African American Literature in Transition, 1940–1950
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- Publisher:
- Cambridge University Press
- Publication date:
- 09 July 2026
- 30 July 2026
- ISBN:
- 9781108648240
- 9781108480284
- Dimensions:
- (229 x 152 mm)
- Weight & Pages:
- 0.822kg, 440 Pages
- Dimensions:
- Weight & Pages:
- Subjects:
- Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies
You may already have access via personal or institutional login- Subjects:
- Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies
Volume 11
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Book description
1940s African American literature sits between two of the best-known periods in Black writing. Adding more intricacy to its framing, this decade's literary output commences and ends with watershed creative accomplishments by canonical mainstays in the waiting like Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, James Baldwin, and Ralph Ellison. However, this book shows that mid-century Black literary productivity is not a matter of a handful of canonical figures and instead, it illuminates overt and implicit collaboration as a hallmark of the age. It identifies perforation, aesthetic plurality, multi-generic virtuosity, and writerly professionalism as signposts for understanding mid-twentieth century Black literary productivity. It engages prior assessments that cast African American literature in the 1940s based on stylistic clashes and technical stasis. It restores Black writing's role as feature of American social progress in the space between the Great Depression and the mature Civil Rights Movement.
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