The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home: African American Literature and the Era of the Overseas Expansion

The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home provides a fascinating and entirely original account of the African American response to the nation’s turn-of-the-century imperial adventures. Professor Gruesser adds a welcome new perspective to the study of American empire and reveals a dimension of black writing that has gone largely unnoticed by scholars.

–Eric J. Sundquist “author of King’s Dream: The Legacy of Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” Speech“

Looking at late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American writers’ responses to U.S. imperialist expansion abroad, Gruesser expands our understanding of African American literature of the period and also of U.S. history, showing that African American commitment to antiracism did not stop at the nation’s borders. An important book for scholars and general readers alike.

–Elizabeth Ammons “author of Brave New Words: How Literature Will Save the Planet“

Through close, carefully crafted readings of the responses of African American writers to the Spanish-Cuban American War, the Philippine-American War, and US intervention in the Pacific, Central America, and Latin America, [Gruesser] offers an absorbing portrait of the wide-ranging, sometimes ambivalent, sometimes contradictory responses to these events. . . . This is a work that should attract the attention of many in the field.

–J. A. Mille “Choice“

Through his insightful analysis of both familiar and understudied texts, Gruesser makes critical interventions in the fields of African American literature, African American cultural history, and American Studies. . . . As The Empire Abroad and the Empire at Home powerfully reveals, African Americans’ efforts to combat racial terror and disenfranchisement on American soil required a strategic–and often highly selective–engagement with U.S. expansionist projects in the Caribbean and the Pacific.–Reena N. Goldthree “The Journal of African American History”

JOHN CULLEN GRUESSER is a professor of English at Kean University in New Jersey. He is the author of White on Black and Black on Black and the editor of The Unruly Voice.