Chapter 12 &15
Jewish and Black Literature
A street on the Lower East Side
From An Outline of American
Literature by Peter B. High
The Depression era and Proletarian
Writers in the 1930s
a period of social anger and self-criticism,
“Leftist” flavor (p.161)
1. a new kind of social realism and naturalism
2. showed the struggle of ordinary people
3. Marxist Proletarian Literature movement
4. the magazine of the era was the pro-Marxist
Partisan Review
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Michael Gold (1896-1967)
editor of the Communicst paper The New Masses, a
leading force in this movement
 Jews without Money (1930)
1. a autobiographical novel of social realism
2. a model for other “Proletarian” writers
3. Edward Dahlberg’s Bottom Dogs (1930) and Jack
Conroy’s Disinherited (1933)
4. the start of the “Jewish-American” novel – describes
the failure of the “American Dream” for those who
had left Europe looking for a new and better life
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Henry Roth (1907-1995)
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Call It Sleep (1935) –
mixes Marxist and
Freudian theory (p.162)
Jewish mythology and
a stream-ofconsciousness writing
style
James T. Farrell (1904-1979)
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Note on Literary Criticism (1936), reveals his
own view is Marxist, but “not oversimplified
sort”
“Stud Lonigan” trilogy
1. Young Lonigan (1932)
2. The Young Manhood of Studs Lonigan (1934)
3. Judgment Day (1935)
4. middle-class Irish-Catholic families in Chicago
5. spiritual poverty, the “black dullness” of such
life
6. using stream-of-consciousness techniques
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John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
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in the 1930s, his characters were “naturalistic” in the
classical meaning of the word, driven by forces in
themselves and in society (p.163)
fear, hunger, sex, and the disasters of nature and the
evils of Capitalism
took naturalistic way of looking at things with a deep
sympathy for people and the human condition
Painted large portraits of the “national spirit” by
combining myth of “westering” (the movement to the
west) with his naturalism
John Steinbeck (1902-1968)
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The Long Valley (1938) – a collection of short stories
set in the Salinas Valley
The Grapes of Wrath (1939) – social injustice, daily
heroism of ordinary people
East of Eden (1952) – a modern story based on the
Bible story about the brothers Cain and Abel
Travel with Charley (1962) – the unity of all living
creatures, his own personal transcendentalism
Received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1962
James T. Farrell (1904-1979)
A World I Never Made (1936) – p.162
1. new trilogy with a new hero, Danny O’Neil
2. describes the spiritual poverty of IrishCatholic families (the emotional religion, the
new child every year, the money worries and
the heavy drinking)
3. a documentary realism, like reading the true
story behind the newspaper articles of the era
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The 20th-century Black Writer
the Struggle of Black Americans
 A. Abraham Lincoln had ended the
slavery of blacks in 1863 (p.211)
1. government laws kept black
Americans in a low social position
in the South
2. Ku Klux Klan, used violence
against blacks
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Advertisement for the sale of slaves
Slave quarters on a South Carolina plantation,
1860
Harlem in New York
3. the migration to
the North around
the turn of the
century
4. in New York,
black artists and
writers began
their struggle for
social justice for
their people
http://search.eb.com/blackhistory/micro/551/36.html
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During the 1920's and 1930's an important movement
was started for African Americans. Blacks from
different parts of the country migrated to Harlem,
New York to be part of this cultural and exploratory
movement known as the Harlem Renaissance. This
movement, also known as the New Negro Movement
and the Cultural Awakening, raised important black
issues through various forms of art. Concerns such as
racial consciousness and racial integrity were
expressed through music (mostly jazz and blues),
painting, drama and literature. By the time the 1930's
came around, more than 200,000 African Americans
had come to Harlem from various parts of the
country. This was an increase of more than 185,000
blacks since 1914.
Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance
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Great leaders like W. E. B. Du Bois and Alain Locke
emerged during this time. These men served as
mentors and were an inspiration to aspiring writers
and artists. They were in large part responsible for
this new found enlightenment for the black people
and urged educated blacks to preach black pride
while emphasizing African culture.
Jazz, a musical form created by Southern blacks,
became popular among white culture
Musicians such as Duke Ellington and Louis
Armstrong contributed to the music of the
renaissance
Jazz Age and the Harlem Renaissance
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black writers in Harlem, a northern part of New
York city, began the Harlem Renaissance
influenced by the experimental styles of
European and American literature
talk about the experience of black people in
American society
Great writers and poets such as Countee Cullen,
Langston Hughes, Zora Neale Hurston, Claude
McKay and Jean Toomer were breaking across
the color line through writing.
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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The Souls of Black Folk (1903)
1. describes the effects of white American racial
prejudice on the minds of blacks
2. special culture of American blacks which
unites them into a single “nation”
3. black cultural nationalism
W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
Double Consciousness –
“It is a particular sensation, this doubleconsciousness, this sense of always looking at
one’s self through the eyes of other . . . One
feels his twoness – An American; a Negro two
souls, two thoughts, two unreconciloed
strivings, two warring ideals in one dark body,
whose dogged strength alone keep it from
being torn asunder.”
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W. E. B. Du Bois (1868-1963)
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The Quest of the Silver Fleece (1911) and Dark
Princess (1928)
became interested in Africa in the 1930s
1. Africa is the spiritual and cultural home of all blacks
2. “Black Flame” trilogy (1957-1961) – Manuel Mansart
describes the history of American blacks through the
first sixty years of the 20th century
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Jean Toomer
(1894-1967)
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Cane (1923) – the most famous work of the
movement (p.212)
combines poetry with short stories
First section – women in the South and a
natural beauty in them
Second section – set in Washington D. C.,
blacks in the city can’t feel comfortable and
free
Langston Hughes
(1902-1967)
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his poetry experiments with the jazz and blues
rhythms of black music
“Dream Variations” (1922)
1. produces the images of fast-moving jazz
music than its rhythms
2. celebrates the joy of motion
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Langston Hughes (1902-1967)
“I, Too” (1925)
1. a protest poem
2. attack white society for its racial hatred
3. adds to Walt Whitman’s songs of America
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“Harlem” (1951)
1. express more anger
2. wants racial justice and warns white that there might
be an explosion of black violence
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Countee Cullen (1903-1946)
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wants to be more than a black poet, a poet for
all mankind (p.214)
“Yet Do I Marvel” (1925)
1. love, beauty , and the shortness of life are the
themes
2. the pain of being black in America
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Richard Wright (1908-1960)
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a writer of realism
Uncle Tom’s Children (1938) -- gives detailed description of the
violence in Southern white society
Black Boy (1945), Native Son (1940)
1. uses naturalist techniques to describe the social and
psychological pressure on his black hero
2. the violence in a black man caused by the harsh social situation
3. fear of the white world causes confusion which leads to crimes
4. the suffering humanity, human nature is basically good; the
society is really bad.
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The Man Who Lived Underground (1945) – creates a new
metaphor for the way blacks are invisible in American society
Ralph Ellison
(1914-)
Invisible Man (1952)
1. the most famous novel in black American literature
2. hero is a nameless black individuals who lives
underground
3. “invisible” because the people around him “see only
my surroundings, themselves, or figments of their
imagination.”
4. whites can’t see blacks as individuals people, only see
their wrong idea of what a black is
5. “The Royal Battle” (p.215)
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2
Htel
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From:http://www.let.rug
.nl/usa/LIT/ellison.htm
Ralph Ellison was a midwesterner, born in
Oklahoma, who studied at Tuskegee Institute in
the southern United States. He had one of the
strangest careers in American letters -consisting of one highly acclaimed book, and
nothing more. The novel is Invisible Man
(1952), the story of a black man who lives a
subterranean existence in a hole brightly
illuminated by electricity stolen from a utility
company. The book recounts his grotesque,
disenchanting experiences. When he wins a
scholarship to a black college, he is humiliated
by whites; when he gets to the college, he
witnesses the black president spurning black
American concerns. Life is corrupt outside
college, too. For example, even religion is no
consolation: A preacher turns out to be a
criminal. The novel indicts society for failing to
provide its citizens -- black and white -- with
viable ideals and institutions for realizing them.
It embodies a powerful racial theme because the
"invisible man" is invisible not in himself but
because others, blinded by prejudice, cannot see
James Baldwin (1924-)
Go Tell It on the Mountain (1953) –
story about religion in Harlem (p.217)
1.a boy deeply troubled by religious
thoughts, how race, sex, and religion
influence the lives of people in a small
Harlem church
2. religion creates strong emotions in these
people but they also destroy their
ability to see the real world
3. Another Country (1962) – describes the
moral confusion and race hatred of
American cities
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