Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930Race, Work and Desire analyses literary representations of work relationships across the colour-line from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Michele Birnbaum examines inter-racial bonds in fiction and literary correspondence by black and white authors and artists - including Elizabeth Keckley, Frances E. W. Harper, W. D. Howells, Grace King, Kate Chopin, Langston Hughes, Amy Spingarn and Carl Van Vechten - exploring the way servants and employers, doctors and patients, and patrons and artists negotiate their racial differences for artistic and political ends. Situating these relationships in literary and cultural context, Birnbaum argues that the literature reveals the complexity of cross-racial relations in the workplace, which, although often represented as an oasis of racial harmony, is in fact the very site where race politics are most fiercely engaged. This study productively complicates current debates about cross-racial collaboration in American literary and race studies, and will be of interest to scholars in both literary and cultural studies. |
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Contents
working relations and racial desire | 1 |
Elizabeth Keckleys Behind The Scenes Or Thirty Years A Slave And Four Years In The White House ... | 28 |
2 Offcolor patients in Frances E W Harpers Iola Leroy and W D Howellss An Imperative Duty ... | 58 |
3 Alien hands in Kate Chopins The Awakening | 76 |
Langston Hughes and the art of patronage | 94 |
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Common terms and phrases
African Americans American Literature Amy Spingarn argues artistic becomes black and white black women blood body Carl Van Vechten chapter clothing Collection color color-line confi critical cultural discourses Edna Edna’s fact father female feminine fiction gender Gresham gure Harlem Renaissance Harper’s Howells Howells’s Hughes’s identity Imperative Duty insists interracial intimacy Iola Leroy James Weldon Johnson Jewish Jews Kate Chopin Keckley Keckley’s King’s labor Langston Hughes letters Lincoln literary Literary Realism Madame Marcélite Marcélite’s Marie Marie’s marriage miscegenation mistress Monsieur Motte mother Mulatto narrative Negro Norwood novel ofthe Olney one’s Oxford University Press patronage patrons play poem political quadroon Quoted race relations racial desire racism Rampersad realism relationship representation represented rhetorical Rhoda’s Robert Scenes sense servant sexual simply slave slavery social suggests texts theater W. D. Howells W. E. B. Du Bois Walker’s white women woman womanhood writing Yale York
Bibliographic information
| Title | Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860-1930 Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture |
| Authors | Michele Birnbaum, Michele Elam |
| Contributors | Albert Gelpi, Ross Posnock |
| Edition | illustrated |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press, 2003 |
| ISBN | 0521824257, 9780521824255 |
| Length | 195 pages |
| Subjects | › › Literary Criticism / American / General Literary Criticism / General |
| Export Citation | BiBTeX EndNote RefMan |