Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South [Hardcover]

John Edgar Tidwell (Editor), Mark A. Sanders (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 3, 2007

Using oral history and the printed word, Sterling A. Brown set out during the Second World War to capture the response of African Americans, primarily living in the South, to America's involvement in the war and how it affected them. These responses, brought together in extended, non-fiction essays of many different types, illustrate the diversity of opinions in the Black South about the war and the war period in America. For nearly sixty years, the excerpts that were never published languished in Brown's manuscript collection at Howard University. Now, for the first time, all of the completed pieces of unpublished writings are combined with the few published sections into the book that Brown envisioned. The legacy Brown left us is not only a superb portrait of the way in which African Americans of the mid-century talked and lived; he also provided a methodology that oral and written historians will find extremely useful. This is clearly a document from another time, as its now outdated title reminds us, but it reveals a world that still informs our sense of ourselves as a nation. In fact, it is an unforgettable history, which Brown has cast in a bright, elucidating new light.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"Brown's reports bear an austere poetry and rhythm about them. Fueling the reportage is an exacting intellectual mind with a nod to old-fashioned storytelling craft. Subject specialists in the social sciences will consider this a valuable title for inclusion in their folklore and oral history collection."--Jim Hahn, Library Journal

"Brown's reports bear an austere poetry and rhythm about them. Fueling the reportage is an exacting intellectual mind with a nod to old-fashioned storytelling craft. Subject specialists in the social sciences will consider this a valuable title for inclusion in their folklore and oral history collection."--Jim Hahn, Library Journal

"The valuable service that Tidwell and Sanders perform as the outstanding editors of Sterling A. Brown's A Negro Looks at the South is to pass on the legacy of Sterling A. Brown's authority, authenticity, and agency as innovative poet and radical critic."-frican American Review

About the Author

Sterling Allen Brown (1901-1989) was an African American teacher, and writer on folklore, poetry, and literary criticism. John Edgar Tidwell is Associate Professor of English at the University of Kansas. Mark A. Sanders is Associate Professor of African American Studies and English at Emory University.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 400 pages
• Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA (February 3, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0195313992
• ISBN-13: 978-0195313994
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,356,119 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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