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New Negro, Old Left – African–American Writing & Communism Between the Wars
Author(s): William Maxwell (Author)
- Publisher: Columbia University Press
- Publication Date: 8 Sept. 1999
- Edition: Illustrated
- Language: English
- Print length: 272 pages
- ISBN-10: 0231114257
- ISBN-13: 9780231114257
Book Description
Maxwell uncovers both black literature’s debt to Communism and Communism’s debt to black literature, reciprocal obligations first incurred during the Harlem Renaissance.
Editorial Reviews
Review
Lucidly argued and written,
New Negro, Old Left is an astute, original addition to work on the Harlem Renaissance, proletarian literature and, in particular, the often misrepresented relationship between them.– “American Studies”William J. Maxwell’s
New Negro, Old Left: African-American Writing and Communism Between the Wars is a closely argued, thoroughly researched attempt to show how this dominant narrative [of the history of African-American writing during the period between the First and Second World Wars] has often been misleading and reductive….[a] fine book….–James Grove, Mount Mercy College “College Literature”William Maxwell’s creative and compelling new book presents the case for a mutual indebtedness, a two-way channel ‘between radical Harlem and Soviet Moscow, between the New Negro renaissance and proletarian literature’ of the 1920s and 1930s. His emphasis on ‘Black volition’ and the ‘interracial education of the Old Left’ also aims to enhance our understanding of African American and ‘white’ modern literature as well as radicalism….This is a book that not only demands the attention of those who wish to be informed about the history of the African American Left, the Harlem Renaissance, and proletarian literature, but that will also engage anyone seeking to understand the potential relevance of contemporary critical arguments from scholars such as Eric Lott, David Roediger, Pierre Bordieu, Eve Sedgwick, Hazel Carby, George Hutchinson, Michael North, Michael Rogin, Robyn Wiegman, and others. Specialists in black culture and Communism will come away from the experience of reading
New Negro, Old Left with a much enriched apprehension of the ambiguities of cultural practice and a salutary desire to open up some of those little boxes (‘Harlem Renaissance, ‘ ‘proletairan literature, ‘ ‘Wright versus Hurston’) by means of which we have too neatly classified earlier relationships.–Alan Wald, University of Michigan “American Literature”From the Back Cover
Juxtaposing well-known and newly rediscovered works by Claude McKay, Andy Razaf, Mike Gold, Langston Hughes, Louise Thompson, Richard Wright, Zora Neale Hurston, and Nelson Algren, Maxwell maintains that the “Old”, Soviet-allied Left promoted a spectrum of exchanges between black and white authors, genres, theories, and cultural institutions. Channels opened between radical Harlem and Bolshevik Moscow, between the New Negro renaissance and proletarian literature. Claude McKay’s 1922-23 pilgrimage to the Soviet Union, for example, usually recalled as a lighthearted adventure in radical tourism, actually jumpstarted the Comintern’s controversial nation-centered program for Afro America. Breaking from studies governed by Cold War investments and pivoting on the Great Depression, Maxwell argues that Communism’s rare sustenance for African-American initiative — not a seduction of Depression-scarred innocents — brought scores of literary “New Negroes” to the Old Left.
