Representing Segregation: Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow, and Other Forms of Racial Division

299 Pages·2010·1.69 MB·English

by  Brian Norman

Representing Segregation
Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow,
and Other Forms of Racial Division
Edited by
Brian Norman and
Piper Kendrix Williams

Representing Segregation

Representing Segregation
Toward an Aesthetics of Living Jim Crow,
and Other Forms of Racial Division
Edited by
BRIAN NORMAN
and
PIPER KENDRIX WILLIAMS
iv Contents
Cover photo courtesy of the Library of Congress
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2010 State University of New York
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Representing segregation : toward an aesthetics of living Jim Crow, and other forms
of racial division / edited by Brian Norman and Piper Kendrix Williams.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-1-4384-3033-1 (hardcover : alk. paper)
ISBN 978-1-4384-3032-4 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. American literature—African American authors—History and criticism.
2. American literature—20th century—History and criticism. 3. Segregation in
literature. 4. Race in literature. 5. African Americans in literature. 6. African
Americans—Segregation—Historiography. I. Norman, Brian, 1977– II. Williams,
Piper Kendrix, 1972–
PS153.N5R47 2010
810.9'896073—dc22 2009022997
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents v
Contents
List of Illustrations ix
Foreword xi
Joycelyn Moody
Acknowledgments xiii
Introduction 1
To Lie, Steal, and Dissemble: The Cultural Work of the Literature
of Segregation 1
Brian Norman and Piper Kendrix Williams
In The Crowd, Artist’s Statement 11
Shawn Michelle Smith
Section I: The Aesthetic Challenges of Jim Crow Politics 13
American Graffi ti: The Social Life of Segregation Signs 15
Elizabeth Abel
Smacked Upside the Head—Again 37
Trudier Harris
Section II: Imagining and Subverting Jim Crow in Charles Chesnutt’s
Segregation Fiction 41
Wedded to the Color Line: Charles Chesnutt’s Stories of Segregation 43
Tess Chakkalakal
Charles Chesnutt’s “The Dumb Witness” and the Culture of Segregation 57
Lori Robison and Eric Wolfe
vi Contents
“Those that do violence must expect to suffer”: Disrupting
Segregationist Fictions of Safety in Charles W. Chesnutt’s
The Marrow of Tradition 73
Birgit Brander Rasmussen
Section III: Inside Jim Crow and His Doubles 91
White Islands of Safety and Engulfi ng Blackness: Remapping
Segregation in Angelina Weld Grimké’s “Blackness” and “Goldie” 93
Anne P. Rice
“Somewhat Like War”: The Aesthetics of Segregation, Black
Liberation, and A Raisin in the Sun 113
Michelle Y. Gordon
Housing the Black Body: Value, Domestic Space, and
Segregation Narratives 131
GerShun Avilez
Diseased Properties and Broken Homes in Ann Petry’s The Street 149
Elizabeth Boyle Machlan
Section IV: Exporting Jim Crow 165
Embodying Segregation: Ida B. Wells and the Cultural Work of Travel 167
Gary Totten
Black Is a Region: Segregation and American Literary Regionalism in
Richard Wright’s The Color Curtain 185
Eve Dunbar
“¿Qué Dice?”: Latin America and the Transnational in James Weldon
Johnson’s Autobiography of an Ex-Coloured Man and Along this Way 201
Ruth Blandón
Section V: Jim Crow’s Legacy 221
In Possession of Space: Abolitionist Memory and Spatial
Transformation in Civil Rights Literature and Photography 223
Zoe Trodd
Contents vii
Into a Burning House: Representing Segregation’s Death 245
Vince Schleitwiler
Afterword 265
Cheryl A. Wall
List of Contributors 269
Index 273
viii Contents