Description
Book SynopsisPresents the Harlem Renaissance, exploring early challenges to the idea that race is a static category. Drawing on vernacular theories of African American literature from figures such as Henry Louis Gates Jr and Houston Baker, this book looks at the work of four fiction writers: James Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler, and Jean Toomer.
Trade Review“
Authentic Blackness marks an advance on current work on the Harlem Renaissance. Favor’s examination of how ‘race’ as a critical concept was destabilized by Harlem Renaissance writers makes an important contribution to our thinking of the period.”—Theodore O. Mason, Kenyon College
“J. Martin Favor has done the field of African American literary and cultural studies a profound service. His readings of Harlem Renaissance texts challenge our assumptions about racial identity and the ways our assumptions have shaped how we read literature by Black writers.”—Herman Beavers, author of
Wrestling Angels into Song: The Fictions of Ernest J. Gaines and James Alan McPhersonTable of ContentsAcknowledgments vii
1 Discourses of Black Identity: The Elements of Authenticity 1
2 For a Mess of Pottage: James Weldon Johnson's Ex-Colored Man as (In)authentic Man 25
3 "Colored; Cold. Wrong somewhere.": Jean Toomer's Cane 53
4 A Clash of Birthrights: Nella Larsen, the Feminine, and African American Identity 81
5 Color, Culture, and the Nature of Race: George S. Schuyler's Black No More 111
6 The Possibilities of Multiplicity: Community, Tradition, and African American Subject Positions 137
Notes 153
Bibliography 171
Index 179
