The Postwar African American Novel: Protest and Discontent, 1945-1950
The Postwar African American Novel: Protest and Discontent, 1945-1950
Cite
Abstract
Americans in the World War II era bought the novels of African American writers in unprecedented numbers. However, the names on the books lining shelves and filling barracks trunks were not the now-familiar Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison, but Frank Yerby, Chester Himes, William Gardner Smith, and J. Saunders Redding. This book recovers the work of these innovative novelists, overturning conventional wisdom about the writers of the period and the trajectory of African American literary history. The book also questions the assumptions about the relations between race and genre that have obscured the importance of these once-influential creators. Wright’s Native Son is typically considered to have inaugurated an era of social realism in African American literature. Ellison’s Invisible Man has been cast as both a high mark of American modernism and the only worthy stopover on the way to the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s. However, readers in the late 1940s purchased enough copies of Yerby’s historical romances to make him the best-selling African American author of all time. Critics, meanwhile, were taking note of the generic experiments of Redding, Himes, and Smith, while the authors themselves questioned the obligation of black authors to write protest, instead penning campus novels, war novels, and, in Yerby’s case, “costume dramas.” Their status as “lesser lights” is the product of retrospective bias, the book demonstrates.
-
Front Matter
- Introduction
- One Beyond Protest: Retracing the Margins of the Postwar African American Novel
- Two “If I Can Only Get It Funny!”: Chester Himes’s Parodic Protest Novels
- Three Frank Yerby and the “Costume Drama” of Southern Historiography
- Four William Gardner Smith and the Cosmopolitan War Novel
- Five J. Saunders Redding and the African American Campus Novel
- Conclusion
-
End Matter
Sign in
Get help with accessPersonal account
- Sign in with email/username & password
- Get email alerts
- Save searches
- Purchase content
- Activate your purchase/trial code
Institutional access
- Sign in through your institution
- Sign in with a library card Sign in with username/password Recommend to your librarian
Institutional account management
Sign in as administratorPurchase
Our books are available by subscription or purchase to libraries and institutions.
Purchasing informationMonth: | Total Views: |
---|---|
October 2023 | 3 |
October 2023 | 1 |
October 2023 | 8 |
November 2023 | 1 |
February 2024 | 1 |
February 2024 | 5 |
March 2024 | 1 |
Get help with access
Institutional access
Access to content on Oxford Academic is often provided through institutional subscriptions and purchases. If you are a member of an institution with an active account, you may be able to access content in one of the following ways:
IP based access
Typically, access is provided across an institutional network to a range of IP addresses. This authentication occurs automatically, and it is not possible to sign out of an IP authenticated account.
Sign in through your institution
Choose this option to get remote access when outside your institution. Shibboleth/Open Athens technology is used to provide single sign-on between your institution’s website and Oxford Academic.
If your institution is not listed or you cannot sign in to your institution’s website, please contact your librarian or administrator.
Sign in with a library card
Enter your library card number to sign in. If you cannot sign in, please contact your librarian.
Society Members
Society member access to a journal is achieved in one of the following ways:
Sign in through society site
Many societies offer single sign-on between the society website and Oxford Academic. If you see ‘Sign in through society site’ in the sign in pane within a journal:
If you do not have a society account or have forgotten your username or password, please contact your society.
Sign in using a personal account
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members. See below.
Personal account
A personal account can be used to get email alerts, save searches, purchase content, and activate subscriptions.
Some societies use Oxford Academic personal accounts to provide access to their members.
Viewing your signed in accounts
Click the account icon in the top right to:
Signed in but can't access content
Oxford Academic is home to a wide variety of products. The institutional subscription may not cover the content that you are trying to access. If you believe you should have access to that content, please contact your librarian.
Institutional account management
For librarians and administrators, your personal account also provides access to institutional account management. Here you will find options to view and activate subscriptions, manage institutional settings and access options, access usage statistics, and more.