Publishing Blackness: Textual Constructions of Race Since 1850

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George Hutchinson, John Kevin Young
University of Michigan Press, Feb 8, 2013 - Literary Criticism - 236 pages

From the white editorial authentication of slave narratives, to the cultural hybridity of the Harlem Renaissance, to the overtly independent publications of the Black Arts Movement, to the commercial power of Oprah's Book Club, African American textuality has been uniquely shaped by the contests for cultural power inherent in literary production and distribution. Always haunted by the commodification of blackness, African American literary production interfaces with the processes of publication and distribution in particularly charged ways. An energetic exploration of the struggles and complexities of African American print culture, this collection ranges across the history of African American literature, and the authors have much to contribute on such issues as editorial and archival preservation, canonization, and the "packaging" and repackaging of black-authored texts. Publishing Blackness aims to project African Americanist scholarship into the discourse of textual scholarship, provoking further work in a vital area of literary study.

 

Contents

Introduction George Hutchinson and John K Young
1
The Brief Wondrous Life of the AngloAfrican Magazine or Antebellum African American Editorial Practice and Its Afterlives Ivy G Wilson
18
Representing African American Literature or Tradition against the Individual Talent George Hutchinson
39
Subpersons and Textual Property in Native Son and Black Boy John K Young
67
Publishing African Americans Jews and Irish in the 1920s George Bornstein
93
The Caribbean in Hughes and Bontempss The Poetry of the Negro 1949 Ifeoma Kiddoe Nwankwo
108
The Hoover Raids the New Negro Renaissance and the Origins of FBI Literary Surveillance William J Maxwell
136
Rethinking Racial Representation in African American Anthologies Gene Andrew Jarrett
160
Some Problems of Recollecting and Editing Black Arts Texts James W Smethurst
175
Textual Productions of Black Aesthetics Unbound Margo Natalie Crawford
188
Select Bibliography
211
Contributors
215
Index
219
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