The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man

James Weldon Johnson

ISBN 10: 1841594067 / ISBN 13: 9781841594064

Editore: Everyman Okt 2022, 2022

Neuware - First published anonymously in 1912, this resolutely unsentimental novel gave many white readers their first glimpse of the double standards - and double consciousness - experienced by Black people in modern America. Republished in 1927, at the height of the Harlem Renaissance, with an introduction by Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man became a pioneering document of African-American culture and an eloquent model for later novelists ranging from Zora Neale Hurston to Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison.Narrated by a man whose light skin enables him to 'pass' for white, the novel describes a journey through the strata of Black society at the turn of the century - from a cigar factory in Jacksonville to an elite gambling club in New York, from genteel aristocrats to the musicians who hammered out the rhythms of Ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man is a complex and moving examination of the question of race and an unsparing look at what it meant to forge an identity as a man in a culture that recognized nothing but colour. Codice articolo 9781841594064

Riassunto:

Pubblicato per la prima volta in forma anonima nel 1912, questo romanzo decisamente poco sentimentale ha dato a molti lettori bianchi il primo assaggio dei doppi standard e della doppia consapevolezza vissuti dai neri nell'America moderna. Ripubblicato nel 1927, all'apice dell'Harlem Renaissance, con un'introduzione di Carl Van Vechten, The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man è diventato un documento pionieristico della cultura afroamericana e un modello eloquente per romanzieri successivi che vanno da Zora Neale Hurston a Richard Wright e Ralph Ellison. Narrato da un uomo la cui pelle chiara gli consente di "passare" per bianco, il romanzo descrive un viaggio attraverso gli strati della società nera all'inizio del secolo, da una fabbrica di sigari a Jacksonville a un club di gioco d'azzardo d'élite a New York, da aristocratici signorili ai musicisti che hanno martellato i ritmi del Ragtime. The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man è un'analisi complessa e toccante della questione razziale e uno sguardo spietato su cosa significasse forgiare un'identità come uomo in una cultura che non riconosceva altro che il colore della pelle.

Informazioni sull'autore: James Weldon Johnson (Author)
James Weldon Johnson (1871-1938) was a novelist, poet, lawyer, editor and ethnomusicologist, and co-author of the hymn 'Lift Every Voice and Sing', which is informally known as the Black national anthem in the USA. Born in Jacksonville, Florida, he was educated at Atlanta and Columbia Universities and was the first Black lawyer admitted to the Florida bar. He was also, for a time, a songwriter in New York, American consul in Venezuela and Nicaragua, executive secretary of the NAACP (National Association for the Advancement of Colored People) and professor of creative literature at Fisk University. His other books include an autobiography, Along This Way, and God's Trombones: Seven Negro Sermons in Verse.

Gregory Pardlo (Introducer)
Gregory Pardlo is the author of Air Traffic and of Digest, winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Poetry. Pardlo's poems and essays have appeared in The New Yorker, The Nation and The New York Times, among others. He is Poetry Editor of Virginia Quarterly Review.

Dati bibliografici

Titolo: The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man
Casa editrice: Everyman Okt 2022
Data di pubblicazione: 2022
Legatura: Buch
Condizione: Neu