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During the course of the novel, Acorn is attacked and taken over by Christian American "Crusaders" and turned into a re-education camp. For the next year and a half, Lauren and the other adults are enslaved and forced to wear "shock collars". Their Christian American captors exploit them as forced labor under the prete... |
Meanwhile, Larkin is adopted by an African American Christian America family and renamed "Asha Vere Alexander" after a popular Dreamask hero. Unloved and abused by her adoptive parents, Asha grows up never knowing who her biological parents are. As an adult, Asha reunites with her uncle Marcus "Marc" Duran, who was bel... |
Unknown to Asha, Uncle Marc had previously re-established contact with his long-lost half-sister Lauren. Marc claimed that the "Crusaders" were rogue elements who do not represent Christian America. He tells Asha that her mother is dead, and never told Lauren he had found her daughter. With Jarret's legacy in disgrace,... |
After Asha learns that Lauren is her biological mother, she manages to meet with her mother. Though Asha is unable to forgive her mother for choosing Earthseed over her, Lauren tells her daughter that her door is always open to her. After learning that her half-brother Uncle Marc hid the fact that Asha was related to L... |
Jana Diemer Llewellyn regards "Parable of the Talents" as a harsh indictment of religious fundamentalism and compares the novel to Joanna Russ' "The Female Man" and Margaret Atwood's "The Handmaid's Tale". The "Los Angeles Times" op-ed editor Abby Aguirre has likened the religious fundamentalism and authoritarianism of... |
Butler had planned to write a third "Parable" novel, tentatively titled "Parable of the Trickster", which would have focused on the community's struggle to survive on a new planet. She began this novel after finishing "Parable of the Talents", and mentioned her work on it in a number of interviews, but at some point en... |
Invisible Man is a novel by Ralph Ellison, published by Random House in 1952. It addresses many of the social and intellectual issues faced by African Americans in the early twentieth century, including black nationalism, the relationship between black identity and Marxism, and the reformist racial policies of Booker T... |
"Invisible Man" won the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1953, making Ellison the first African American writer to win the award. |
In 1998, the Modern Library ranked "Invisible Man" 19th on its list of the 100 best English-language novels of the 20th century. "Time" magazine included the novel in its TIME 100 Best English-language Novels from 1923 to 2005, calling it "the quintessential American picaresque of the 20th century," rather than a "race... |
Ellison says in his introduction to the 30th Anniversary Edition that he started to write what would eventually become "Invisible Man" in a barn in Waitsfield, Vermont, in the summer of 1945 while on sick leave from the Merchant Marine. The book took five years to complete with one year off for what Ellison termed an "... |
Ellison's "ancestors" included, among others, "The Waste Land" by T.S. Eliot. In an interview with Richard Kostelanetz, Ellison states that what he had learned from the poem was imagery, and also improvisation techniques he had only before seen in jazz. |
Some other influences include William Faulkner and Ernest Hemingway. Ellison once called Faulkner the South's greatest artist. Likewise, in the Spring 1955 "Paris Review", Ellison said of Hemingway: "I read him to learn his sentence structure and how to organize a story. I guess many young writers were doing this, but ... |
Some of Ellison's influences had a more direct impact on his novel as when Ellison divulges this, in his introduction to the 30th anniversary of "Invisible Man", that the "character" ("in the dual sense of the word") who had announced himself on his page he "associated, ever so distantly, with the narrator of Dostoevsk... |
Other most likely influences to Ellison, by way of how much he speaks about them, are: Kenneth Burke, Andre Malraux, Mark Twain, to name a few. |
The letters he wrote to fellow novelist Richard Wright as he started working on the novel provide evidence for his disillusion with and defection from the Communist Party for perceived revisionism. In a letter to Wright on August 18, 1945, Ellison poured out his anger toward party leaders for betraying African-American... |
The narrator, an unnamed black man, begins by describing his living conditions: an underground room wired with hundreds of electric lights, operated by power stolen from the city's electric grid. He reflects on the various ways in which he has experienced social invisibility during his life and begins to tell his story... |
The narrator lives in a small Southern town and, upon graduating from high school, wins a scholarship to an all-black college. However, to receive it, he must first take part in a brutal, humiliating battle royal for the entertainment of the town's rich white dignitaries. |
One afternoon during his junior year at the college, the narrator chauffeurs Mr. Norton, a visiting rich white trustee, out among the old slave-quarters beyond the campus. By chance, he stops at the cabin of Jim Trueblood, who has caused a scandal by impregnating both his wife and his daughter in his sleep. Trueblood's... |
Dr. Bledsoe, the college president, excoriates the narrator for showing Mr. Norton the underside of black life beyond the campus and expels him. However, Bledsoe gives several sealed letters of recommendation to the narrator, to be delivered to friends of the college in order to assist him in finding a job so that he m... |
Acting on the son's suggestion, the narrator seeks work at the Liberty Paint factory, renowned for its pure white paint. He is assigned first to the shipping department, then to the boiler room, whose chief attendant, Lucius Brockway, is highly paranoid and suspects that the narrator is trying to take his job. This dis... |
The rallies go smoothly at first, with the narrator receiving extensive indoctrination on the Brotherhood's ideology and methods. Soon, though, he encounters trouble from Ras the Exhorter, a fanatical black nationalist who believes that the Brotherhood is controlled by whites. Neither the narrator nor Tod Clifton, a yo... |
The narrator can find no trace of Clifton at first, but soon discovers him selling dancing Sambo dolls on the street, having become disillusioned with the Brotherhood. Clifton is shot and killed by a policeman while resisting arrest; at his funeral, the narrator delivers a rousing speech that rallies the crowd to suppo... |
The epilogue returns to the present, with the narrator stating that he is ready to return to the world because he has spent enough time hiding from it. He explains that he has told his story in order to help people see past his own invisibility, and also to provide a voice for people with a similar plight: "Who knows b... |
Critic Orville Prescott of "The New York Times" called the novel "the most impressive work of fiction by an American Negro which I have ever read," and felt it marked "the appearance of a richly talented writer." Novelist Saul Bellow in his review found it "a book of the very first order, a superb book...it is tragi-co... |
In "The Paris Review", literary critic Harold Bloom referred to "Invisible Man", along with Zora Neale Hurston's "Their Eyes Were Watching God", as "the only full scale works of fiction I have read by American blacks in this century that have survival possibilities at all." |
Anthony Burgess described the novel as "a masterpiece". |
It was reported in October 2017 that streaming service Hulu was developing the novel into a television series. |
Quicksand is a novel by American author Nella Larsen, first published in 1928. This is her first novel and she completed the first draft quickly. The novel was out of print from the 1930s to the 1970s. "Quicksand" is a work that explores both cross-cultural and interracial themes. Larsen dedicated the novel to her husb... |
Discussing the novel, Jacquelyn Y. McLendon called it the more "obviously autobiographical" of Larsen's two novels. Larsen called the emotional experiences of the novel "the awful truth" in a letter to her friend Carl van Vechten. |
Throughout the development of the novel, though driven by the search for racial identity, Helga also rejects intimate relationships with every man she encounters at each destination. It isn’t until she fully indulges in an intimate relationship that she becomes forced to exist in a space (Deep South) and becomes stuck. |
The story’s protagonist. Helga’s mother was born in Denmark and her father was of west-Indian descent. Helga is a young, biracial woman whose journey’s purpose is finding a place where she belongs. She struggles with insecurities. The story begins where she is a teacher at Naxos, a white-imposing school, where she then... |
Helga’s fiancé when she is at Naxos. She ends their relationship when she moves away. James comes off as a serious and boring young man. |
Helga’s employer that enables Helga to move to Harlem after she leaves Naxos. The protagonist is hired to help Mrs. Hayes-Rore write a speech. |
A 35 year old handsome man with grey eyes. He is known as the principal of Naxos at the beginning of the story, but then becomes someone that Helga thinks of romantically. |
Helga’s friend that ultimately influences her to the Harlem Culture. Is a socialite and widow that is utterly obsessed with the race problem brought up in the novel. |
When Helga returns to New York again in the story, she meets this southern reverend after bumping into him at church. The two then get married and move to Alabama where they have 5 children. |
Danish artist that proposes to Helga and ultimately gets turned down because he objectifies her. |
Helga’s white aunt in Copenhagen, her mother’s sister. |
Helga’s white uncle that lives in Copenhagen. His only wish is for Helga to be happy and get married. |
Helga struggles with race are emphasized due to society’s attitude toward her. Helga’s mental and physical expedition is to find a place where she doesn’t draw attention to., or take away from her differences. However, society and social order play a role in which people are viewed, if they are culturally different. He... |
Helga is a young biracial woman; a half white, half black woman. For Helga, identifying as a biracial woman means she has less restrictions when it comes to racial labels. Her struggles with her identity come from the reluctance of others and how they view themselves and others. Helga’s understanding of herself is cons... |
Helga’s future is determined by her sex and her race. Her fascination with clothing and color is a way for Helga to build a female identity for herself. Helga dressed in styles unique to herself and others as a way to stand out from the rest. The way she dressed also goes against the way Naxos wanted their teachers to ... |
Hogg is a novel by Samuel R. Delany. It was written in San Francisco in 1969 and completed just days before the Stonewall Riots in New York City. A further draft was completed in 1973 in London. At the time it was written, no one would publish it due to its graphic descriptions of murder, child molestation, incest, cop... |
The preface to the novel is titled "The Scorpion Garden". It is not included in the hardback edition from 1995, although it was written in 1973. It is included in "The Straits of Messina" (1989). |
As described in the book "Inventory" by The A.V. Club, |
These acts include a substantial amount of "rape, violence, and murder", such as "scenes of Hogg and his gang brutally raping various women" and other "extensive scenes involving consumption of bodily waste." Every chapter in the novel contains graphic sexual or violent acts. |
The main events of the novel take place on June 26, 27, and 28, 1969, in an unspecified city. The narrator mentions various nearby areas—"Crawhole," "Frontwater," and "Ellenville"—apparently fictional neighborhoods. The nameless city is described as an industrial wasteland. The events take place at docks, garbage barge... |
In an interview with TK Enright, Delany states ""[Hogg's]" action takes place in Pornotopia—that is the land where any situation can become rampantly sexual under the least increase in the pressure of attention. Like its sister lands, Comedia and Tragedia, it can only be but so realistic." In the same interview Delany ... |
At the start, the narrator is living with a Hispanic boy named Pedro and performing sex acts with older men in the basement of the dwelling for money, along with Pedro's teenage sister Maria. He engages in sex with Maria, Pedro, a gang of bikers, and a group of Black men. The narrator consistently assumes the bottom ro... |
When their last job is completed, the group retires to the Piewacket bar, where they fraternize with members of the Phantoms—the same biker gang encountered in the beginning of the novel. Nigg and one of the bikers, Hawk, hatch a scheme to sell the narrator to a black tugboat captain called Big Sambo. Without consultin... |
The narrator goes walking around the docks at night, where he overhears a radio on the deck of a garbage scow. The newscaster on the radio reports on a series of murders that has occurred recently—as it turns out, the suspect is Denny. This is confirmed to the reader when it is noted that the phrase "it's all right" is... |
On the docks the narrator then meets two garbagemen: Red, a red-headed white man, and Rufus, a black man. While having sex with the narrator outside, they plan to "borrow" the narrator from Big Sambo and keep him at their scow on a collar and leash. They are interrupted by Whitey, a cop who patrols the area, who also h... |
Hogg arrives at Big Sambo's scow and assaults Big Sambo. Hogg and the narrator leave the docks in Hogg's truck, in which Denny was hiding from the police. After driving out of the Crawhole area and getting clear of the law, Hogg commands Denny to bathe himself, dress in clean clothes, and hitch a ride to Florida. While... |
The off-stage murder spree by Dennis "Denny" Harkner is described by radio reporter Edward Sawyer as "an afternoon and evening long rampage...that threatens to outdo Starkweather, Speck, and Manson together." Later in the novel it is revealed that the spree took place on June 27th, 1969, more than a month before the Ta... |
Michael Hemmingson wrote in the journal "The Review of Contemporary Fiction" that Hogg, |
Despite the book's infamous reputation, several respected authors have given it their endorsement. Norman Mailer, for instance, said "There is no question that "Hogg" by Samuel R. Delany is a serious book with literary merit." J.G. Ballard, prolific speculative fiction author and elder statesman of transgressive litera... |
Author Dennis Cooper said in his collection "Smothered in Hugs: Essays, Interviews, Feedback, and Obituaries" that ""Hogg" is tiresome and indulgent" and that the "pace is molasses-slow". However, he also goes on to say that "the book is a highly charged object...[and] that's reason enough to recommend it." In the Pref... |
Jeffrey A. Tucker, associate professor of English at the University of Rochester, comments in his critical study "A sense of wonder: Samuel R. Delany, race, identity and difference" that "Hogg" "gave expression to the author's hostility toward a heterosexist society, an anger that had no socially constructive outlet pr... |
Cane is a 1923 novel by noted Harlem Renaissance author Jean Toomer. The novel is structured as a series of vignettes revolving around the origins and experiences of African Americans in the United States. The vignettes alternate in structure between narrative prose, poetry, and play-like passages of dialogue. As a res... |
The ambitious, nontraditional structure of the novel – and its later influence on future generations of writers – have helped "Cane" gain status as a classic of modernism. Several of the vignettes have been excerpted or anthologized in literary collections; the poetic passage "Harvest Song" has been included in multipl... |
Jean Toomer began writing sketches that would become the first section of "Cane" in November 1921 on a train from Georgia to Washington D.C. By Christmas of 1921, the first draft of those sketches and the short story “Kabnis” were complete. Waldo Frank, Toomer’s close friend, suggested that Toomer combine the sketches ... |
However, before the book was published, Toomer’s initial euphoria began to fade. He wrote, “The book is done but when I look for the beauty I thought I’d caught, they thin out and elude me.” He thought that the Georgia sketches lacked complexity and said they were “too damn simple for me.” In a letter to Sherwood Ander... |
Toomer spent a great deal of time working on the structure of "Cane". He said that the design was a circle. Aesthetically, "Cane" builds from simple to complex forms; regionally, it moves from the South to the North and then back to the South; and spiritually, it begins with “Bona and Paul,” grows through the Georgia n... |
In his autobiography, Toomer wrote: “I realized with deep regret, that the spirituals, meeting ridicule, would be certain to die out. With Negroes also the trend was towards the small town and then towards the city—and industry and commerce and machines. The folk-spirit was walking in to die on the modern desert. That ... |
"Cane" was not widely read when it was published but was generally praised by both black and white critics. Montgomery Gregory, an African American, wrote in his 1923 review: "America has waited for its own counterpart of Maran—for that native son who would avoid the pitfalls of propaganda and moralizing on the one han... |
W. E. B. Du Bois reviewed "Cane" in 1924, saying: "Toomer does not impress me as one who knows his Georgia but he does know human beings." Du Bois goes on to say that Toomer does not depict an exact likeness of humans but rather depicts them like an Impressionist painter. Du Bois also wrote that Toomer’s writing is del... |
In his 1939 review "The New Negro", Sanders Redding wrote: ""Cane" was experimental, a potpourri of poetry and prose, in which the latter element is significant because of the influence it had on the course of Negro fiction." |
White critics who reviewed "Cane" in 1923 were mostly positive about the novel, praising its new portrayal of African Americans. John Armstrong wrote: "It can perhaps be safely said that the Southern negro, at least, has found an authentic lyric voice in Jean Toomer…there is nothing of the theatrical coon-strutting hig... |
Robert Littell wrote in his 1923 review that ""Cane" does not remotely resemble any of the familiar, superficial views of the South on which we have been brought up. On the contrary, Mr. Toomer’s view is unfamiliar and bafflingly subterranean, the vision of a poet far more than the account of things seen by a novelist.... |
Alice Walker said of the book, "It has been reverberating in me to an astonishing degree. I love it passionately, could not possibly exist without it." |
In "The Negro Novel in America", Robert A. Bone wrote: "By far the most impressive product of the Negro Renaissance, "Cane" ranks with Richard Wright’s "Native Son" and Ralph Ellison’s "Invisible Man" as a measure of the Negro novelist’s highest achievement. Jean Toomer belongs to that first rank of writers who use wor... |
Gerald Strauss points out that despite "critical uncertainty and controversy," he finds that "Cane"'s structure is not without precedent: "it is similar to James Joyce’s "Dubliners" (1914) and Sherwood Anderson’s "Winesburg, Ohio" (1919), two other thematically related story collections that develop unified and coheren... |
In 1973, Alice Walker and fellow Zora Neale Hurston scholar Charlotte D. Hunt discovered a grave they thought was Hurston's in Ft. Pierce, Florida. Walker had it marked with a gray marker stating ZORA NEALE HURSTON / "A GENIUS OF THE SOUTH" / NOVELIST FOLKLORIST / ANTHROPOLOGIST / 1901–1960. The line "a genius of the s... |
The novel inspired the Gil Scott-Heron song "Cane", in which he sings about two main characters of the novel: Karintha and Becky. |
The novel inspired Marion Brown in his "Georgia" trilogy of jazz albums, especially on "Geechee Recollections" (1973), where he put "Karintha" to music, recited by Bill Hasson. |
"The Bluest Eye," published in 1970, is the first novel written by Toni Morrison. The novel takes place in Lorain, Ohio (Morrison's hometown), and tells the story of a young African-American girl named Pecola who grew up following the Great Depression. Set in 1941, the story tells that she is consistently regarded as "... |
The novel is told from Claudia MacTeer's point of view. She is the daughter of Pecola's foster parents at different stages in her life. In addition, there is an omniscient third-person narrative that includes inset narratives in the first person. The book's controversial topics of racism, incest, and child molestation ... |
Morrison was an African-American novelist, a Pulitzer, and Nobel Prize winner whose works are praised for addressing the harsh consequences of racism in the United States. |
The novel, through flashbacks, explores the younger years of both of Pecola's parents, Cholly and Pauline, and their struggles as African Americans in a largely White Anglo-Saxon Protestant community. Pauline now works as a servant for a wealthier white family. One day in the novel's present time, while Pecola is doing... |
Claudia, as narrator a final time, describes the recent phenomenon of Pecola's insanity and suggests that Cholly (who has since died) may have shown Pecola the only love he could by raping her. Claudia laments on her belief that the whole community, herself included, has used Pecola as a scapegoat to make themselves fe... |
Morrison commented on her motivations to write the novel, saying, "I felt compelled to write this mostly because in the 1960s, black male authors published powerful, aggressive, revolutionary fiction or nonfiction, and they had positive racially uplifting rhetoric with them that were stimulating and I thought they woul... |
In an article titled “Decay and Symbolic Impotence in Toni Morrison’s THE BLUEST EYE,” the author examines how several critics have studied the significance of the loss of one of Pauline’s front teeth in The Bluest Eye. Parker argues that Pauline’s missing front tooth symbolizes the “destructive nature” of white beauty... |
Blue eyes symbolize the attractiveness and contentment that Pecola associates with the middle class. To Pecola, blue eyes symbolize beauty and associates it with whiteness. |
The marigold flowers symbolize the overall safety of Pecola’s baby. |
The Blacker the Berry: A Novel of Negro Life (1929) is a novel by American author Wallace Thurman, associated with the Harlem Renaissance. The novel tells the story of Emma Lou Morgan, a young black woman with dark skin. It begins in Boise, Idaho and follows Emma Lou in her journey to college at USC and a move to Harle... |
Born in Boise, Idaho, Emma Lou Morgan is an African-American girl who has extremely dark skin. Her mother's family have lighter skin that shows European ancestry; the "blue-black" hue came from her father, who left her and her mother soon after her birth. Believing that her color will reduce her marriageability, her mo... |
Emma Lou's Uncle Joe encourages her to go to the University of Southern California (USC), where she'll be among black students, and he encourages her to study education and move South to teach. He believes that smaller towns like Boise "encouraged stupid color prejudice such as she encountered among the blue vein circl... |
At USC, Emma Lou intends to meet the "right" crowd among other Negro students. On registration day she meets a black girl named Hazel Mason; unfortunately, when she speaks Emma Lou decides that she is the "wrong" sort, definitely lower-class. Other girls, though pleasant, never invite her into their circles or sorority... |
Back in Boise, Emma Lou meets Weldon Taylor at a picnic. Although darker than her ideal, he attracts her, and she ends up going too far with him that night, thinking she is in love. Over the next two weeks, she is thrilled to be with Taylor, for "his presence and his love making." He had been to college but temporarily... |
In Harlem, Emma Lou meets a young man named John whom she decides is "too dark." She heads to an employment agency seeking work as a stenographer; lacking experience, she pads her account of her skills. She is sent to a real-estate office for an interview, only to be told that they have someone else in mind. She return... |
Mrs. Blake tells her about work prospects, saying that black businessmen preferred to hire light-skinned, pretty girls; she advises Emma Lou to go to Columbia Teachers' College and train for a job in the public-school system. After lunch, Emma is walking on Seventh Avenue and while stopping to check her reflection, she... |
Determined to stay in New York, Emma Lou finds a job as a maid to Arline Strange, an actress "in an alleged melodrama about Negro life in Harlem." She thinks all the characters are caricatures. Arline and her brother from Chicago take Emma Lou to her first cabaret one night, where he makes her a drink from his hip flas... |
Intrigued by the cabaret, Emma Lou talks to the stage director about being in the dance chorus. He tells her plainly the girls are chosen in part for appearance, and notes they all have lighter skin than hers. She decides to look for a new place to live, hoping to meet "the right sort of people." |
One evening she goes to a casino, where she recognizes Alva. When she approaches him and asks if he remembers her, he politely acts like he does: he talks to her, dances with her, and even gives her his phone number. She calls him a couple of times before they make plans. Braxton is critical of Alva's seeing her, but h... |
After avoiding taking Emma Lou to parties or dances, not wanting his friends to meet her (preferring to be seen with light-skinned Geraldine), Alva finally takes her to a "rent party. Used to manipulating young women for money, Alva liked Geraldine for herself. Emma Lou was very excited about the party, and worried tha... |
At the rent party, Emma had consumed more alcohol than usual, and the next morning her landlady demands that she find somewhere else to stay. As the woman speaks, Emma Lou remembers a little more about Alva bringing her home after the party and realizes that the woman might be right that her behavior hadn't met the boa... |
Alva has his own trouble with Braxton: he has no job and pays no rent. When Braxton finally moves out, Alva doesn't want Emma Lou to move in. One night the couple goes to a theatre, but Emma Lou doesn't have a good time: "You’re always taking me some place, or placing me in some position where I’ll be insulted." One ni... |
Two years later, Emma Lou works as a personal maid/companion to Clere Sloane, a retired actress married to Campbell Kitchen, a white writer very interested in Harlem. He encouraged Emma Lou to seek more education in order to achieve economic independence. She has few friends and still feels very out-of-place. When she ... |
Geraldine and Alva's son has been born disfigured and possibly retarded and seems to bring them endless trouble; they often wish he would die. Geraldine blames Alva—another man would have made a better baby—and her mother blames both of them for not bothering to marry before his birth (or conception). Alva has become a... |
Having moved to the Y.W.C.A., Emma Lou has found some new friends and is studying teaching. She continues to work hard but to feel no better about her appearance, although her friend Gwendolyn Johnson tries to help her. She starts seeing Benson Brown, a light-skinned man described as a "yaller nigger." His appearance s... |
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