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  1. Home
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  3. Autobiography and Black Identity Politics
  • Cited by 31
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
1999
Online ISBN:
9780511483172
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511483172
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory, European and World Literature: General Interest
Series:
Cultural Margins (7)
Information

Book description

Why has autobiography been central to African American political speech throughout the twentieth century? What is it about the racialization process that persistently places African Americans in the position of speaking from personal experience? In Autobiography and Black Identity Politics: Racialization in Twentieth-Century America, Kenneth Mostern illustrates the relationship between narrative and racial categories such as 'colored', 'Negro', 'black' or 'African American' in the work of writers such as W. E. B. Du Bois, Zora Neale Hurston, Malcom X, Martin Luther King, Paul Robeson, Angela Davis and bell hooks. Mostern shows how these autobiographical narratives attempt to construct and transform the political meanings of blackness. The relationship between a black masculine identity that emerged during the 1960s, and the counter-movement of black feminism since the 1970s, is also discussed. This wide-ranging study will interest all those working in African American studies, cultural studies and literary theory.

Reviews

"Mostern provides intriguing readings of...the autobiographies he presents." American Literature

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