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The Resource Dividing lines : class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction, Andreá N. Williams

Dividing lines : class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction, Andreá N. Williams

Creator
Summary
"Dividing Lines is one of the most extensive studies of class in nineteenth-century African American literature. Clear and engaging, this book unveils how black fiction writers represented the uneasy relationship between class differences, racial solidarity, and the quest for civil rights in black communities. By portraying complex, highly stratified communities with a growing black middle class, these authors dispelled popular notions that black Americans were uniformly poor or uncivilized. But even as the writers highlighted middle-class achievement, they worried over whether class distinctions would help or sabotage collective black protest against racial prejudice. Andreá N. Williams argues that the signs of class anxiety are embedded in postbellum fiction: from the verbal stammer or prim speech of class-conscious characters to fissures in the fiction's form. In these telling moments, authors innovatively dared to address the sensitive topic of class differences--a topic inextricably related to American civil rights and social opportunity. Williams delves into the familiar and lesser-known works of Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton Griggs, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, showing how these texts mediate class through discussions of labor, moral respectability, ancestry, spatial boundaries, and skin complexion. Dividing Lines also draws on reader responses--from book reviews, editorials, and letters--to show how the class anxiety expressed in African American fiction directly sparked reader concerns over the status of black Americans in the U.S. social order. Weaving literary history with compelling textual analyses, this study yields new insights about the intersection of race and class in black novels and short stories from the 1880s to 1900s."--Publisher's website
Language
eng
Work
Publication
Extent
222 pages
Contents
  • Introduction: Contending classes, dividing lines
  • The language of class: taxonomy and respectability in Frances E. W. Harper's Trial and triumph and Iola Leroy
  • Working through class: the black body, labor, and leisure in Sutton Griggs's Overshadowed
  • Mapping class difference: space and social mobility in Paul L. Dunbar's short fiction
  • Blood and the mark of class: Pauline Hopkins's genealogies of status
  • Classing the color line: class-passing, antiracism, and Charles W. Chesnutt
  • Epilogue: beyond the talented tenth
Isbn
9780472118618
Instance
Label
Dividing lines : class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction
Title
Dividing lines
Title remainder
class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction
Statement of responsibility
Andreá N. Williams
Title variation
Class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction
Creator
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"Dividing Lines is one of the most extensive studies of class in nineteenth-century African American literature. Clear and engaging, this book unveils how black fiction writers represented the uneasy relationship between class differences, racial solidarity, and the quest for civil rights in black communities. By portraying complex, highly stratified communities with a growing black middle class, these authors dispelled popular notions that black Americans were uniformly poor or uncivilized. But even as the writers highlighted middle-class achievement, they worried over whether class distinctions would help or sabotage collective black protest against racial prejudice. Andreá N. Williams argues that the signs of class anxiety are embedded in postbellum fiction: from the verbal stammer or prim speech of class-conscious characters to fissures in the fiction's form. In these telling moments, authors innovatively dared to address the sensitive topic of class differences--a topic inextricably related to American civil rights and social opportunity. Williams delves into the familiar and lesser-known works of Frances E.W. Harper, Pauline Hopkins, Charles W. Chesnutt, Sutton Griggs, and Paul Laurence Dunbar, showing how these texts mediate class through discussions of labor, moral respectability, ancestry, spatial boundaries, and skin complexion. Dividing Lines also draws on reader responses--from book reviews, editorials, and letters--to show how the class anxiety expressed in African American fiction directly sparked reader concerns over the status of black Americans in the U.S. social order. Weaving literary history with compelling textual analyses, this study yields new insights about the intersection of race and class in black novels and short stories from the 1880s to 1900s."--Publisher's website
Member of
Cataloging source
DLC
http://library.link/vocab/creatorName
Williams, Andreá N
Dewey number
813.009/896073
Government publication
government publication of a state province territory dependency etc
Index
index present
LC call number
PS374.N4
LC item number
W55 2013
Literary form
non fiction
Nature of contents
bibliography
Series statement
Class : culture
http://library.link/vocab/subjectName
  • American fiction
  • Social classes in literature
  • Social status in literature
  • African Americans in literature
Label
Dividing lines : class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction, Andreá N. Williams
Instantiates
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Introduction: Contending classes, dividing lines -- The language of class: taxonomy and respectability in Frances E. W. Harper's Trial and triumph and Iola Leroy -- Working through class: the black body, labor, and leisure in Sutton Griggs's Overshadowed -- Mapping class difference: space and social mobility in Paul L. Dunbar's short fiction -- Blood and the mark of class: Pauline Hopkins's genealogies of status -- Classing the color line: class-passing, antiracism, and Charles W. Chesnutt -- Epilogue: beyond the talented tenth
Control code
793221917
Dimensions
24 cm
Extent
222 pages
Isbn
9780472118618
Isbn Type
(cloth : acid-free paper)
Lccn
2012033641
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)793221917
Label
Dividing lines : class anxiety and postbellum Black fiction, Andreá N. Williams
Publication
Bibliography note
Includes bibliographical references and index
Carrier category
volume
Carrier category code
  • nc
Carrier MARC source
rdacarrier
Content category
text
Content type code
  • txt
Content type MARC source
rdacontent
Contents
Introduction: Contending classes, dividing lines -- The language of class: taxonomy and respectability in Frances E. W. Harper's Trial and triumph and Iola Leroy -- Working through class: the black body, labor, and leisure in Sutton Griggs's Overshadowed -- Mapping class difference: space and social mobility in Paul L. Dunbar's short fiction -- Blood and the mark of class: Pauline Hopkins's genealogies of status -- Classing the color line: class-passing, antiracism, and Charles W. Chesnutt -- Epilogue: beyond the talented tenth
Control code
793221917
Dimensions
24 cm
Extent
222 pages
Isbn
9780472118618
Isbn Type
(cloth : acid-free paper)
Lccn
2012033641
Media category
unmediated
Media MARC source
rdamedia
Media type code
  • n
System control number
(OCoLC)793221917

Subject

Genre

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      38.944491 -92.326012

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