Pick Seven Days in June comes a hot and hilarious borough-crossed love story about a Manhattan beauty editor, a Brooklyn writer, and the attraction that takes them by storm. Billie Burke is smart, endlessly driven, and fabulous—it’s no accident she landed a job as the beauty editor at the world’s leading fashion magazine. Caught in a whirlwind of long office hours and fashion industry party-hopping, she hasn’t had time to focus on her nonexistent love life. Instead, she’s been living vicariously through her friends. Then she meets Jay Lane, a gorgeous up-and-coming Brooklyn writer who pretty much knocks her right out of her stilettos. Soon Billie finds herself doing things with Jay in broad daylight that she’s never even dared to think about in the privacy of her own head. In no time at all she’s absolutely addicted to an affair that’s as crazy and seductive as New York itself. But there’s a lot she doesn’t know about Jay, whose rough past seems determined to start creeping back into their present....

Black Regions of the Imagination

Black Regions of the Imagination PDF Author: Eve Dunbar
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781439909430
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 212

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Book Description
Establishing an imaginative space for blackness, four mid-century American writers resist literary segregation

The Other Blacklist

The Other Blacklist PDF Author: Mary Washington
Publisher: Columbia University Press
ISBN: 0231152701
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 370

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Book Description
Examines African American writers and artists of the 1950s, tracing leftist ideas and activism within their work, recounts the events of the 1959 Black Writers' Conference and explores the ongoing influence of the Black Popular Front.

A Place Inside of Me

A Place Inside of Me PDF Author: Zetta Elliott
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux (BYR)
ISBN: 0374388636
Category : Juvenile Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 19

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Book Description
Caldecott Honor Book Today Show Best Book for the Holidays ALA Notable Book for All Ages ALSC Notable Children's Book NCTE Notable Poetry Book Evanston Public Library's Top 100 Great Book for Kids Nerdy Award Winner for Single Poem Picture Book Bank Street Best Books of the Year In this powerful, affirming poem by award-winning author Zetta Elliott, a Black child explores his shifting emotions throughout the year. There is a place inside of me a space deep down inside of me where all my feelings hide. Summertime is filled with joy—skateboarding and playing basketball—until his community is deeply wounded by a police shooting. As fall turns to winter and then spring, fear grows into anger, then pride and peace. In her stunning debut, illustrator Noa Denmon articulates the depth and nuances of a child’s experiences following a police shooting—through grief and protests, healing and community—with washes of color as vibrant as his words. Here is a groundbreaking narrative that can help all readers—children and adults alike—talk about the feelings hiding deep inside each of us.