Skip to main content Accessibility help
×
Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-t8hqh Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-23T11:42:03.189Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

Eve Dunbar
Affiliation:
Vassar College, New York
Ayesha K. Hardison
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
Get access

Summary

This introduction outlines the parameters of the 1930s as the decade that shapes the African American literature tradition. It considers the volumeʼs chapters and their willingness to linger in the economic, social, and political uncertainty – the transitions – that mark this oft-overlooked decade. Bound not simply by a willingness to grapple with cultural works produced during national and international economic, political, and social upheaval, this introduction argues for the decadeʼs centrality to the later twentieth-century literary trends in the form of literary concerns and aesthetic innovations.

Type
Chapter
Information
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, James Truslow. The Epic of America. New York: Little, Brown, and Co., 1931.Google Scholar
Angelou, Maya. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings. New York: Random House, 1969.Google Scholar
Barlow, William. Voice Over: The Making of Black Radio. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Bone, Robert, and Courage, Richard. The Muse in Bronzeville: African American Creative Expression in Chicago, 1932–1950. New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Boyd, Valerie. Wrapped in Rainbows. New York: Scribner, 2003.Google Scholar
Brown, Sterling A. Negro Poetry and Drama. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1937.Google Scholar
The Negro in American Fiction. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1937.Google Scholar
Bryant, Earle V., ed. Byline Richard Wright: Articles from the Daily Worker and New Masses. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 2015.Google Scholar
Collins, Lisa Gail, Mustalish, Rachel, and Mintz, Lisa. African-American Artists, 1929–2945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Cripps, Thomas. Making Movies Black: The Hollywood Message Movie from World War II to the Civil Rights Era. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cullen, Countee. One Way to Heaven. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1932.Google Scholar
Davis, Angela Y. Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage Books, 1999.Google Scholar
Davis, Frank Marshall. Black Man’s Verse. Chicago: Black Cat Press, 1935.Google Scholar
Davis, Frank Marshall I Am the American Negro. Chicago: Black Cat Press, 1937.Google Scholar
Davis, Frank Marshall Livin’ the Blues: Memoirs of a Black Journalist and Poet, ed. Tidwell, John Edgar. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Davis, Frank Marshall Through Sepia Eyes. Chicago: Black Cat Press, 1938.Google Scholar
Dawahare, Anthony. Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature Between the Wars. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003.Google Scholar
Denning, Michael. The Cultural Front: The Laboring of American Culture in the Twentieth Century. New York: Verso, 1996.Google Scholar
Dickson-Carr, Darryl. “African American Literature and the Great Depression.” In The Cambridge History of African American Literature, eds. Graham, Maryemma and Ward, Jerry W., Jr., 288310. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Dilevko, Juris, and Magowan, Candice F. C.. Readers’ Advisory Service in North American Public Libraries, 1870–2005: A History and Critical Analysis. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Co., 2007.Google Scholar
Doherty, M. Stephen. “Introduction.” In Alone in a Crowd: Prints of the 1930s by African-American Artists, from the Collection of Reba and Dave Williams, 2nd revised edition, 12. New York: Washburn Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Drake, St. Clair, and Cayton, Horace R.. Black Metropolis: A Study of Negro Life in a Northern City. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1945.Google Scholar
Du Bois, W. E. B. Black Reconstruction in America: An Essay Toward a History of the Part Which Black Folk Played in the Attempt to Reconstruct Democracy in America, 1860–1880. New York: Harcourt, Brace and Co., 1935.Google Scholar
Dusk of Dawn. New York: Harcourt, Brace, and Co., 1940.Google Scholar
Dunbar, Eve. Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers between the Nation and the World. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2012.Google Scholar
Foley, Barbara. Radical Representations: Politics and Form in U.S. Proletarian Fiction, 1929–1941. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Frazier, E. Franklin. The Negro Family in the United States. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1939.Google Scholar
Goodman, James. Stories of Scottsboro. New York: Pantheon Books, 1994.Google Scholar
Graham, Maryemma and Ward, Jerry W., Jr. “Introduction.” In The Cambridge History of African American Literature, eds. Graham, Maryemma and Ward, Jerry W., Jr., 119. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Greenberg, Cheryl Lynn. To Ask for an Equal Chance: African Americans in the Great Depression. Lanham, MD: Rowan & Littlefield, 2009.Google Scholar
Guttman, Sondra. “‘No Tomorrow in the Man’: Uncovering the Great Depression in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” Arizona Quarterly 63, no. 3 (2007): 91117.Google Scholar
Hardison, Ayesha K. Writing through Jane Crow: Race and Gender Politics in African American Literature. Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Haywood, Harry. Black Bolshevik: Autobiography of an Afro-American Communist. Chicago: Liberator Press, 1978.Google Scholar
Himes, Chester. The Quality of Hurt. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1972.Google Scholar
Holiday, Billie with William Dufty. Lady Sings the Blues. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1956.Google Scholar
Hughes, Langston. I Wonder as I Wander: An Autobiographical Journey. 1956. New York: Hill & Wang, 1993.Google Scholar
Hughes, Langston The Big Sea. New York: Knopf, 1940.Google Scholar
Hughes, Langston The Ways of White Folks. New York: Knopf, 1934.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale. Dust Tracks on a Road. 1942. New York: HarperCollins (Perennial Classics), 1996.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale Jonah’s Gourd Vine. Philadelphia: J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1934.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale “The Gilded Six-Bits.” Story, August 1933.Google Scholar
Hurston, Zora Neale Their Eyes Were Watching God. 1937. New York: HarperCollins (Perennial Classics), 1998.Google Scholar
Jackson, Lawrence P. The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934–1960. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010.Google Scholar
Jarrett, Gene Andrew. Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature. Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2007.Google Scholar
Johnson, James Weldon. Along This Way. New York: Viking Press, 1933.Google Scholar
Jones, Jacqueline. Labor of Love, Labor of Sorrow: Black Women, Work, and the Family, from Slavery to the Present. New York: Basic Books, 2009.Google Scholar
Jones, William N. “Stock Market Crash Did Not Affect Local Investors.” Baltimore Afro-American (November 9, 1929): 18.Google Scholar
Kaplan, Carla. “The Erotics of Talk: ‘That Oldest Human Longing’ in Their Eyes Were Watching God.” American Literature 67 no.1 (1995): 115142.Google Scholar
Lewis, David Levering. When Harlem Was in Vogue. New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1981.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain. The Negro in America. Chicago: American Library Association, 1933.Google Scholar
Locke, Alain The Negro in Art: A Pictorial Record of the Negro Artist and of the Negro Theme in Art. Washington, DC: Associates in Negro Folk Education, 1940.Google Scholar
Loggins, Vernon. The Negro Author: His Development in America. New York: Columbia University Press, 1931.Google Scholar
Maxwell, William J. New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism Between the Wars. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Messinger, Lisa Mintz, Collins, Lisa Gail, and Mustalish, Rachel. African-American Artists, 1929–1945: Prints, Drawings, and Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2003.Google Scholar
Morgan, Stacy I. Rethinking Social Realism: African American Art and Literature, 1930–1953. Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2004.Google Scholar
Mullen, Bill V. “Introduction.” In Popular Fronts: Chicago and African American Cultural Politics, 1935–1946, 117. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Robeson, Paul. Here I Stand. New York: Othello Associates, 1958.Google Scholar
Schuyler, George S. Black and Conservative: The Autobiography of George S. Schuyler. New Rochelle, NY: Arlington House, 1966.Google Scholar
Schuyler, George S. Black No More: Being an Account of the Strange and Wonderful Workings of Science in the Land of the Free, A.D. 1933–1940. New York: Macauley Company, 1931.Google Scholar
Schuyler, George S. “The Talented Tenth.” New York Amsterdam News (December 4, 1929): 20.Google Scholar
Sims, Lowery Stokes. “African-American Artists as Printmakers.” In Alone in a Crowd: Prints of the 1930s by African-American Artists, from the Collection of Reba and Dave Williams, 2nd revised ed. New York: Washburn Press, 1993.Google Scholar
Sklaroff, Lauren Rebecca. Black Culture and the New Deal: The Quest for Civil Rights in the Roosevelt Era. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2009.Google Scholar
Smethurst, James. The New Red Negro: The Literary Left and African American Poetry, 1930–1946. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999.Google Scholar
Smith, Bessie. “Poor Man’s Blues.” In Y. Davis, Angela, Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday. New York: Vintage, 1999.Google Scholar
Stevens, John D.The Black Reaction to ‘Gone with the Wind.’” Journal of Popular Film 2, no. 4 (Fall 1973): 366371.Google Scholar
Takayoshi, Ichiro. “Introduction.” In American Literature in Transition, 1930–1940, ed. Takayoshi, Ichiro, 124. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2018.Google Scholar
Terrell, Mary Eliza Church. A Colored Woman in a White World. Washington, DC: Ransdell, 1940.Google Scholar
Thompson, Era Bell. American Daughter. London: Victor Gollancz, 1946.Google Scholar
Thurman, Wallace. Infants of the Spring. New York: Macauley Company, 1932.Google Scholar
Trotter, Joe William. From a Raw Deal to a New Deal?: African Americans, 1929–1945. New York: Oxford University Press, 1996.Google Scholar
Waligora-Davis, Nicole. “Weaving Jagged Words: The Black Left, 1930s–1940s.” In The Cambridge History of African American Literature, eds. Graham, Maryemma and Ward, Jerry W., Jr., 311340. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Washington, Mary Helen. The Other Black List: The African American Literary and Cultural Left of the 1950s. New York: Columbia University Press, 2014.Google Scholar
Waters, Ethel. His Eye Is on the Sparrow. Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1951.Google Scholar
Werner, Craig H., and Shannon, Sandra G., “Foundations of African American Modernism, 1910–1950.” In The Cambridge History of African American Literature, eds. Graham, Maryemma and Ward, Jerry W., Jr., 241267. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011.Google Scholar
Wilkerson, Isabel. The Warmth of Other Suns: The Epic Story of America’s Great Migration. New York: Vintage Books, 2010.Google Scholar
Wright, Richard. Black Boy, a Record of Childhood and Youth. New York: Harper and Brothers, 1945.Google Scholar

Save book to Kindle

To save this book to your Kindle, first ensure [email protected] is added to your Approved Personal Document E-mail List under your Personal Document Settings on the Manage Your Content and Devices page of your Amazon account. Then enter the ‘name’ part of your Kindle email address below. Find out more about saving to your Kindle.

Note you can select to save to either the @free.kindle.com or @kindle.com variations. ‘@free.kindle.com’ emails are free but can only be saved to your device when it is connected to wi-fi. ‘@kindle.com’ emails can be delivered even when you are not connected to wi-fi, but note that service fees apply.

Find out more about the Kindle Personal Document Service.

Available formats
×

Save book to Dropbox

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Dropbox.

Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

Available formats
×