eBook

Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars

Anthony Dawahare

2002,2003

Overview

During and after the Harlem Renaissance, two intellectual forces --nationalism and Marxism--clashed and changed the future of African American writing. Current literary thinking says that writers with nationalist leanings wrote the most relevant fiction, poetry, and prose of the day. Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars: A New Pandora's Boxchallenges that notion. It boldly proposes that such writers as A. Philip Randolph, Langston Hughes, and Richard Wright, who often saw the world in terms of class struggle, did more to advance the anti-racist politics of African American letters than writers such as Countee Cullen, Jessie Redmon Fauset, Alain Locke, and Marcus Garvey, who remained enmeshed in nationalist and racialist discourse. Evaluating the great impact of Marxism and nationalism on black authors from the Harlem Renaissance and the Depression era, Anthony Dawahare argues that the spread of nationalist ideologies and movements between the world wars did guide legitimate political desires of black writers for a world without racism. But the nationalist channels of political and cultural resistance did not address the capitalist foundation of modern racial discrimination. During the period known as the \"Red Decade\" (1929-1941), black writers developed some of the sharpest critiques of the capitalist world and thus anticipated contemporary scholarship on the intellectual and political hazards of nationalism for the working class. As it examines the progression of the Great Depression, the book focuses on the shift of black writers to the Communist Left, including analyses of the Communists' position on the \"Negro Question,\" the radical poetry of Langston Hughes, and the writings of Richard Wright.

• Publisher: University Press of Mississippi
• Subject: 20th century / African American authors / African Americans / African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th century / African Americans -- Politics and government / African Americans in literature / American literature / American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism / American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism / Black nationalism / Black nationalism -- United States -- History -- 20th century / Black nationalism in literature / Communism and literature / Communism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / History / History and criticism / Intellectual life / Language & Literature / Nationalism and literature / Nationalism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / Politics and government / Politics in literature / Race in literature / Socialism and literature / Socialism and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century / United States
• ISBN: 1578065070, 9781578065073