Of vagabonds and fellow travelers : African diaspora literary culture and the cultural cold war / Cedric R. Tolliver.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Tolliver, Cedric R., author.

Contributor:

Michigan Publishing (University of Michigan), publisher.

Series:

Class, culture.

Class: culture

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

African diaspora in literature.

Cold War in literature.

Cold War--Social aspects.

Cold War.

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

American literature.

Caribbean literature (English)--Black authors--History and criticism.

Caribbean literature (English).

Caribbean literature (French)--Black authors--History and criticism.

Caribbean literature (French).

Physical Description:

1 online resource (xi, 221 pages).

Place of Publication:

Ann Arbor, Michigan : University of Michigan Press, 2019.

Summary:

Of Vagabonds and Fellow Travelersrecovers the history of the writers, artists, and intellectuals of the African diaspora who, witnessing a transition to an American-dominated capitalist world-system during the Cold War, offered searing critiques of burgeoning U.S. hegemony. Cedric R. Tolliver traces this history through an analysis of signal events and texts where African diaspora literary culture intersects with the wider cultural Cold War, from the First Congress of Black Writers and Artists organized by Francophone intellectuals in September 1956 to the reverberations among African American writers and activists to the assassination of Patrice Lumumba. Among Tolliver's subjects are Caribbean writers Jacques Stephen Alexis, George Lamming, and Aimé Césaire, the black press writing of Alice Childress and Langston Hughes, and the ordeal of Paul Robeson, among other topics. The book's final chapter highlights the international and domestic consequences of the cultural Cold War and discusses their lingering effects on our contemporary critical predicament.

Contents:

Intro

Contents

Acknowledgments

Introduction. Black (World) Reconstruction and the Cultural Cold War

Chapter 1. Reorienting the Cardinal Points: Présence Africaine and the Centripetal Pull of the Cultural Cold War

Chapter 2. Setting the Cold War Stage: George Lamming, Jacques Stephen Alexis, and the Critique of U.S. Imperialism in the Caribbean

Chapter 3. Fellow Travelers, Treacherous Ground: Strategic Critique in the Black Press Writing of Langston Hughes and Alice Childress

Chapter 4. Black Radical Vagabond: Paul Robeson's Cold War Ordeal

Chapter 5. Crisis and Rupture: African American Literary Culture and the Response to Patrice Lumumba's Assassination

Notes

Bibliography

Index.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 203-221) and index.

Description based on information from the publisher.

ISBN:

9780472124367

0472124366

OCLC:

1117714092