Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903618
Danica Savonick
what a cartoon image is capable of expressing. The images that most intrigue Wanzo exemplify her view that “black cultural productions are always sparring with ghosts” (220). The comic artists she discusses in her remarkable book are amused by this endless sparring match, and their evocation of the clumsy struggle is both an acknowledgment of real human suffering and an assertion of hope. Wanzo brings the richness and seriousness of their art into focus as never before.
{"title":"“Black People Are My Business”: Toni Cade Bambara’s Practices of Liberation by Thabiti Lewis (review)","authors":"Danica Savonick","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903618","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903618","url":null,"abstract":"what a cartoon image is capable of expressing. The images that most intrigue Wanzo exemplify her view that “black cultural productions are always sparring with ghosts” (220). The comic artists she discusses in her remarkable book are amused by this endless sparring match, and their evocation of the clumsy struggle is both an acknowledgment of real human suffering and an assertion of hope. Wanzo brings the richness and seriousness of their art into focus as never before.","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45367813","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903615
Robert Fanuzzi
Helwig’s analysis of cross-racial solidarity focuses in particular on passages such as the reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act in Lippard’s last novella, Eleanor (1854): “Black Slavery is the very embodiment of all the evils of White Slavery, multiplied ad infinitum; the great Sum of all the villainies and tyrannies that ever existed beneath the Sun” (98-99). While Helwig integrates both antebellum and contemporary critiques of the reality of cross-racial solidarity in his study (84, 98, 153), his book falls on the optimistic side in its assessment of the extent of this solidarity. Helwig frames his monograph, somewhat infelicitously in methodological terms, as a revisionist project that seeks to correct the historiographic “meta-narrative” of the “white working class as a politically reactionary and racist monolith” (5), an idea that he sees as informing such scholarship as David Roediger’s seminal work on The Wages of Whiteness (1991). Helwig’s argument focuses on the fraught analogy between “Northern ‘wage slavery’ and Southern chattel slavery” (8), an analogy that Roediger discussed in detail, pointing out that the term “wage slavery” was far less common in the antebellum era than “white slavery.” Roediger offers a more nuanced examination of what W. E. B. Du Bois had identified as the “public and psychological wage” of white workers in Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935) than Helwig’s summative reference to the “white working class as a politically reactionary and racist monolith” suggests (5). In a context in which Black Lives Matter coexists with Trumpism, such a scholarly debate has political implications that Helwig does not address directly. The structural relationship between race and class remains undertheorized in contrast to individual moral and ethical quandaries that are discussed with great nuance. The issue of the interconnections between Southern chattel slavery and Northern wage labor forms the core of the debate over the “New History of Capitalism,” whose proponents (e.g., Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton, 2014; Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told, 2014) argue that the production of raw cotton by enslaved African Americans in the South played a crucial role in the emergence of modern-day globalized capitalism. Within the field of antebellum American literature, Helwig’s book advances research on George Lippard’s work in particular. In analyses that should interest specialists in antebellum city mysteries, the monograph also contributes to the study of the early African American novel and the cultural relevance of reviewing to the papers edited by Frederick Douglass. For the many questions it raises, Helwig’s book thus makes an important contribution to the study of antebellum American literature and will invite much follow-up research. It poses anew the question of the role of literature in cross-racial solidarity and investigates its social limits, imaginary conditions, and political potential in antebe
{"title":"Puritan Spirits in the Abolitionist Imagination by Kenyon Gradert, and: Selling Antislavery: Abolition and Mass Media in Antebellum Culture by Teresa A. Goddu (review)","authors":"Robert Fanuzzi","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903615","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903615","url":null,"abstract":"Helwig’s analysis of cross-racial solidarity focuses in particular on passages such as the reaction to the Fugitive Slave Act in Lippard’s last novella, Eleanor (1854): “Black Slavery is the very embodiment of all the evils of White Slavery, multiplied ad infinitum; the great Sum of all the villainies and tyrannies that ever existed beneath the Sun” (98-99). While Helwig integrates both antebellum and contemporary critiques of the reality of cross-racial solidarity in his study (84, 98, 153), his book falls on the optimistic side in its assessment of the extent of this solidarity. Helwig frames his monograph, somewhat infelicitously in methodological terms, as a revisionist project that seeks to correct the historiographic “meta-narrative” of the “white working class as a politically reactionary and racist monolith” (5), an idea that he sees as informing such scholarship as David Roediger’s seminal work on The Wages of Whiteness (1991). Helwig’s argument focuses on the fraught analogy between “Northern ‘wage slavery’ and Southern chattel slavery” (8), an analogy that Roediger discussed in detail, pointing out that the term “wage slavery” was far less common in the antebellum era than “white slavery.” Roediger offers a more nuanced examination of what W. E. B. Du Bois had identified as the “public and psychological wage” of white workers in Black Reconstruction in America, 1860-1880 (1935) than Helwig’s summative reference to the “white working class as a politically reactionary and racist monolith” suggests (5). In a context in which Black Lives Matter coexists with Trumpism, such a scholarly debate has political implications that Helwig does not address directly. The structural relationship between race and class remains undertheorized in contrast to individual moral and ethical quandaries that are discussed with great nuance. The issue of the interconnections between Southern chattel slavery and Northern wage labor forms the core of the debate over the “New History of Capitalism,” whose proponents (e.g., Sven Beckert’s Empire of Cotton, 2014; Edward Baptist’s The Half Has Never Been Told, 2014) argue that the production of raw cotton by enslaved African Americans in the South played a crucial role in the emergence of modern-day globalized capitalism. Within the field of antebellum American literature, Helwig’s book advances research on George Lippard’s work in particular. In analyses that should interest specialists in antebellum city mysteries, the monograph also contributes to the study of the early African American novel and the cultural relevance of reviewing to the papers edited by Frederick Douglass. For the many questions it raises, Helwig’s book thus makes an important contribution to the study of antebellum American literature and will invite much follow-up research. It poses anew the question of the role of literature in cross-racial solidarity and investigates its social limits, imaginary conditions, and political potential in antebe","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"47242156","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903609
Aimee Zygmonski
{"title":"Sistuhs in the Struggle: An Oral History of Black Arts Movement Theater and Performance by La Donna L. Forsgren (review)","authors":"Aimee Zygmonski","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903609","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903609","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"49146724","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903600
Sławomir Studniarz
Abstract:This article discusses All Our Names, the 2014 novel by Dinaw Mengestu, an Ethiopian-born, American immigrant writer. The narrative focuses on two figures: a young Ethiopian dreamer caught in the postcolonial military struggle in Uganda who later seeks safe haven in the US, and a single white American woman in her early thirties named Helen, a social worker at Lutheran Relief Services. Such a configuration certainly suggests the relevance of the postcolonial perspective, but in the novel, issues of race and postcolonialism are intertwined with the identity crisis aggravated by the ethnically polarized world of small-town America. Yet the identity that is destabilized is not merely racial but also sexual, through the convoluted and illicit erotic relationships in which the characters are enmeshed. This article analyzes the concealments of sexual identities and the struggles of the characters, who are reluctant to disclose their selves and the true nature of their relations with each other, first in the context of cultural dislocation engendered by involuntary migration to the United States, and then in the postcolonial setting of war-torn Uganda
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903610
Derek C. Maus
hearing the voices of those about whom we have not always read, such as Doris Derby and Barbara Molette, as well as of those we have lost, including brief but poignant words from playwright/poet Ntozake Shange and lighting designer Shirley Prendergast. The book also provides a window into career fields not typically showcased in compendiums of this nature, such as stage management and design. Interviews with ‘Femi Sarah Heggie about falling into stage management work with the Negro Ensemble Company and Kathy Perkins’s vast experience as a lighting designer offer a rare and an alternative glimpse into the field as a whole. While Forsgren’s interviews privilege the speaker’s voice, they also share the author’s own positionality, not only as an interviewer and witness but also as an interlocutor and participant in the women’s recollections and histories. While it is clear that she impeccably researched each individual she interviewed, the joy of reading Sistuhs at times comes in part from Forsgren’s own questions and comments, which serve not only to direct interviewees toward more insightful and directive answers but also to make the reader feel as if she were sitting in that living room, café, or theater office with them. It is almost as if we can hear their voices, their laughter, as if we were eavesdropping on a shared secret. (In fact, Forsgren offers her own journey in this process in the Appendix, sharing that it was not until she called attention to her particular position as a Black female theater artist did some of the women wish to speak with her at all.) The context Forsgren provides ahead of sections of interviewees is valuable, as are the biographies in the back of the book. A small criticism would be that a reader who is not a scholar of the Black Arts Movement and/or theater history will appreciate some of the details, but not understand the whole story as told. Narratives weave in and out at times and even with Forsgren’s informative perspective, the interviews can feel disjointed in the order in which she’s chosen to share them. Forsgren notes forthrightly that this collection should not serve as a “definitive” history of women’s involvement in the Black Arts Movement (11), but Sistuhs in the Struggle provides a critical and necessary compendium of the marginalized and silenced voices of Black female theater artists. As playwright P. J. Gibson shares, “It is incumbent upon me to leave an arsenal of information that gives a glimpse into the black presence in America during the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. That’s my job” (321).
听到了那些我们不常读到的人的声音，比如多丽丝·德比和芭芭拉·莫莱特，以及那些我们失去的人，包括剧作家/诗人恩托扎克·尚格和灯光设计师雪莉·普伦德加斯特简短但辛酸的话。这本书还提供了一个了解职业领域的窗口，这些领域通常不会在这种性质的简编中展示，比如舞台管理和设计。对Femi Sarah Heggie的采访讲述了她在黑人合奏团公司从事舞台管理工作的经历，以及Kathy Perkins作为灯光设计师的丰富经验，为我们提供了一个罕见的、另类的视角。虽然福斯格伦的采访赋予了演讲者的发言权，但他们也分享了作者自己的立场，不仅是作为采访者和证人，也是女性回忆和历史的对话者和参与者。虽然很明显，她对采访的每一个人都进行了无可挑剔的研究，但阅读《西斯图》的乐趣有时部分来自Forsgren自己的问题和评论，这些问题和评论不仅有助于引导受访者找到更具洞察力和指导性的答案，还让读者感觉她和他们一起坐在客厅、咖啡馆或剧院办公室里。我们几乎可以听到他们的声音，他们的笑声，就好像我们在窃听一个共同的秘密。（事实上，Forsgren在附录中介绍了她自己在这一过程中的经历，她分享说，直到她提请人们注意她作为黑人女戏剧艺术家的特殊地位，一些女性才希望与她交谈。）Forsgren为部分受访者提供的背景很有价值，书后面的传记也是如此。一个小的批评是，一个不是黑人艺术运动和/或戏剧史学者的读者会欣赏其中的一些细节，但不会理解整个故事。叙述有时会穿插进来，即使福斯格伦的视角信息丰富，采访也会让人感觉脱节，因为她选择了分享这些采访的顺序。Forsgren直率地指出，这本作品集不应成为女性参与黑人艺术运动的“决定性”历史（11），但《斗争中的西斯图》为黑人女性戏剧艺术家被边缘化和沉默的声音提供了一个关键而必要的简编。正如剧作家P·J·吉布森所分享的那样，“我有责任留下一个信息库，让人们一窥二十世纪和二十一世纪美国黑人的存在。这是我的工作”（321）。
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903598
Crystal S. Donkor
Abstract:This article reads Frances Harper’s serialized novel, Minnie’s Sacrifice (1868), as a response to the anxieties of loss and reunion captured in the “Information Wanted” feature of the Christian Recorder. When mutually assessed, each text augments the other, harkening back to the African American cultural tradition of call-and-response. I explore this tradition’s inversion in the periodical, giving way to new forms of understanding how the presence of call-and-response exists beyond the bounds of religiosity, and how it can be a method of literary analysis that helps us better understand African American print culture.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903612
Gordon E. Thompson
{"title":"African American Poetry: 250 Years of Struggle and Song ed. by Kevin Young (review)","authors":"Gordon E. Thompson","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903612","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903612","url":null,"abstract":"","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"45421162","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903619
J. Porter
break stereotypes “of the passive or accommodating girl” (64) and struggle with lessons that mentors and elders seek to impart, weighing inherited wisdom against the experiences of their daily lives. In Bambara’s deft hands, characters who might not fit conventional definitions of activists are honored for the questions they ask, the lessons they teach, and the laughter they generate in a radically unjust and unequal world. The remaining chapters analyze how Bambara’s two novels draw on “West African-based religions” (10) to depict a liberation that is equal parts spiritual and political. Chapter four explores the dynamics of “renewal” and “transformation” in The Salt Eaters (1980), and chapter five illustrates how Bambara’s posthumously published novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child (1999), a fictional retelling of the Atlanta child murders of 1979-81, draws on the ethos of African spirituals and religious practices to emphasize the importance of keeping covenants with “family, faith, feeling, and freedom” (2). Weaving together genres ranging from spirituals to sermons and incorporating practices like nature worship, Bambara’s fiction explores a complex, multifaceted spirituality that is integral to larger freedom movements. One unexpected insight into Bambara’s œuvre comes in Lewis’s analysis of her Black feminist perspective on masculinity. Bambara is well known for stories that explore the wide range of relationships among Black women: as mothers and daughters, teachers and students, and as activists and members of communities. Lewis also draws our attention to her depictions of men, showing how she centers Black women characters and perspectives in ways that are “critical of patriarchy” (15) yet also create spaces for men as collaborators and “comrades for change” (201). As Lewis writes, “Given Bambara’s views of womanhood/manhood and revolution, when one views Bambara against her contemporaries, she was less concerned with the hurt of it all and chose to handle Black male-female relationships differently. . . . These stories model a society that is egalitarian, with new masculine realities that feature a more responsible Black manhood that is less sexist and believes less in patriarchy” (98). Such striking observations lead one to wonder whether Bambara’s work was wholly circumscribed by rigid male-female binaries, or if her “spiritual wholeness aesthetic” might also provide grounds for thinking in more fluid, less binary terms about gender. “Black People Are My Business” offers dazzling new insights into one of the most important Black feminist writers and activists of the late twentieth century. From her charismatic characters to her jazzy, belly-laugh-inducing dialogue, Lewis invites us to savor the revolutionary impulse that animates her every word. Or, as Bambara would say, “It is all sacred” (191).
{"title":"Redlining Culture: A Data History of Racial Inequality and Postwar Fiction by Richard Jean So (review)","authors":"J. Porter","doi":"10.1353/afa.2023.a903619","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1353/afa.2023.a903619","url":null,"abstract":"break stereotypes “of the passive or accommodating girl” (64) and struggle with lessons that mentors and elders seek to impart, weighing inherited wisdom against the experiences of their daily lives. In Bambara’s deft hands, characters who might not fit conventional definitions of activists are honored for the questions they ask, the lessons they teach, and the laughter they generate in a radically unjust and unequal world. The remaining chapters analyze how Bambara’s two novels draw on “West African-based religions” (10) to depict a liberation that is equal parts spiritual and political. Chapter four explores the dynamics of “renewal” and “transformation” in The Salt Eaters (1980), and chapter five illustrates how Bambara’s posthumously published novel, Those Bones Are Not My Child (1999), a fictional retelling of the Atlanta child murders of 1979-81, draws on the ethos of African spirituals and religious practices to emphasize the importance of keeping covenants with “family, faith, feeling, and freedom” (2). Weaving together genres ranging from spirituals to sermons and incorporating practices like nature worship, Bambara’s fiction explores a complex, multifaceted spirituality that is integral to larger freedom movements. One unexpected insight into Bambara’s œuvre comes in Lewis’s analysis of her Black feminist perspective on masculinity. Bambara is well known for stories that explore the wide range of relationships among Black women: as mothers and daughters, teachers and students, and as activists and members of communities. Lewis also draws our attention to her depictions of men, showing how she centers Black women characters and perspectives in ways that are “critical of patriarchy” (15) yet also create spaces for men as collaborators and “comrades for change” (201). As Lewis writes, “Given Bambara’s views of womanhood/manhood and revolution, when one views Bambara against her contemporaries, she was less concerned with the hurt of it all and chose to handle Black male-female relationships differently. . . . These stories model a society that is egalitarian, with new masculine realities that feature a more responsible Black manhood that is less sexist and believes less in patriarchy” (98). Such striking observations lead one to wonder whether Bambara’s work was wholly circumscribed by rigid male-female binaries, or if her “spiritual wholeness aesthetic” might also provide grounds for thinking in more fluid, less binary terms about gender. “Black People Are My Business” offers dazzling new insights into one of the most important Black feminist writers and activists of the late twentieth century. From her charismatic characters to her jazzy, belly-laugh-inducing dialogue, Lewis invites us to savor the revolutionary impulse that animates her every word. Or, as Bambara would say, “It is all sacred” (191).","PeriodicalId":44779,"journal":{"name":"AFRICAN AMERICAN REVIEW","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":0.2,"publicationDate":"2023-03-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"66775498","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":3,"RegionCategory":"文学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903595
HANNAH-ROSE Murray
Abstract:Black freedom fighters have always been at the forefront pushing the United States to accept the ideals it was founded on and were—are—unrelenting in their groundbreaking campaigns for abolition, equality, and social justice. In this article, I argue that to add nuance and a greater understanding to the philosophies developed by such freedom fighters, it is necessary to evaluate the transatlantic connections between the United States and Britain. Complicating and expanding their calls for antiracism and anti-oppression, Black activists have gained an alternative international perspective on British soil. Beginning with a discussion of the Movement for Black Lives in the US and its links with the UK, I analyze the movement’s historical and transatlantic roots.
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Pub Date : 2023-03-01DOI: 10.1353/afa.2023.a903613
D. Grigsby
diverse responses from listeners.” Thomas characterizes this ethic of reciprocity as embedded in the collective research processes that undergird the project and indeed the book itself is structured in a call-and-response format, incorporating the voices of eight authors, ranging from undergraduate students to community members to professors. While the website and other repositories of the project’s primary research may attract a broader audience, Call My Name, Clemson is informative for scholars housed in academic institutions and interested in the mechanics of social justice work in the academy and local community. As a case study of what public humanities might look like from the ground up, the book is commendably detailed and informative, although more explicit and sustained connections to conversations about memorialization on other college campuses would have been welcome. Mapped against social and cultural conversations about Black Lives Matter and pervasive anti-Black racism in the United States as they have played out over the past fifteen years, however, Call My Name, Clemson is a powerful model for effecting material change on college campuses through deliberately collaborative public humanities research.
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