Title Black aesthetics and the interior life / Christopher Freeburg

Published Charlottesville ; London : University of Virginia Press, 2017

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Description 1 online resource (x, 159 pages) : illustrations Contents Prologue: Black aesthetics and the personal -- The violence inside -- The beast within the city -- Blues no more -- Interlude: The Afro samurai's symptom -- Past the Chokecherry tree -- Epilogue: Nina Simone's script Summary "Christopher Freeburg's Black Aesthetics and the Interior Life offers a crucial new reading of a neglected aspect of African American literature and art across the long twentieth century. Rejecting the idea that the most dehumanizing of black experiences, such as lynching or other racial violence, have completely robbed victims of their personhood, Freeburg rethinks what it means to be a person in the works of black artists. This book advances the idea that individual persons always retain the ability to withhold, express, or change their ideas, and this concept has profound implications for long-held assumptions about the relationship between black interior life and black collective political interests. Examining an array of seminal black texts--from Ida B. Wells's antilynching pamphlets to works by Richard Wright, Nina Simone, and Toni Morrison--Freeburg demonstrates that the personhood represented by these writers unsettles rather than automatically strengthens black subjects' relationships to political movements such as racial uplift, civil rights, and black nationalism. He shows how black artists illuminate the challenges of racial collectivity while stressing the vital stakes of individual personhood. In his challenge to current African Americanist criticism, Freeburg makes a striking contribution to our understanding of African American literature and culture."--Publisher's description Bibliography Includes bibliographical references and index Notes Print version record Subject American literature -- African American authors -- History and criticism African American aesthetics. African Americans in literature. LITERARY CRITICISM -- American -- General. African American aesthetics African Americans in literature American literature -- African American authors Ethnische Identität Motiv Ethnische Beziehungen Ästhetik Literatur Schwarze USA Genre/Form Criticism, interpretation, etc. Form Electronic book ISBN 9780813940328 081394032X 9780813940335 0813940338 9780813940335

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