The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 [Hardcover]

Henry Louis Gates Jr. (Editor), Gene Andrew Jarrett (Editor)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0691126518 | ISBN-13: 978-0691126517 | Publication Date: October 15, 2007

When African American intellectuals announced the birth of the "New Negro" around the turn of the twentieth century, they were attempting through a bold act of renaming to change the way blacks were depicted and perceived in America. By challenging stereotypes of the Old Negro, and declaring that the New Negro was capable of high achievement, black writers tried to revolutionize how whites viewed blacks--and how blacks viewed themselves. Nothing less than a strategy to re-create the public face of "the race," the New Negro became a dominant figure of racial uplift between Reconstruction and World War II, as well as a central idea of the Harlem, or New Negro, Renaissance. Edited by Henry Louis Gates, Jr., and Gene Andrew Jarrett, The New Negro collects more than one hundred canonical and lesser-known essays published between 1892 and 1938 that examine the issues of race and representation in African American culture.

These readings--by writers including W.E.B. Du Bois, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Alain Locke, Carl Van Vechten, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright--discuss the trope of the New Negro, and the milieu in which this figure existed, from almost every conceivable angle. Political essays are joined by essays on African American fiction, poetry, drama, music, painting, and sculpture. More than fascinating historical documents, these essays remain essential to the way African American identity and history are still understood today.

Editorial Reviews

Review

Because 'New Negro' is really just a catchprase for the capacious topic of race in America, this is less an anthology than a mix of articles, criticism, essays, theories, calls to action and commentary by people both black and white, ranging from the famous (Richard Wright, James Weldon Johnson, H.L. Mencken) to those lesser known but prominent in their time (Alain Locke). The result is a spirited...dialectic tracing the most intense period of New Negro discussions, between 1892 and 1938.
(Erin Aubry Kaplan Los Angeles Times Book Review )

Recent years have seen an explosion of writings on the so-called new Negro. . . . Now Gates and Jarrett lend their considerable voices to the discussion. Including an excellent introduction that situates the debate, this anthology collects some 100 essays on the trope of the new Negro between 1892 and 1938, years that broadly encompass the period known as the Harlem Renaissance. . . . The book covers not only literature but also music, theater, and the fine arts and convincingly links them with social and political happenings of the period. . . . [O]verall this is a masterful piece of work.
(J. Parascandola, Long Island University, for "CHOICE )

Review

This illuminating and indispensable anthology lays bare a fascinating genealogy of the most frequently invoked trope in the history of U.S. Black culture and politics: The New Negro. Professors Gates and Jarrett take us on an intellectual journey through a crucial half century of Black thought that remains relevant in our time!
(Cornel West, author of "Race Matters" and "Democracy Matters" )

See all Editorial Reviews

Product Details

• Hardcover: 608 pages
• Publisher: Princeton University Press (October 15, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0691126518
• ISBN-13: 978-0691126517
• Product Dimensions: 10 x 7.1 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 2.6 pounds
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,421,302 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gene Andrew Jarrett is currently Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of English at Boston University, with affiliate university appointments in African American Studies and American and New England Studies. Jarrett earned his A.B. in English from Princeton University and his A.M. and Ph.D. in English from Brown University. His scholarship focuses on African American literary history, particularly the longstanding struggles of African American writers with racial representation, or the responsibility of portraying race in culturally and politically progressive ways. Taken together, Jarrett's authored and edited books examine racial representation in African American literature from the 18th century to the present.

Jarrett is the author of Representing the Race: A New Political History of African American Literature (New York University Press, 2011) and Deans and Truants: Race and Realism in African American Literature (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2006).

He is the editor of A Companion to African American Literature (Wiley-Blackwell Publishers, 2010); Claude McKay's 1937 autobiography A Long Way from Home (Multi-Ethnic Literature of the Americas Series, Rutgers University Press, 2007); and African American Literature beyond Race: An Alternative Reader (New York University Press, 2006).

He is also the co-editor of several books, including, with Herbert Woodward Martin and Ronald Primeau, The Collected Novels of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Ohio University Press, 2009); with Henry Louis Gates Jr., The New Negro: Readings on Race, Representation, and African American Culture, 1892-1938 (Princeton University Press, 2007); and with Thomas Lewis Morgan, The Complete Stories of Paul Laurence Dunbar (Ohio University Press, 2005; paperback 2009).

Jarrett has published scholarly essays and book reviews in a host of venues, including the Chronicle of Higher Education, Publication of the Modern Language Association, American Literary History, African American Review, Nineteenth-Century Literature, NOVEL: A Forum on Fiction, American Literary Realism, The Blackwell Concise Companion to American Fiction, and The Cambridge Companion to Frederick Douglass, among other academic journals and scholarly books.

Jarrett's scholarship has been supported by fellowships from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, the Woodrow Wilson National Fellowship Foundation, and, most recently, the Radcliffe Institute for Advanced Study at Harvard University. As 2010 Walter Jackson Bate Fellow in English Literature at Radcliffe, Jarrett began work on a definitive biography of Paul Laurence Dunbar (1872-1906), looking at the literature, life, and times of the first professional African American writer, born in Dayton, Ohio.