In a broad-ranging, revisionary account of the relationship between African-American literary culture and Communism in the 1920s and 19302, William J. Maxwell uncovers both black literature's debt to Communism and Communism's debt to black literature, reciprocal obligations first incurred during the Harlem Renaissance. Juxtaposing well-known and newly rediscovered works by Claude McKay, Andy Razaf, Mike Gold, Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nelson Algren, the author maintains that the "old", Soviet-allied left promoted a spectrum of exchanges between black and white authors, genres, theories, and cultural institutions. New channels opened between radical Harlem and Bolshevik Moscow, between the New Negro renaissance and proletarian literature, Claude McKay's 1922-23 pilgrimage to the Soviet Union, for example, usually recalled as a lighthearted adventure in radical tourism, actually jumpstarted the Comintern's controversial nation-centred program for Afro America. Communism's rare sustenance for African-American initiative - not a seduction of depression-scarred innocents - brought scores of literary "New Negroes" to the Old Left.
- ISBN10 0231114249
- ISBN13 9780231114240
- Publish Date 8 September 1999
- Publish Status Active
- Out of Print 13 January 2011
- Publish Country US
- Imprint Columbia University Press
- Format Hardcover
- Pages 272
- Language English