Racial Myths And Masculinity In African American Literature

The portrayal of black men in our national literature is controversial, complex, and often contradictory."In Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature, Jeffrey B. Leak identifies some of the long-held myths and stereotypes that persist in the work of black writers from the nineteenth century to the present--intellectual inferiority, criminality, sexual prowess, homosexual emasculation, and cultural deprivation. Utilizing Robert B. Stepto's call-and-response theory, Leak studies four pairs of novels within the context of certain myths, identifying the literary tandems between them and seeking to discover the source of our culture's psychological preoccupation with black men. Calling upon interdisciplinary fields of study--literary theory, psychoanalysis, gender studies, legal theory, and queer theory--Leak offers ground breaking analysis of both canonical texts (representing the "call" of the call-and-response dyad) and texts by emerging writers (representing the "response"), including Frederick Douglass and Charles Johnson: Ralph Ellison and Brent Wade; Richard Wright and Ernest J. Gaines; and Toni Morrison and David Bradley. Though Leak does not claim that the "response" tests are superior to the "call' texts, he does argue that, in some cases, the newer work--such as charles Johnson's "Oxherding Tale--can address a theme or offer a narrative innovation not found in preceding texts, such as "Narrative of the Life of Frederick Douglas. In these instances, argues Leak, the newer texts constitute not only a response to the call text, but a substantial revision. Leak offers the first in-depth criticism of black masculinity in a range of literary texts. In a final chapter, he expands his discussion to the emerging field of black masculinity studies, pointing to future directions for study, including memoir, film, drama, and others. Poised on the brink of exciting new trends in scholarship, "Racial Myths and Masculinity in African American Literature is flagship work, enhancing the understanding of literary constructions of black masculinity and the larger cultural imperatives to which these writers are reacting.

American writings often express a hunger for a mythologized frontier at the edge of known civilization, where one's identity, choices, and decisions are not limited by convention. Since the nineteenth century, writers have used this frontier space both to probe and to define the meanings of masculinity. In Black Masculinity and the Frontier Myth in American Literature, Michael K. Johnson examines the writings of black authors whose works use the mythologized frontier to explore black masculinity and identity formed in an environment free of racism and race-based restrictions. Black writers have reworked the mythology of the American West to address black male experiences more authentically, Johnson argues, grappling with such concerns as racial assimilation and the notion of "regenerative violence" as a method of masculine initiation. White-authored stories of frontier conquest often pit a white hunter against a hunted man of another race. In this ritual of the hunt, defeating the racial other renews white manhood. Black writers who invoke this ritual address the contradictions inherent in adapting a dominant culture form that routinely positions the black man as the hunted object rather than as the hunter. Following his discussion of the frontier in the American West, Johnson explores how writers invent new frontiers by mythologizing or reimagining various locations, such as Paris in the 1960s or the African continent. Johnson also addresses efforts by black authors to develop a frontier identity that transcends the gaps between the cultures of Africa and the mainstream culture of the United States.

Inverting the traditional focus of ethnic studies on blackness as the object of scrutiny, this book explores dominant forms of white masculinity as seen by African American authors placed alongside certain white writers. Author analyzes texts by Herman Melville, Ernest Hemingway, Martha Gellhorn, Frederick Douglass, and James Baldwin.

Who are the "race men" standing for black America? It is a question Hazel Carby rejects, along with its long-standing assumption: that a particular type of black male can represent the race. A searing critique of definitions of black masculinity at work in American culture, Race Men shows how these defining images play out socially, culturally, and politically for black and white society--and how they exclude women altogether. Carby begins by looking at images of black masculinity in the work of W. E. B. Du Bois. Her analysis of The Souls of Black Folk reveals the narrow and rigid code of masculinity that Du Bois applied to racial achievement and advancement--a code that remains implicitly but firmly in place today in the work of celebrated African American male intellectuals. The career of Paul Robeson, the music of Huddie Ledbetter, and the writings of C. L. R. James on cricket and on the Haitian revolutionary, Toussaint L'Ouverture, offer further evidence of the social and political uses of representations of black masculinity. In the music of Miles Davis and the novels of Samuel R. Delany, Carby finds two separate but related challenges to conventions of black masculinity. Examining Hollywood films, she traces through the career of Danny Glover the development of a cultural narrative that promises to resolve racial contradictions by pairing black and white men--still leaving women out of the picture. A powerful statement by a major voice among black feminists, Race Men holds out the hope that by understanding how society has relied upon affirmations of masculinity to resolve social and political crises, we can learn to transcend them.

Comprising seven different chapters, the collection Men in Color attempts to analyze, and revisit, the representation of ethnic masculinities, both white and non-white, in and through contemporary U.S. literature and cinema. If most of the existing studies on masculinity and race have centered on one specific model of racialized masculinities, Men in Color attempts to provide an introductory perspective on different racialized masculinities simultaneously, including African American, Asian American, Chicano, Arab American, and also white masculinity, which is analyzed as another ethnic and gendered construct, rather than as a paradigm of normalcy and “universality.” By exploring several ethnic masculinities in relation to each other, the present volume aims to highlight both the differences and the similarities between different patterns of masculinity, showing how, even as gender is inflected by race, certain aspects or features of masculinity remain unchanged across the ethnic board. Ultimately, the volume as a whole illustrates both the changing nature of masculinities as well as the recurrence of certain stereotypes, such as the hypersexualization and/or the feminization of ethnic males, which recur in and across several ethnicities. The constant tension and intersection between gender and race is the subject of this book, which hopes to contribute some notes and reflections on ethnic masculinities to the much more complex and larger discussion about gender and racial identities in our increasingly multicultural and globalized 21st-century world.

Traps is the first anthology that historicizes the writings by African American men who have examined the meanings of the overlapping categories of race, gender, and sexuality, and who have theorized these categories in the most expansive and progressive terms. Traps contains the landmark speeches, essays, letters, and a manifesto by nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American men who have examined the complex terrain of gender and sexuality within the historical and cultural matrix of the United States.

Nonfiction 20th century African American literature Literary Criticism African American gender studies Title: Institutional Racism and the Search for African American Masculinity and Identity in Selected Works of Richard Wright Author Khefa Nosakhere Publisher: kalimba Publishing The author examines how institutional racism defines the lives of Bigger Thomas (Native Son) Richard Wright (Black Boy) Fred Thomas ( The Man Who Lived Underground) Wealth Gap Prison Industrial Complex Pipeline to Prison Generational Black Poverty Pub, 2020ISBN1087870704, 9781087870700 Length238 pages Subjects: Biography & Autobiography › Cultural, Ethnic & Regional › African American & Black

Representing Black Men focuses on gender, race and representation in the literary and cultural work of black men.