Description
Book SynopsisFrom the 1880s to the early 1900s, a particularly turbulent period of US race relations, the African American novel provided a powerful counternarrative to dominant and pejorative ideas about blackness. This book explores how writers experimented with innovative narrative strategies to revise stereotypical views of black identity and experience.
Trade ReviewGoing beyond an additive model of inserting a few black writers into discussions of American realism, Daniels-Rauterkus highlights how realism evolves as a benefit of black and white writers' reciprocal literary influences across the color line. Devising a style of realism tinged with a bit of romance, black and white writers drew on shared literary strategies to represent race, difference, and black social life. Provocative and richly engaging, this book will be a welcome addition to discussions of nineteenth-century U.S. literature and African American literature, traditions that the author rightly recognizes as inextricably connected.
Afro-Realisms and the Romances of Race breathes new life into ongoing debates on how central African American fiction is to the very definition of American realism. It is a bold book that will spark new conversations among scholars and readers.
