African American Literature in Transition, 1940-1950

Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-1-108-48028-4
Verlag: Cambridge University Press

Buch, Englisch, 440 Seiten, Format (B × H): 157 mm x 235 mm, Gewicht: 787 g

Reihe: African American Literature in Transition

1940s African American literature sits between two of the best-known periods in Black writing. Adding more intricacy to its framing, this decade's literary output commences and ends with watershed creative accomplishments by canonical mainstays in the waiting like Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison. However, this book shows that mid-century Black literary productivity is not a matter of a handful of canonical figures and instead, it illuminates overt and implicit collaboration as a hallmark of the age. It identifies perforation, aesthetic plurality, multi-generic virtuosity, and writerly professionalism as signposts for understanding mid-twentieth century Black literary productivity. It engages prior assessments that cast African American literature in the 1940s based on stylistic clashes and technical stasis. It restores Black writing's role as feature of American social progress in the space between the Great Depression and the mature Civil Rights Movement.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Hill, Michael

Inhaltsverzeichnis

List of illustrations; List of contributors; General editor's preface; Chronology; Introduction: without apology or applause, black writing from 1940 to 1950 Michael D. Hill; Part I. Fiction: 1. In a strange country: The African American short story as/and historical change Marc C. Conner; 2. 1940s Black novels and the consequences of thematic repertoire Michael D. Hill; 3. The left, out: The ambiguous legacy of the 1940s Donald Kizza-Brown; Part II. Poetry: 4. 'Time unhinged the gates': synoptic vision in 1940s African American Literature Brent Krammes; 5. People's poets, demotic rhythms, and the riddle of Black internationalism James Alexander Robinson; 6. Arc of modernity – African American poetics of the nineteen forties R. Baxter Miller; 7. Gwendolyn Brooks and 'holler[ing] down the lions' of poetry Stewart Habig; Part III. Nonfiction: 8. Unco-opted: Cooperative economies as counter surveillance Irvin J. Hunt; 9. 'The Mirror of Our Consciousnes': Psychoanalysis and Visual Culture in Nonfiction Essays, 1940–1950 Catherine A. Stewart; 10. History and literature in Black autobiography from the Harlem Renaissance through the civil rights movement Marta Holliday; Part IV. Drama and Film: 11. 'The problem of the hero': the ensemble and the star in African American Theater, 1940–1950 Melissa Barton; 12. Evolving roles and film adaptions of 1940s African American novels Sharon L. Jones; Bibliography; Index.

Über Autor(innen)

Hill, Michael
Michael D. Hill is the inaugural director of the DeLaney Center as well as a Professor and Chair of Africana Studies at Washington and Lee University. He co-wrote Ralph Ellison's Invisible Man: A Reference Guide (2008), authored The Ethics of Swagger: Prizewinning African American Novels, 1977–1993 (2013), and co-edited Invisible Hawkeyes: African Americans at the University of Iowa During the Long Civil Rights Era (2016). He received the Nick Aaron Ford-Waters Edward Turpin Award and an honorable mention for the Benjamin F. Shambaugh Award. Currently, he is drafting Weathervanes of Democracy: Adolescence in African American Novels, 1937–2016.