Download or read book The Blue Vein Society Class and Color within Black America written by Sam Kelley and published by Xlibris Corporation. This book was released on 2013-01-25 with total page 127 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Blue Vein Society Blue Vein Society President Josh Ryder is all set to announce his engagement to a young fair-skinned beauty when his very dark-skinned wife from slavery suddenly appears searching for her long lost husband. A shocked Ryder is forced to confront his hidden past. No Hidin’ Place A southern sheriff discovers the mulatto he is protecting from the lynch mob is his own son, accused of murdering a Confederate army officer. As the mob closes in, the sheriff is forced to make a painful decision to save his son from being lynched. With amazing speed -- and superb acting -- Kelley's play shifts from light but edged irony, to pain, rage, tenderness and acceptance, underscoring the many nuances of prejudice. Neil Novelli Syracuse Post Standard This reviewer long has felt [Kelley] has a kinship with the late August Wilson. Like the Pulitzer Prize winner, Kelley revels in dealing with African-American history. Joan E. Vadaboncouer Syracuse Post Standard The Blue Vein Society . . . is most certainly about the black experience, but like all good drama, it uses that point of view to talk about the human experience. Ann L. Ryan Albuquerque Journal

Download or read book Wife of His Youth written by Charles Waddell Chesnutt and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 1899 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chesnutt's second major work of fiction, The Wife of His Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, was published in 1899 by Houghton Mifflin. In this collection of nine short stories set in Ohio and North Carolina, Chesnutt scrutinizes the sociological and psychological effects of Jim Crow laws and practices on white, black, and mixed-race communities. Chesnutt insightfully and often satirically reveals not only the difficulties faced by racially blended individuals but also their intense prejudices against more darkly shaded African Americans. Throughout The Wife of His Youth, Charles Chesnutt repeatedly unveils the nation's hypocrisy in claiming social equality among the races while gradually embracing the fierce system of segregation that characterized the North and the South at that time.

Download or read book A Companion to the American Short Story written by Alfred Bendixen and published by John Wiley & Sons. This book was released on 2020-08-24 with total page 536 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:

Download or read book Rereading the Harlem Renaissance written by Sharon L. Jones and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2002-12-30 with total page 172 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: African American writers of the Harlem Renaissance generally fall into three aesthetic categories: the folk, which emphasizes oral traditions, African American English, rural settings, and characters from lower socioeconomic levels; the bourgeois, which privileges characters from middle class backgrounds; and the proletarian, which favors overt critiques of oppression by contending that art should be an instrument of propaganda. Depending on critical assumptions regarding what constitutes authentic African American literature, some writers have been valorized, others dismissed. This rereading of the Harlem Renaissance gives special attention to Fauset, Hurston, and West. Jones argues that all three aesthetics influence each of their works, that they have been historically mislabeled, and that they share a drive to challenge racial, class, and gender oppression. The introduction provides a detailed historical overview of the Harlem Renaissance and the prevailing aesthetics of the period. Individual chapters analyze the works of Hurston, West, and Fauset to demonstrate how the folk, bourgeois, and proletarian aesthetics figure into their writings. The volume concludes by discussing the writers in relation to contemporary African American women authors.

Download or read book The Paper Bag Principle written by Audrey Elisa Kerr and published by Univ. of Tennessee Press. This book was released on 2006 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Paper Bag Principle: Class, Colorism, and Rumor in the Case of Black Washington, D.C. considers the function of oral history in shaping community dynamics among African American residents of the nation's capitol. The only attempt to document rumor and legends relating to complexion in black communities, The Paper Bag Principle looks at the divide that has existed between the black elite and the black "folk." The Paper Bag Principle focuses on three objectives: to record lore related to the "paper bag principle" (the set of attitudes that granted blacks with light skin higher status in black communities); to investigate the impact that this "principle" has had on the development of black community consciousness; and to link this material to power that results from proximity to whiteness. The Paper Bag Principle is sure to appeal to scholars and historians interested in African American studies, cultural studies, oral history, folklore, and ethnic and urban studies.

Download or read book Detroit Time Capsule written by Gregory A. Fournier and published by Wheatmark, Inc.. This book was released on 2021-10-06 with total page 293 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Detroit Time Capsule is a collection of seventy-five articles that first appeared as Fornology.com blog posts. The original posts have been revised and re-edited for inclusion in this anthology. Topics vary from significant historical events to biographical profiles of people who left their mark on Detroit history. Although this collection can be read from beginning to end, most chapters are self-contained with no narrative thread binding them. This eclectic collection makes a great springboard for readers interested in learning more about Detroit's rich past.

Download or read book The Blacker the Berry written by Wallace Thurman and published by Courier Corporation. This book was released on 2008-01-01 with total page 162 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A source of controversy upon its 1929 publication, this novel was the first to openly address color prejudice among black Americans. The author, an active member of the Harlem Renaissance, offers insightful reflections of the era's mood and spirit in an enduringly relevant examination of racial, sexual, and cultural identity.

Download or read book Blue Veins and Kinky Hair written by Obiagele Lake and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2003-06-30 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The author explores how Africans in America internalized the negative images created of them by the European world, and how internalized racism has worked to fracture African American unity and thereby dilute inchoate efforts toward liberation. In the late 1960s, change began with the Black Is Beautiful slogan and new a consciousness, which went hand in hand with Black Power and pan-African movements. The author argues that for any people to succeed, they must first embrace their own identity, including physical characteristics. Naming, skin color, and hair have been topical issues in the African American community since the 18th century. These three areas are key to a sense of identity and self, and they were forcefully changed when Africans were taken out of Africa as slaves. The author discusses how group and personal names, including racial epithets, have had far-reaching and deep-seated effects on African American self perception. Most of her attention, however, is focused on issues of physical appearance which reflect a greater or lesser degree of racial blending. She tells us about exclusive African American organizations such as The Blue Vein Society, in which membership was extended to African Americans whose skin color and hair texture tended toward those of European Americans, although wealthy dark-skinned people were also eligible. Much of the book details the lengths to which African American women have gone to lighten their complexions and straighten their hair. These endeavors started many years ago, and still continue, although today there is also a large number of women who are adamantly going natural. Her historical look at the cultural background to African American issues of hair and skin is the first monograph of its kind.

Download or read book Showing My Color written by Clarence Page and published by Harper Perennial. This book was released on 1997 with total page 324 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Reflecting on changes in the racial landscape since the 1960s and drawing on a depth of personal and private experiences, a Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the "Chicago Tribune" reconnects the increasingly abstract political debates about black conservatives, affirmative action, and the "race card" to the people for whom these words mean something more than just votes.

Download or read book Layers of Blackness written by Deborah Gabriel and published by Imani Media Ltd. This book was released on 2007 with total page 149 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first book by an author in the UK to take an in-depth look at colourism - the process of discrimination based on skin tone among members of the same ethnic group, whereby lighter skin is more valued than darker complexions. The African Diaspora in Britain is examined as part of a global black community with shared experiences of slavery, colonization and neo-colonialism. The author traces the evolution of colourism within African descendant communities in the USA, Jamaica, Latin America and the UK from a historical and political perspective and examines its present impact on the global African Diaspora. This book is essential reading for educators and students and will appeal to anyone with an interest in the subject of race and identity who wants to understand why colourism - a psychological legacy of slavery still impacts people of African descent in the Diaspora today.

Download or read book Presenting Oprah Winfrey Her Films and African American Literature written by T. Green and published by Springer. This book was released on 2012-12-28 with total page 189 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Oprah Winfrey has long promoted black issues by being involved as a producer or actor in the adaptation of works by African American writers for film. This volume evaluates Winfrey's involvement in the visual interpretation of African American literary texts using film, music, black masculinity, black feminist, and cultural theory.

Download or read book Aristocrats of Color written by Willard B. Gatewood and published by University of Arkansas Press. This book was released on 2000-05-01 with total page 495 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every American city had a small, self-aware, and active black elite, who felt it was their duty to set the standard for the less fortunate members of their race and to lead their communities by example. Professor Gatewood's study examines this class of African Americans by looking at the genealogies and occupations of specific families and individuals throughout the United States and their roles in their various communities. --from publisher description.

Download or read book Encyclopedia of African American Society written by Gerald D. Jaynes and published by SAGE. This book was released on 2005-02 with total page 1113 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: An encyclopedic reference of African American history and culture.

Download or read book Black Baseball 1858 1900 written by James E. Brunson III and published by McFarland. This book was released on 2019-04-08 with total page 1402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is one of the most important baseball books to be published in a long time, taking a comprehensive look at black participation in the national pastime from 1858 through 1900. It provides team rosters and team histories, player biographies, a list of umpires and games they officiated and information on team managers and team secretaries. Well known organizations like the Washington's Mutuals, Philadelphia Pythians, Chicago Uniques, St. Louis Black Stockings, Cuban Giants and Chicago Unions are documented, as well as lesser known teams like the Wilmington Mutuals, Newton Black Stockings, San Francisco Enterprise, Dallas Black Stockings, Galveston Flyaways, Louisville Brotherhoods and Helena Pastimes. Player biographies trace their connections between teams across the country. Essays frame the biographies, discussing the social and cultural events that shaped black baseball. Waiters and barbers formed the earliest organized clubs and developed local, regional and national circuits. Some players belonged to both white and colored clubs, and some umpires officiated colored, white and interracial matches. High schools nurtured young players and transformed them into powerhouse teams, like Cincinnati's Vigilant Base Ball Club. A special essay covers visual representations of black baseball and the artists who created them, including colored artists of color who were also baseballists.

Download or read book That Middle World written by Julia S. Charles and published by UNC Press Books. This book was released on 2020-10-01 with total page 243 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this study of racial passing literature, Julia S. Charles highlights how mixed-race subjects invent cultural spaces for themselves—a place she terms that middle world—and how they, through various performance strategies, make meaning in the interstices between the Black and white worlds. Focusing on the construction and performance of racial identity in works by writers from the antebellum period through Reconstruction, Charles creates a new discourse around racial passing to analyze mixed-race characters' social objectives when crossing into other racialized spaces. To illustrate how this middle world and its attendant performativity still resonates in the present day, Charles connects contemporary figures, television, and film—including Rachel Dolezal and her Black-passing controversy, the FX show Atlanta, and the musical Show Boat—to a range of nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary texts. Charles's work offers a nuanced approach to African American passing literature and examines how mixed-race performers articulated their sense of selfhood and communal belonging.

Download or read book The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line and Selected Essays written by Charles W. Chesnutt and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-08-15 with total page 221 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: DigiCat Publishing presents to you this special edition of "The Wife of his Youth and Other Stories of the Color Line, and Selected Essays" by Charles W. Chesnutt. DigiCat Publishing considers every written word to be a legacy of humankind. Every DigiCat book has been carefully reproduced for republishing in a new modern format. The books are available in print, as well as ebooks. DigiCat hopes you will treat this work with the acknowledgment and passion it deserves as a classic of world literature.

Download or read book The Geographies of African American Short Fiction written by Kenton Rambsy and published by Univ. Press of Mississippi. This book was released on 2022-03-25 with total page 118 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Perhaps the brevity of short fiction accounts for the relatively scant attention devoted to it by scholars, who have historically concentrated on longer prose narratives. The Geographies of African American Short Fiction seeks to fill this gap by analyzing the ways African American short story writers plotted a diverse range of characters across multiple locations—small towns, a famous metropolis, city sidewalks, a rural wooded area, apartment buildings, a pond, a general store, a prison, and more. In the process, these writers highlighted the extents to which places and spaces shaped or situated racial representations. Presenting African American short story writers as cultural cartographers, author Kenton Rambsy documents the variety of geographical references within their short stories to show how these authors make cultural spaces integral to their artwork and inscribe their stories with layered and resonant social histories. The history of these short stories also documents the circulation of compositions across dozens of literary collections for nearly a century. Anthology editors solidified the significance of a core group of short story authors including James Baldwin, Toni Cade Bambara, Charles Chesnutt, Ralph Ellison, Zora Neale Hurston, and Richard Wright. Using quantitative information and an extensive literary dataset, The Geographies of African American Short Fiction explores how editorial practices shaped the canon of African American short fiction.