Recovering the lost history of a crucial era in African American
literature
The Indignant Generation is the first narrative history of the
neglected but essential period of African American literature between
the Harlem Renaissance and the civil rights era. The years between these
two indispensable epochs saw the communal rise of Richard Wright,
Gwendolyn Brooks, Ralph Ellison, Lorraine Hansberry, James Baldwin, and
many other influential black writers. While these individuals have been
duly celebrated, little attention has been paid to the political and
artistic milieu in which they produced their greatest works. With this
commanding study, Lawrence Jackson recalls the lost history of a crucial
era.
Looking at the tumultuous decades surrounding World War II, Jackson
restores the "indignant" quality to a generation of African American
writers shaped by Jim Crow segregation, the Great Depression, the growth
of American communism, and an international wave of decolonization. He
also reveals how artistic collectives in New York, Chicago, and
Washington fostered a sense of destiny and belonging among diverse and
disenchanted peoples. As Jackson shows through contemporary documents,
the years that brought us Their Eyes Were Watching God, Native Son,
and Invisible Man also saw the rise of African American literary
criticism--by both black and white critics.
Fully exploring the cadre of key African American writers who triumphed
in spite of segregation, The Indignant Generation paints a vivid
portrait of American intellectual and artistic life in the mid-twentieth
century.
