Black Regions of the Imagination
African American Writers between the Nation and the World
- English
- PDF
- Available on iOS & Android
Black Regions of the Imagination
African American Writers between the Nation and the World
About This Book
Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Chester Himes were all pressured by critics and publishers to enlighten mainstream (white) audiences about race and African American culture. Focusing on fiction and non-fiction they produced between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, Eve Dunbar's important book, Black Regions of the Imagination, examines how these African American writersâwho lived and traveled outside the United Statesâboth document and re-imagine their "homegrown" racial experiences within a worldly framework.
From Hurston's participant-observational accounts and Wright's travel writing to Baldwin's Another Country and Himes' detective fiction, these writers helped develop the concept of a "region" of blackness that resists boundaries of genre and geography. Each writer representsâand signifiesâblackness in new ways and within the larger context of the world. As they negotiated issues of "belonging, " these writers were more critical of social segregation in America as well as increasingly resistant to their expected roles as cultural "translators."
Frequently asked questions
Information
Table of contents
- Contents
- Preface
- Acknowledgments
- Introduction
- 1. Becoming American through Ethnographic Writing: Zora Neale Hurston and the Performance of Ethnography
- 2. Escape through Ethnography: Literary Regionalism and the Image of Nonracial Alignment in Richard Wrightâs Travel Writing
- 3. Deconstructing the Romance of Ethnography: Queering Knowledge in James Baldwinâs Another Count
- 4. Ethnography of the Absurd: Chester Himesâs Detective Fiction and Counterimages of Black Life
- Conclusion: Look Down! The Black Arts Affirmation of Place and the Refusal to Translate
- Notes
- Bibliography
- Index