Description
Book SynopsisRevealing the formative influence of 1950s leftist radicalism on African American literature and culture.
Trade ReviewA wonderful combination of careful research, adept historicizing, and insightful close reading. Mary Helen Washington's book brings needed critical attention to understudied figures and helps readers rethink the careers of others whom they believe they already know. -- James Smethurst, author of The African American Roots of Modernism: From Reconstruction to the Harlem Renaissance and The Black Arts Movement: Literary Nationalism in the 1960s and 1970s [A] compelling look at artists and writers who became part of the vanguard of the progressive politics and civil rights movement of the 1960s. Booklist (starred review) Groundbreaking...thought-provoking. Publishers Weekly (starred review) Well-thought, highly readable and timely. Huffington Post Washington builds a strong and much-needed case against purely aesthetic interpretations of 1950s African American literature. Highly recommended. CHOICE Insightful, densely researched, and engaging... Washington resoundingly demonstrates the importance of the Black Popular Front to the postwar black literary tradition. Women's Review of Books Washington's brilliant, intimate and highly readable new book capstones an important era of post-Cold War scholarship of the legacy of American Communism and African American literature... no book in recent memory more boldly confronts and dismantles the political apparatus of literary commemoration. Solidarity Washington's excellent book contributes powerfully to a strand of scholarship that is transforming our understanding of post-World War II American intellectual and cultural history... Deeply researched, persuasively argued, and much-needed. Journal of American History As literary and cultural history, Washington's book offers a vast resource... Readers who are eager to place the postwar period in the context of 1930s and '40s historiography of the left as well as the period of black nationalism that followed in the 1960s will rejoice in these pages. The Los Angeles Review of Books Well-researched, informative, illuminating... By challenging the standard Cold War narrative of Communist Party irrelevance and isolation, The Other Blacklist not only promotes radical African American cultural production in the 1950's, it also highlights the very real internal and external pressures faced by communists and their allies. People's World Superbly woven together... A must-read book for those who study and teach literature, women's studies, history, African American studies, American studies, and cultural studies. Womens Studies Quarterly An extraordinary piece of scholarly research and cultural commentary. Science & Society
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations Acknowledgments List of Abbreviations Introduction 1. Lloyd Brown: Black Fire in the Cold War 2. Charles White: "Robeson with a Brush and Pencil" 3. Alice Childress: Black, Red, and Feminist 4. When Gwendolyn Brooks Wore Red 5. Frank London Brown: The End of the Black Cultural Front and the Turn Toward Civil Rights 6. 1959: Spycraft and the Black Literary Left Epilogue: The Example of Julian Mayfield Notes Works Cited Index
