Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West Book PDF, ePub eBook

Join our eBook service for unlimited books & audiobooks. Get a free 7 day subscription! ↓↓↓↓↓


Book Descriptions:
Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism revives and critiques four African American and Francophone Caribbean women writers sometimes overlooked in discussions of early-twentieth-century literature: Guadeloupean Suzanne Lacascade (dates unknown), African American Marita Bonner (1899–1971), Martinican Suzanne Césaire (1913–1966), and African American Dorothy West (1907–1998). Reexamining their most significant work, Jennifer M. Wilks demonstrates how their writing challenges prevailing racial archetypes—such as the New Negro and the Negritude hero—of the period from the 1920s to the 1940s, and explores how these writers tapped into modernist currents from expressionism to surrealism to produce progressive treatments of race, gender, and nation that differed from those of currently canonized black writers of the era, the great majority of whom are men.

Wilks begins with Lacascade, whom she deems "best known for being unknown," reading Lacascade's novel Claire-Solange, âme africaine (1924) as a protofeminist, proto-Negritude articulation of Caribbean identity. She then examines the fissures left unexplored in New Negro visions of African American community by showing the ways in which Bonner's essays, plays, and short stories highlight issues of economic class. Césaire applied the ideas and techniques of surrealism to the French language, and Wilks reveals how her writings in the journal Tropiques (1941-45) directly and insightfully engage the intellectual influences that informed the work of canonical Negritude. Wilks' close reading of West's The Living Is Easy (1948) provides a retrospective critique of the forces that continued to circumscribe women's lives in the midst of the social and cultural awakening presumably embodied in the New Negro.

To show how the black literary tradition has continued to confront the conflation of gender roles with social and literary conventions, Wilks examines these writers alongside the late twentieth-century writings of Maryse Condé and Toni Morrison. Unlike many literary analysts, Wilks does not bring together the four writers based on geography. Lacascade and Césaire came from different Caribbean islands, and though Bonner and West were from the United States, they never crossed paths. In considering this eclectic group of women writers together, Wilks reveals the analytical possibilities opened up by comparing works influenced by multiple intellectual traditions.

Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West by Jennifer M. Wilks

From reader reviews:

Stacey Thompson:

Exactly why? Because this Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West is an unordinary book that the inside of the publication waiting for you to snap that but latter it will zap you with the secret this inside. Reading this book alongside it was fantastic author who have write the book in such remarkable way makes the content within easier to understand, entertaining way but still convey the meaning thoroughly. So , it is good for you for not hesitating having this anymore or you going to regret it. This phenomenal book will give you a lot of positive aspects than the other book get such as help improving your expertise and your critical thinking method. So , still want to hold off having that book? If I ended up you I will go to the guide store hurriedly.

Linda McGrane:

Are you kind of stressful person, only have 10 as well as 15 minute in your moment to upgrading your mind ability or thinking skill perhaps analytical thinking? Then you are having problem with the book as compared to can satisfy your short space of time to read it because all of this time you only find e-book that need more time to be study. Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West can be your answer mainly because it can be read by an individual who have those short extra time problems.

Laura Bradberry:

Many people spending their time by playing outside having friends, fun activity together with family or just watching TV the whole day. You can have new activity to enjoy your whole day by examining a book. Ugh, you think reading a book will surely hard because you have to take the book everywhere? It ok you can have the e-book, taking everywhere you want in your Mobile phone. Like Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West which is finding the e-book version. So , try out this book? Let's observe.

Irene Navarro:

Is it you who having spare time then spend it whole day simply by watching television programs or just lying down on the bed? Do you need something totally new? This Race, Gender, and Comparative Black Modernism: Suzanne Lacascade, Marita Bonner, Suzanne Césaire, Dorothy West can be the respond to, oh how comes? It's a book you know. You are therefore out of date, spending your time by reading in this new era is common not a nerd activity. So what these textbooks have than the others?