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Chapter 1 - Black Excesses and Deprivations in Literature and Photography of the 1930s

from Part I - Productive Precarity and Literary Realism

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  25 March 2022

By
Sharon Lynette Jones
Edited by
Eve Dunbar  and
Ayesha K. Hardison
Eve Dunbar
Affiliation:
Vassar College, New York
Ayesha K. Hardison
Affiliation:
University of Kansas
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Summary

The decade of the 1930s reflects transitions in African American literary and photographic texts because of an emphasis on topics such as marriage, courtship, migration, childhood, as well as home in relationship to impoverishment and affluence. Discourse on aesthetics in African American literature also serves as a context for exploring representations of Black people in the 1930s. The chapter examines writings by authors such as Zora Neale Hurston, Langston Hughes, Arna Bontemps, and Marita Bonner, as well as other Black writers. Photographers James Van Der Zee and Carl Van Vechten depict Black people as prosperous, while Work Projects Administration and Farm Security Administration photographers portray Black people facing deprivation. Additionally, the chapter analyzes excess and deprivation in 1800s African American literature by Harriet Jacobs, William Wells Brown, and Frederick Douglass and post-1950 twentieth-century African American literature by Lorraine Hansberry as well as Toni Cade Bambara.

Keywords

African American literature,Great DepressionHarlem Renaissancematerialismphotographypoverty
Type
Chapter
Information
African American Literature in Transition, 1930–1940 , pp. 33 - 58
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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