Looking for Harlem : urban aesthetics in African American literature / Maria Balshaw.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Balshaw, Maria.

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

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

American literature.

American literature--20th century--History and criticism.

City and town life in literature.

Cities and towns in literature.

African Americans in literature.

African American aesthetics.

Aesthetics, American.

Harlem Renaissance.

Harlem (New York, N.Y.)--In literature.

Harlem (New York, N.Y.).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (184 p.)

Edition:

1st ed.

Place of Publication:

London ; Sterling, Va : Pluto Press, 2000.

Language Note:

English

Summary:

Taking the incredible flowering of African-American literature in the 1920's as its starting point, Looking for Harlem offers a cogent and persuasive new reading of a diverse range of twentieth-century black American writing. From the streets, subways, hotels and cabarets of New York's Harlem and Chicago's Southside, Maria Balshaw moves beyond the canon to encompass often neglected writing by Rudolph Fisher, Wallace Thurman and Claude McKay, as well as the more familiar work of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Nella Larsen and Toni Morrison. In a provocative revision of African-American literary history, Balshaw examines the creation of an 'urban aesthetic' and explores the links between the engagement with the city and fictional reconstructions of racial identity and race writing. Focusing on the material culture of the city, the visual sense of the urban environment, the class dynamics of urban culture and the crucial importance of consumerism, this study presents a critically astute, challenging and very welcome new approach to a much-studied area of contemporary American fiction.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgements

Introduction

The Criteria of Negro Art

The Race Capital

1. New Negroes, New Spaces

Racialised Urbanity

From the Harlem Special Issue to The New Negro

Fire!! Magazine

2, Space, Race and Identity

The H of Harlem

Harlem Hierarchies: Racial Performance, Social Space

3. Passing and the Spectacle of Harlem

New Women, New Negroes

Spectacle, Race and Gender

Danse Sauvage

Passing Encounters, City Scenes

A Vital, Glowing Thing

4. Women in the City of Refuge

The Closing Door

The Silent Story

On Being Young - A Woman - and Colored

Frye Street: All the World is There

Nothing New

Black Notes/ City Notes

5. Consumer Desire and Domestic Urbanism

Reading the Urban Domestic

Reading the Signs Inside

Small Victories

6. Elegies to Harlem

Looking For ... or At?

Bitch or Dumpling Girl

Conclusion

Notes

Chapter One: New Negroes, New Spaces

Chapter Two: Space, Race and Identity

Chapter Three: Passing and the Spectacle of Harlem

Chapter Four: Women in the City of Refuge

Chapter Five: Consumer Desire and Domestic Urbanism

Chapter Six: Elegies to Harlem

Index

Africa, and African American

40

41

149n.7

Africa, and African American,

25-6

38-9

African American canon

6-9

53

99

African American modernism

22

23

54-5

146n.7

African American women

46-8

50-3

58

72

78

80

African American women writers

8-9

10-12

44

67

97

agency, black female

100

103

107

120-1

Anderson, Jervis, This Was Harlem 73

authenticity

6

7-8

17

49

54

60

62

avant-garde cinema

129-30

133

164n.20

Baker Jr, Houston A.

7

8

145n.18

Baker, Josephine 61

Baraka, Amiri

42

151n.22.

Barnes, Djuna, Nightwood 52

Bennett, Gwendolyn

24

Ebony Flute, 74

Black Arts

Black Atlantic [Gilroy]

2

16

45

69

81

102

black feminism

9

51

86

139

black middle class

11

21

25

48

52

55

83

black modernism 20

blues

6-7

35-6

129

bohemians

68

132

Bonner, Marita

5

19

72-5

109

A Possible Triad on Black Notes, 94

Black Fronts, 84

Black Fronts, 85

Drab Rambles, 84

Drab Rambles, 85

Drab Rambles, 88-9

Frye Street, 83

Frye Street, 86-7

Frye Street, 89

Frye Street, 91

Frye Street, 94

Frye Street, 96

Hate is Nothing, 84

Light in Dark Places, 88

Nothing New, 84

Nothing New, 88-92

On The Altar, 84

OnBeing Young-A Woman-and Colored, 83-6

OnBeing Young-A Woman-and Colored, 94

One Boy's Story, 79-83

One Boy's Story, 88

One True Love, 85

Patch Quilt, 88

Stones For Bread, 84

Tin Can, 94

Bontemps, Arna

145n.2

Brawley, Benjamin

26

27

38

149n

Brooker, Peter 137

Brooks, Gwendolyn

12

75

101-8

113

A Street In Bronzeville, 100-1

A Street In Bronzeville, 102-7

Burill, Mary 73

Butler, Judith

63

67-8

156n.43

cabarets

Carby, Hazel

145n.24

161n.2

Chicago School sociology

10

18

Christian, Barbara

98

112

Civic Club dinner

20

74

commodification

56

134

consumer culture

94

Cotton Club, The 127

Crisis, The

47

50

84

Cullen, Countee 72

Davis, Thadious

de Certeau, Michel.

102

162n.13

Delany, Clarissa Scott 73

detective fiction 38-43

Diawara, Manthia

130

164n.24

Doane, Mary Ann

68-9

126

127

domestic space

76-7

101-7

108

110-12

Douglas, Aaron

Douglas, Ann

137

151n.23

Du Bois, W.E.B.

3

34

73

Dyer, Richard 130

Ellison, Ralph

13

143n.3

Invisible Man, 5

Invisible Man, 92

essentialism

ethnicity

90-2

160n.37

eugenics

37

46-52

76

92

Faderman, Lillian

147n.10

Fanon, Franz 126-7

Fauset, Jessie

female social protest

95-6

feminism

120

122

143-4n.9

Fire!!magazine [Thurman]

14

23-9

89

Fisher, Rudolph

1

30-43

Blades of Steel, 32-6

City of Refuge, 14-16

City of Refuge, 30

City of Refuge, 31

music in, 35-6

The Conjure Man Dies, Miss Cynthie

The Conjure Man Dies, 10

The Conjure Man Dies, 38-43

The Walls of Jericho, 30

The Walls of Jericho, 36-8

The Walls of Jericho, 52

Garber, Eric

Garner, Margaret 81-2

Gates Jr, Henry Louis

85

145n.20

Gayle, Addison

99-100

144n.14

gaze

64-9

racialised, 127

ghetto

87

93

103-4

106

Gilroy, Paul

82-3

Goldberg, David Theo

101

162n.19

Grimké, Angelina Weld

72-9

81-3

110

The Closing Door, 75-9

The Closing Door, 81-3

The Closing Door, 81-3.

The Closing Door, 87

The Closing Door, 87

Hall, Stuart

125

131

Harlem Renaissance

31

and commodification, 61

and homosexuality, 28-9

and homosexuality, 73

and homosexuality, 74

and homosexuality, 127-34

and modernism, 11

and modernism, 43

and modernism, 54-5

and representation, 51

and women, 11-12

and women, 72-5

and women, 83

and women, 109

geographies of, 34

Herskovits, Melville

Himes, Chester

4

homophobia

128-9

164n.25

homosexuality

27-9

hooks, bell 126

Huggins, Nathan

Hughes, Langston

Hull, Gloria T.

Hurston, Zora Neale

Hutchinson, George, The Harlem Renaissance in Black and White

144n.15

149n.34

identity politics 127

intersectionality

45-6

56-7

121-2

152n.4

Jazz Age

46

Johnson, Charles S.

151n.20

Johnson, Georgia Douglas

Street Salon, 73-4

Street Salon, 158n.8

Johnson, James Weldon

Black Manhattan, 14

Black Manhattan, 98

Julien, Isaac

124

136

141

Looking For Langston, 4

Looking For Langston, 13

Looking For Langston, 67

Looking For Langston, 123-4

Looking For Langston, 126-34

Kawash, Samira 154n.127

Knopf, Marcy, The Sleeper Wakes 74

Larsen, Nella

30.

44-6

58-60 as lesbian text

and gender and sexuality, 53

and gender and sexuality, 66-9

and gender, 62-3

and spectacle, 55

and spectacle, 63

and spectacle, 64

and spectacle, 66-9

and the gaze, 58-60

and the gaze, 65-9

and visual field, 67-8

and visual field, 69-71

and voyeurism, 58-9

and voyeurism, 64-5

Passing, 52-3

Passing, 63-71

Passing, 128

Quicksand, 47

Quicksand, 52-63

Quicksand, 68

Lenox Avenue

32-4

39

138

Levering Lewis, David

30

life practices

106-7

Locke, Alain

and Survey Graphic, 10

and Survey Graphic, 20-3

and Survey Graphic, 148n.31

and The New Negro, 3

and The New Negro, 10

and The New Negro, 14

and The New Negro, 19-23

and The New Negro, 24

and The New Negro, 25

and The New Negro, 30

Mapplethorpe, Robert 133

McCluskey Jr, John

35

McDowell, Deborah E.

McKay, Claude

Home to Harlem, 30

Home to Harlem, 47

Mercer, Kobena

123

miscegenation

79-83

modernism

2-3

modernity

15-16

33

Morrison, Toni

1-2

165n.34

Beloved, 81

Beloved, 82

Beloved, 137

Jazz, 1

Jazz, 13

Jazz, 33

Jazz, 123-6

Jazz, 134-40

motherhood

75-9

82

92-3

multiculturalism

Negro in Chicago, The

Nelson, Alice Dunbar 73

New Negro Renaissance

19.

30.

Notes:

Bibliographic Level Mode of Issuance: Monograph

Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN:

9781849645164

1849645167

9780585426266

0585426260

OCLC:

860611671