Cross-cultural visions in African American modernism : from spatial narrative to jazz haiku / Yoshinobu Hakutani.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Hakutani, Yoshinobu, 1935-

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

American literature--African American authors--History and criticism.

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

American literature--Foreign influences.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.)--History--20th century.

Influence (Literary, artistic, etc.).

History.

African Americans--Intellectual life--20th century.

African Americans.

African Americans--Intellectual life.

Modernism (Literature)--United States.

Modernism (Literature).

United States.

Physical Description:

ix, 251 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Columbus : Ohio State University Press, [2006]

Summary:

Yoshinobu Hakutani traces the development of African American modernism, which initially gathered momentum with Richard Wright's literary manifesto "Blueprint for Negro Writing" in 1937. Hakutani dissects and discusses the cross-cultural influences on the then-burgeoning discipline in three stages: American dialogues, European and African cultural visions, and Asian and African American cross-cultural visions.

In writing Black Boy, the centerpiece of the Chicago Renaissance, Wright was inspired by Theodore Dreiser. Because the European and African cultural visions that Wright, Ralph Ellison, Alice Walker, and Toni Morrison acquired were but-tressed by the universal humanism that is common to all cultures, this ideology is shown to transcend the problems of society. Fascinated by Eastern thought and art, Wright, Walker, Sonia Sanchez, and James Emanuel wrote highly accomplished poetry and prose. Like Ezra Pound, Wright was drawn to classic haiku, as reflected in the 4,000 haiku he wrote at the end of his life. As W. B. Yeats's symbolism was influenced by his cross-cultural visions of noh theatre and Irish folklore, so is James Emanuel's jazz haiku energized by his cross-cultural rhythms of Japanese poetry and African American music.

The book demonstrates some of the most visible cultural exchanges in modern and postmodern African American literature. Such a study can be extended to other contemporary African American writers whose works also thrive on their cross-cultural visions, such as Amiri Baraka, Ishmael Reed, Charles Johnson, and haiku poet Lenard Moore.

Contents:

The Chicago Renaissance, Theodore Dreiser, and Richard Wright's spatial narrative

The cross-cultural vision of Ralph Ellison's Invisible man

No name in the street : James Baldwin's exploration of American urban culture

If Beale Street could talk : Baldwin's search for love and identity

Jazz and Toni Morrison's urban imagination of desire and subjectivity

Wright's The outsider and French existentialism

Pagan Spain : Wright's discourse on religion and culture

The African "primal outlook upon life" : Wright and Morrison

The poetics of nature : Wright's haiku, Zen, and Lacan

Private voice and Buddhist enlightenment in Alice Walker's The color purple

Cross-cultural poetics : Sonia Sanchez's Like the singing coming off the drums

James Emanuel's jazz haiku and African American individualism.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 235-242) and index.

ISBN:

0814210309

9780814210307

0814291074

9780814291078

OCLC:

68623983