Book contents
- James Baldwin in Context
- James Baldwin in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction: James Baldwin in Context
- Part 1 Life and Afterlife
- Part 2 Social and Cultural Contexts
- Part 3 Literary Contexts
- Chapter 19 The Protest Essay Tradition
- Chapter 20 Baldwin and the Black Arts Movement
- Chapter 21 Baldwin and the Rhetoric of Confession
- Chapter 22 The Poetics of Beautiful Blackness On Baldwin and Négritude
- Chapter 23 Mid-Century Theater
- Chapter 24 Sex and the Twentieth-Century Novel
- Chapter 25 Responding to Richard Wright
- Chapter 26 Baldwin’s Literary Friendships
- Chapter 27 Reviewers, Critics, and Cranks
- Chapter 28 Baldwin’s Collaborative Dance
- Chapter 29 Baldwin’s Literary Progeny
- Index
Chapter 22 - The Poetics of Beautiful Blackness On Baldwin and Négritude
from Part 3 - Literary Contexts
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 12 July 2019
- James Baldwin in Context
- James Baldwin in Context
- Copyright page
- Contents
- Contributors
- Introduction: James Baldwin in Context
- Part 1 Life and Afterlife
- Part 2 Social and Cultural Contexts
- Part 3 Literary Contexts
- Chapter 19 The Protest Essay Tradition
- Chapter 20 Baldwin and the Black Arts Movement
- Chapter 21 Baldwin and the Rhetoric of Confession
- Chapter 22 The Poetics of Beautiful Blackness On Baldwin and Négritude
- Chapter 23 Mid-Century Theater
- Chapter 24 Sex and the Twentieth-Century Novel
- Chapter 25 Responding to Richard Wright
- Chapter 26 Baldwin’s Literary Friendships
- Chapter 27 Reviewers, Critics, and Cranks
- Chapter 28 Baldwin’s Collaborative Dance
- Chapter 29 Baldwin’s Literary Progeny
- Index
Summary
The mid-century black Atlantic moment was diverse, fraught, and full of complicated theorizations of diaspora, identity, and the future of racialized thinking. It was at once nationalist, pan-African, pan-global South, and all sorts of mixtures and variations on those themes. With good reason: centuries of enslavement, colonialism, and segregation all fractured memory, cultural connection, and the meaning of being a part of a racial group in most, if not all, senses beyond a shared suffering of violence. So much of the mid-twentieth century in the black Atlantic was dedicated to reckoning with those centuries and gesturing, then working concretely toward some sort of repair by retrieving redeemable pasts, rethinking racial mythologies, articulating traditions and countertraditions. Few if any moments in the history of ideas have been as compelling and productive.
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- James Baldwin in Context , pp. 233 - 243Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2019