Black on White

Black on White PDF Author: David R. Roediger
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307482294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America? From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior, but until now much of this writing has been ignored. Black on White reverses this trend by presenting the work of more than fifty major figures, including James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker to take a closer look at the many meanings of whiteness in our society. Rich in irony, artistry, passion, and common sense, these reflections on what Langston Hughes called "the ways of white folks" illustrate how whiteness as a racial identity derives its meaning not as a biological category but as a social construct designed to uphold racial inequality. Powerful and compelling, Black on White provides a much-needed perspective that is sure to have a major impact on the study of race and race relations in America.

Black on White

Black on White PDF Author: David R. Roediger
Publisher: Schocken
ISBN: 0307482294
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

Get Book

Book Description
In this thought-provoking volume, David R. Roediger has brought together some of the most important black writers throughout history to explore the question: What does it really mean to be white in America? From folktales and slave narratives to contemporary essays, poetry, and fiction, black writers have long been among America's keenest students of white consciousness and white behavior, but until now much of this writing has been ignored. Black on White reverses this trend by presenting the work of more than fifty major figures, including James Baldwin, Derrick Bell, Ralph Ellison, W.E.B. Du Bois, bell hooks, Toni Morrison, and Alice Walker to take a closer look at the many meanings of whiteness in our society. Rich in irony, artistry, passion, and common sense, these reflections on what Langston Hughes called "the ways of white folks" illustrate how whiteness as a racial identity derives its meaning not as a biological category but as a social construct designed to uphold racial inequality. Powerful and compelling, Black on White provides a much-needed perspective that is sure to have a major impact on the study of race and race relations in America.

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.

New Bones

New Bones PDF Author: Kevin Everod Quashie
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : African Americans
Languages : en
Pages : 1160

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Book Description
An inclusive multi-genre anthology of late 20th century African-American literature.

Playing in the White

Playing in the White PDF Author: Stephanie Li
Publisher: Oxford Studies in American Lit
ISBN: 0199398887
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 242

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Book Description
The postwar period witnessed an outpouring of white life novels--that is, texts by African American writers focused almost exclusively on white characters. Almost every major mid-twentieth century black writer, including Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ann Petry and James Baldwin, published one of these anomalous texts. Controversial since their publication in the 1940s and 50s, these novels have since fallen into obscurity given the challenges they pose to traditional conceptions of the African American literary canon. Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects aims to bring these neglected novels back into conversations about the nature of African American literature and the unique expectations imposed upon black texts. In a series of nuanced readings, Li demonstrates how postwar black novelists were at the forefront of what is now commonly understood as whiteness studies. Novels like Hurston'sSeraph on the Suwanee and Wright's Savage Holiday, once read as abdications of the political imperative of African American literature, are revisited with an awareness of how whiteness signifies in multivalent ways that critique America's abiding racial hierarchies. These novels explore how this particular racial construction is freighted with social power and narrative meaning. Whiteness repeatedly figures in these texts as a set of expectations that are nearly impossible to fulfill. By describing characters who continually fail at whiteness, white life novels ask readers to reassess what race means for all Americans. Along with its close analysis of key white life novels, Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects also provides important historical context to understand how these texts represented the hopes and anxieties of a newly integrated nation.

Black Women Writers at Work

Black Women Writers at Work PDF Author: Claudia Tate
Publisher: Haymarket Books
ISBN: 1642598550
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 365

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Book Description
“Black women writers and critics are acting on the old adage that one must speak for oneself if one wishes to be heard.” —Claudia Tate, from the introduction Long out-of-print, Black Women Writers At Work is a vital contribution to Black literature in the 20th century. Through candid interviews with Maya Angelou, Toni Cade Bambara, Gwendolyn Brooks. Alexis Deveaux, Nikki Giovanni, Kristin Hunter, Gayl Jones, Audre Lorde, Toni Morrison, Tillie Olson, Sonia Sanchez, Ntozake Shange, Alice Walker, Margret Walker, and Shirley Anne Williams, the book highlights the practices and critical linkages between the work and lived experiences of Black women writers whose work laid the foundation for many who have come after. Responding to questions about why and for whom they write, and how they perceive their responsibility to their work, to others, and to society, the featured playwrights, poets, novelists, and essayists provide a window into the connections between their lives and their art. Finally available for a new generation, this classic work has an urgent message for readers and writers today.

Bad Men

Bad Men PDF Author: Howard Rambsy II.
Publisher: University of Virginia Press
ISBN: 0813944147
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 291

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Book Description
How have African American writers drawn on "bad" black men and black boys as creative touchstones for their evocative and vibrant art? This is the question posed by Howard Rambsy’s new book, which explores bad men as a central, recurring, and understudied figure in African American literature and music. By focusing on how various iterations of the bad black man figure serve as creative muse and inspiration for literary production, Rambsy puts a wide variety of contemporary African American literary and cultural works in conversation with creativity research for the first time. Employing concepts such as playfulness, productivity, divergent thinking, and problem finding, Rambsy examines the works of a wide range of writers—including Elizabeth Alexander, Amiri Baraka, Paul Beatty, Ta-Nehisi Coates, Tyehimba Jess, Trymaine Lee, Adrian Matejka, Aaron McGruder, Evie Shockley, and Kevin Young—who have drawn on notions of bad black men and boys to create innovative and challenging works in a variety of genres. Through groundbreaking readings, Rambsy demonstrates the fruitfulness of viewing black literary art through the lens of creativity research.

Black Writers of America

Black Writers of America PDF Author: Richard Kenneth Barksdale
Publisher: Simon & Schuster Books For Young Readers
ISBN:
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 952

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Book Description
This comprehensive collection of Afro-American literature - from its beginnings to the 1970s - provides a generous selection of autobiographies, essays, speeches, letters, political pamphlets, histories, journals, and folk literature as well as poems, plays, and stories - all chosen for their artistic and social significance. A carefully structured organization and the scope and diversity of selections make the anthology suitable to a variety of approaches - chronological, by topic, by theme, or by genre.

Interviews with Black Writers

Interviews with Black Writers PDF Author: John O'Brien
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780871402813
Category : African American authors
Languages : en
Pages : 292

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Book Description


The Word

The Word PDF Author: Marita Golden
Publisher: Crown
ISBN: 0307720772
Category : Literary Collections
Languages : en
Pages : 226

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Book Description
Critically acclaimed Black writers reveal how books have shaped their personal lives—in often unexpected ways. In these thirteen strikingly candid interviews, bestselling authors, winners of the Pulitzer Prize, and writers picked by Oprah’s Book Club discuss how the acts of reading and writing have deeply affected their lives by expanding the conceptual borders of their communities and broadening their sense of self. Edwidge Danticat movingly recounts the first time she encountered a Black character in a book and how this changed her worldview forever; Edward P. Jones speaks openly about being raised by an illiterate mother; J. California Cooper discusses the spiritual sources of her literary inspiration; Nathan McCall explains how reading saved his life while in prison; Pearl Cleage muses eloquently about how other people’s stories help one make one’s own way in the world; and world-renowned historian John Hope Franklin—in one of the last interviews he gave before his death—touchingly recalls his childhood in the segregated South and how reading opened his mind to life’s greater possibilities. The stories that emerge from these in-depth interviews not only provide an important record of the creative life of leading Black writers but also explore the vast cultural and spiritual benefits of reading and writing, and they support the growing initiative to encourage people to read as both a passion and a pastime.

Black Writers Abroad

Black Writers Abroad PDF Author: Robert Coles
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 9780815327516
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 174

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Book Description
First published in 1999. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.