 | The Other Blacklist: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s Subjects: American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism; American literature -- 20th century -- History and criticism; Politics and literature -- United States -- History -- 20th century; African Americans -- Intellectual life -- 20th cen; In this groundbreaking book, University of Maryland literature professor Washington uncovers and recovers the "minimized, or omitted... influence of the Communist Party and the Left" in African-American arts and letters during the 1950s. FBI informants, she observes, were often "far more enterprising and thorough than most literary historians," thus enabling Washington to retrieve details of "Black-Left history" absent from current anthologies. Focusing on six artists-novelist Lloyd L. Brown, graphic artist Charles White, playwright Alice Childress, poet and novelist Gwendolyn Brooks, novelist Frank London Brown, and novelist Julian Mayfield-her work aims to recast who we read and transform how we read. Her analysis of Brown's Iron City as, in aspects, a parody of Wright's Native Son, for example, illuminates both works, and her countering of the "force fed. tale of [Brooks's] sudden and unprecedented conversion to blackness and radicalism" with "her earlier left-wing radicalism" adds fresh insight. Washington attends to the "range of relationships with the left," from Communist Party membership to "idiosyncratic radicalism" and "silences and self-censorship." "What if you put the black literary and cultural Left at the center of African American studies during the Cold War?," Washington asks. Her thought-provoking reply opens a conversation. Illus. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. Mary Helen Washington is a professor in the English Department at the University of Maryland, College Park. She has been a Bunting Fellow at Harvard University and has taught at the University of Massachusetts, Boston. She is the editor of Black-Eyed Susans: Classic Stories by Black Women Writers ; Midnight Birds: Stories of Contemporary Black Women Writers ; Invented Lives: Narratives of Black Women ; and Memory of Kin: Stories of Family by Black Writers . |
