Black Regions of the Imagination: African American Writers Between the Nation and the World (America

Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, James Baldwin, and Chester Himes were all pressured by critics and publishers to enlighten mainstream (white) audiences about race and African American culture. Focusing on fiction and non-fiction they produced between the Harlem Renaissance and the Black Arts Movement, Eve DunbarOCOs important book, "Black Regions of the Imagination," examines how these African American writersOCowho lived and traveled outside the United StatesOCoboth document and re-imagine their OC homegrownOCO racial experiences within a worldly framework.

From HurstonOCOs participant-observational accounts and WrightOCOs travel writing to BaldwinOCOs "Another Country" and HimesOCO detective fiction, these writers helped develop the concept of a OC regionOCO of blackness that resists boundaries of genre and geography. Each writer representsOCoand signifiesOCoblackness in new ways and within the larger context of the world. As they negotiated issues of OC belonging, OCO these writers were more critical of social segregation in America as well as increasingly resistant to their expected roles as cultural OC translators.OCOa

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