On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The Art of the African American Essay

289 Pages·2019·2.852 MB·English

by  Cheryl A. Wall

On Freedom and the Will to Adorn
This page intentionally left blank
cheryl a. wall
On Freedom and the Will to Adorn
The Art of the African American Essay
University of North Carolina Press C hapel Hill
This book was published with the assistance of the Anniversary Fund
of the University of North Carolina Press.
© 2018 Cheryl A. Wall
All rights reserved
Set in Arno by Westchester Publishing Services
Manufactured in the United States of Amer i ca
The University of North Carolina Press has been a member
of the Green Press Initiative since 2003.
Library of Congress Cataloging- in- Publication Data
Names: Wall, Cheryl A., author.
Title: On freedom and the will to adorn : the art of the
African American essay / Cheryl A. Wall.
Description: Chapel Hill : University of North Carolina Press, [2018] |
Includes bibliographical references and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2018016245| ISBN 9781469646893 (cloth : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781469646909 (pbk : alk. paper) | ISBN 9781469646916 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: African American authors— History and criticism. |
Essayists, American. | Essay.
Classification: LCC PS153.N5 W328 2018 | DDC 814.009/896073— dc23
LC rec ord available at https: / / lccn . loc . gov / 2018016245
Cover illustration by Nathan W. Moehlmann, Goosepen Studio & Press
Portions of chapters 4 and 6 were previously published in a dif er ent form. Chapter 4 includes material
from “Stranger at Home: James Baldwin on What It Means to Be an American,” in James Baldwin:
Amer i ca and Beyond, edited by Cora Kaplan and Bill Schwarz (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press,
2011), 35–52. Chapter 6 includes material from “Living by the Word: June Jordan and Alice Walker’s
Quest for a Redemptive Art and Politics,” in Toward an Intellectual History of Black Women, edited by Mia
Bay et al. (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2015), 233–51. Used h ere with permission.
For my great-n ieces and great- nephew:
Morgan Reid
Marjani Reid
Micah Reid
Mikhel Reid
This page intentionally left blank
Contents
Acknowl edgments ix
Prologue: Moving from the Margins 1
chapter one
On Freedom and the Will to Adorn: The African American Essay 10
chapter two
Voices of Thunder: Nineteenth- Century Black Oratory and the
Development of the African American Essay 36
chapter three
On Art and Such: Debating Aesthetics during the
Harlem Re nais sance 84
chapter four
Stranger at Home: James Baldwin on What It Means to
Be an American 119
chapter five
The Mystery of American Identity: Ralph Ellison 148
chapter six
On Women, Rights, and Writing: June Jordan and Alice Walker 176
Epilogue: Essaying in the Digital Age 217
Notes 229
Bibliography 253
Index 263
This page intentionally left blank
Acknowl edgments
I have incurred many debts in the proc ess of writing this book. Chief among
them is the debt I owe to the gradua te and undergraduate students at Rutgers
who read essays in my courses, shared their opinions, and questioned mine.
They have made this a much better book than it would have been without
them. I have tried to discharge my debt to my colleagues mainly by citing
their books and articles, but some I need to thank by name. For reading all or
part of the manuscript, I thank Ryan Kernan, Douglas Jones, Richard Miller,
Stéphane Robolin, and Evie Shockley, as well as the anonymous readers at
the University of North Carolina Press. I owe a special thank you to Barry
Qualls, my most willing and careful reader, who has commented on multi-
ple versions of these pages. I am grateful to Frances Foster for insisting I
read writers from the nineteenth century and to Kelly Josephs and Tzarina
Prater for giving me confidence enough to write about twenty- first century
blogs.
I am grateful to the members of the Towards a Black Women’s Intellectual
History collective, especially Mia Bay, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Martha Jones,
and Barbara Savage, for inviting me to participate in a proj ect that nurtured
and challenged my thinking about the essay as a mode of intellectual produc-
tion for African American w omen. Over the years that this book has taken
shape, I have also benefitted from exchanges with many smart and generous
interlocutors, including Elizabeth Alexander, Kathryn Sophia Belle, Daphne
Brooks, Thadious Davis, Corinne Field, Douglas Field, Arlette Frund, Jacque-
line Goldsby, Mae Henderson, Cora Kaplan, Andrée- Anne Kekeh- dika,
Dwight McBride, Jocelyn Moody, Brian Norman, Bill Schwarz, Hortense
Spillers, Justine Talley, Mary Helen Washington, Deborah White, and Andréa
Williams.
For their sharp questions and insightful comments, I thank audiences at
Barnard College, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland State Univer-
sity, the Ca rib bean Philosophical Association, the Collegium for African
American Research Conference at Université de Paris Diderot, the Collegium
of Black Women Phi los o phers, Emory University, New York University,
Northwestern University, Oklahoma City University, Queen Mary University
in London, Rutgers University, Universidad de La Laguna in Tenerife, Spain,