A freedom bought with blood : African American war literature from the Civil War to World War II / by Jennifer C. James.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

James, Jennifer C.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

American literature--African American authors.

War in literature.

War and literature--United States.

War and literature.

African Americans--Race identity.

African Americans.

African Americans in literature.

United States--History--Civil War, 1861-1865--Literature and the war.

United States.

History.

World War, 1914-1918--United States--Literature and the war.

World War, 1914-1918.

World War, 1939-1945--United States--Literature and the war.

World War, 1939-1945.

Physical Description:

324 pages : illustrations ; 25 cm

Place of Publication:

Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2007]

Summary:

In the first comprehensive study of African American war literature, Jennifer James analyzes fiction, poetry, autobiography, and histories about the major wars waged before the desegregation of the U.S. military in 1948. Examining literature about the Civil War, the Spanish-American Wars, World War I, and World War II, James introduces a range of rare and understudied texts by writers such as Victor Daly, F.Grant Gilmore, William Gardner Smith, and Susie King Taylor. She argues that works by these as well as canonical writers such as William Wells Brown, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and Gwendolyn Brooks mark a distinctive contribution to African American letters.

In establishing African American war literature as a long-standing literary genre in its own right, James also considers the ways in which this writing, centered as it is on moments of national crisis, complicated debates about black identity and African Americans' claims to citizenship. In a provocative assessment, James argues that the very ambivalence over the use of violence as a political instrument defines African American war writing and creates a compelling, contradictory body of literature that defies easy summary.

Contents:

Introduction. Sable Hands and National Arms: Theorizing the African American Literature of War 1

1 Civil War Wounds: William Wells Brown, Violence, and the Domestic Narrative 34

2 Fighting Fire with Fire: Frances Harper, Paul Laurence Dunbar, and the Post-Civil War Reconciliation Narrative 54

3 Not Men Alone: Susie King Taylor's Reminiscences of My Life in Camp and Masculine Self-Fashioning 103

4 Imagining Mobility: Turn-of-the-Century Empire, Technology, and Black Imperial Citizenship 125

5 Innocence, Complicity, Consent: Black Men, White Women, and Worlds of Wars 167

6 Diaspora and Dissent: World War I, Claude McKay, and Home to Harlem 211

7 If We Come Out Standing Up: Gwendolyn Brooks, World War II, and the Politics of Rehabilitation 232

Conclusion. Let This Dying Be for Something: And Then We Heard the Thunder and the Military Neoslave Narrative 261.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages [279]-309) and index.

ISBN:

9780807831168

0807831166

9780807858073

0807858072

OCLC:

85623704