Introduction: The people's form finds its audience : popular front realism and the culture industries -- Taking down the Great White Hope : the popular front boxing narrative -- Radio soaps, Broadway lights : Lillian Hellman, Shirley Graham, and the interpellation of female audiences -- Realism with a little sex in it : Erskine Caldwell's challenge to Gone with the wind -- Asian yeoman and ugly Americans : Carlos Bulosan, H.T. Tsiang, and the U.S. literary market -- The popular front in the American century : Life magazine, Margaret Bourke-White, and partisan objectivity
Summary
Realism for the Masses, is an exploration of how the concept of realism entered mass culture, and from there, how it tried to remake?America.? The literary and artistic creations of American realism are generally associated with the late nineteenth century. But this book argues that the aesthetic actually saturated American culture in the 1930s and 1940s and that the left social movements of the period were in no small part responsible. The book examines the prose of Carlos Bulosan and H.T. Tsiang; the photo essays of Margaret Bourke-White in Life magazine; the bestsellers of Erskine Caldwel
Bibliography
Includes bibliographical references (pages 213-223) and index
