Home | Best Seller | FAQ | Contact Us
Browse
Art & Photography
Biographies & Autobiography
Body,Mind & Health
Business & Economics
Children's Book
Computers & Internet
Cooking
Crafts,Hobbies & Gardening
Entertainment
Family & Parenting
History
Horror
Literature & Fiction
Mystery & Detective
Nonfiction
Professional & Technology
Reference
Religion
Romance
Science
Science Fiction & Fantasy
Sports & Outdoors
Travel & Geography
   Book Info

enlarge picture

Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance  
Author: J. Martin Favor
ISBN: 0822323117
Format: Handover
Publish Date: June, 2005
 
     
     
   Book Review
Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance

FROM THE PUBLISHER

What constitutes "blackness" in American culture? And who gets to define whether or not someone is truly African American? Is a struggling hip-hop artist more "authentic" than a conservative Supreme Court justice? In Authentic Blackness J. Martin Favor looks to the New Negro Movement-also known as the Harlem Renaissance-to explore early challenges to the idea that race is a static category.

Authentic Blackness looks at the place of the "folk"-those African Americans "furthest down," in the words of Alain Locke-and how the representation of the folk and the black middle class both spurred the New Negro Movement and became one of its most serious points of contention. Drawing on vernacular theories of African American literature from such figures as Henry Louis Gates Jr. and Houston Baker as well as theorists Judith Butler and Stuart Hall, Favor looks closely at the work of four Harlem Renaissance fiction writers: James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, and Jean Toomer. Arguing that each of these writers had, at best, an ambiguous relationship to African American folk culture, Favor demonstrates how they each sought to redress the notion of a fixed black identity. Authentic Blackness illustrates how "race" has functioned as a type of performative discourse, a subjectivity that simultaneously builds and conceals its connections with such factors as class, gender, sexuality, and geography.

Offering new insight into the work of the Harlem Renaissance as well as concepts of racialized identity, Authentic Blackness will be welcomed by all those involved in the study of African American literature and culture. It will also be of interest to those concerned more generally with issues surrounding constructions of race.

     



Home | Private Policy | Contact Us
@copyright 2001-2005 ReadingBee.com