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Full-Text Articles in Arts and Humanities
Race, Politics, And Public Housekeeping: Contending Forces In Pauline Hopkins’S Boston, Betsey Klimasmith
Race, Politics, And Public Housekeeping: Contending Forces In Pauline Hopkins’S Boston, Betsey Klimasmith
Trotter Review
For Pauline Hopkins, the decision to present readers with a fictional yet faithful portrayal of urban African-American life centered in Boston, which at that time was the capital of African-American advancement, was political. In her introduction to Contending Forces (1900), she writes: “Fiction is of great value to any people as a preserver of manners and customs—religious, political and social. It is a record of growth and development from generation to generation. No one will do this for us; we must ourselves develop the men and women who will faithfully portray the inmost thoughts and feelings of the Negro with …
Signs, Symbols, And Slave Culture: Representations In Black Thunder, Sandra M. Grayson
Signs, Symbols, And Slave Culture: Representations In Black Thunder, Sandra M. Grayson
Trotter Review
Black Thunder (1936), by Arna Bontemps, is a historical novel that recreates Gabriel Prosser's 1800 slave revolt. This novel is useful in reviewing some of the historical and cultural linkages between Black slaves in the U.S. and African cultures. Thematically, Black Thunder does more than represent Black people's self-assertion through revolt, it also shows their assertion of identity through practicing Atlantic (or western) African traditions, especially those of the Kongo. This is a topic that continues to be significant in light of greater contemporary political and economic linkages between U.S. Blacks and Africans, as well as increasing African immigration into …
Book Review Essay: Black Literature And Society In The Eighteenth Century, Rhett S. Jones
Book Review Essay: Black Literature And Society In The Eighteenth Century, Rhett S. Jones
Trotter Review
The eighteenth century, a growing consensus among historians suggests, was a crucial period in the evolution of racism. Most Europeans entered the century with few fixed ideas on the nature of race and instead thought of themselves and others primarily in ethnic and religious terms. The English who invaded Jamaica (then colonized and occupied by the Spaniards) in 1655, for example, saw themselves as English Christians and the defenders of the island as Spanish “Papists.” Papists for the English of the time were not Christians at all but instead persons enlisted in the army of the anti-Christ. Nearly a century …