eBook

Imagining each other : Blacks and Jews in contemporary American literature

Goffman, Ethan

2000

Overview

Explores the complex ways in which Blacks and Jews have portrayed each other in recent American literature. Imagining Each Other explores Black-Jewish relations by examining the complex ways they have portrayed each other in recent American literature. It illuminates their dramatic alliances and conflicts and their dilemmas of identity and assimilation, and addresses the persistent questions of ethnic division and economic inequality that have so encompassed the Black-Jewish narrative in America. Focusing primarily on the 1960s and its aftermath, the book reveals how Jewish and African Americans view each other through a complex dialectic of identification and difference, channeled by ever-shifting positions within American society. Through the works of Richard Wright, Saul Bellow, Bernard Malamud, Amiri Baraka, Paule Marshall, Grace Paley, and others, Goffman unfolds a story of two peoples with powerful biblical and mythic connections that replay themselves in contemporary circumstances. In doing so, he uncovers layers of meaning in works that dramatize this turbulent, paradoxical relationship, and reveals how this relationship is paradigmatic of multicultural American self-invention.

• Publisher: State University of New York Press
• Subject: 20th century / African American authors / African Americans / African Americans in literature / Afro-Americans -- Relations with Jews / Afro-Americans in literature / American literature / American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism / American literature -- Afro-American authors -- History and criticism / American literature -- Jewish authors -- History and criticism / Blacks / Blacks -- Relations with Jews / Blacks in literature / English, Irish, Scottish, Welsh / Ethnic relations in literature / European / History / History and criticism / Jewish authors / Jews in literature / Judaism and literature / Judaism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / LITERARY CRITICISM / Literature and society / Literature and society -- United States -- History -- 20th century / Race relations in literature / Relations with Jews / United States
• ISBN: 9780791446775, 0791446778