| Description |
848 pages ; 21 cm. |
| Series |
The Library of America ; 218. |
|
Library of America ; 218.
|
| Contents |
Not without laughter / Langston Hughes -- Black no more / George S. Schuyler -- The conjure-man dies / Rudolph Fisher -- Black thunder / Arna Bontemps. |
| Summary |
Four Novels of the 1930s traces the flowering of the Renaissance in diverse genres and forms. It opens with Langston Hughes's Not Without Laughter (1931), an elegantly realized coming-of-age tale that follows a young man from his rural origins to the big city. Suffused with childhood memories, it is the poet's only novel. George S. Schuyler's Black No More (1931), a satire founded on the science fiction premise of a wonder drug permitting blacks to change their race, skewers public figures white and black alike in a raucous, carnivalesque send-up of American racial attitudes. Considered the first detective story by an African American writer, Rudolph Fisher's The Conjure-Man Dies (1932) is a mystery that comically mixes and reverses stereotypes, placing a Harvard-educated African "conjureman" at the center of a phantasmagoric charade of deaths and disappearances. Black Thunder (1936), Arna Bontemps's stirring fictional recreation of Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt, which, though unsuccessful, shook Jefferson's Virginia to its core, marks a turn from aestheticism toward political militancy in its exploration of African American history. |
| Subject |
American fiction -- African American authors.
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American fiction -- New York (State) -- New York.
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American fiction -- 20th century.
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African Americans -- Fiction.
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Harlem Renaissance.
|
| Added Author |
Zafar, Rafia.
|
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Hughes, Langston, 1902-1967
Not without laughter.
|
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Schuyler, George S. (George Samuel), 1895-1977.
Black no more.
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Fisher, Rudolph, 1897-1934.
Conjure-man dies.
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Bontemps, Arna, 1902-1973.
Black thunder.
|
| ISBN |
9781598531015: $35.00 |
|
1598531018 |
|
