To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice, and African American Authorship

by Elizabeth McHenry

Overview

In To Make Negro Literature Elizabeth McHenry traces African American authorship in the decade following the 1896 legalization of segregation. She shifts critical focus from the published texts of acclaimed writers to unfamiliar practitioners whose works reflect the unsettledness of African American letters in this period. Analyzing literary projects that were unpublished, unsuccessful, or only partially achieved, McHenry recovers a hidden genealogy of Black literature as having emerged tentatively, laboriously, and unevenly. She locates this history in books sold by subscription, in lists and bibliographies of African American authors and books assembled at the turn of the century, in the act of ghostwriting, and in manuscripts submitted to publishers for consideration and the letters of introduction that accompanied them. By attending to these sites and prioritizing overlooked archives, McHenry reveals a radically different literary landscape, revising concepts of Black authorship and offering a fresh account of the development of "Negro literature" focused on the never published, the barely read, and the unconventional.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781478014515
Publisher:	Duke University Press
Publication date:	10/22/2021
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.65(d)

About the Author

Elizabeth McHenry is Professor of English at New York University and author of Forgotten Readers: Recovering the Lost History of African American Literary Societies, also published by Duke University Press.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments  ix
Introduction. To Make Negro Literature  1
1. "The Information Contained in This Book Will Never Appear in School Histories": Progress of a Race and Subscription Bookselling at the End of the Nineteenth Century  23
2. Thinking Bibliographically  78
3. Washington's Good Fortune: Writing and Authorship in Practice  129
4. The Case of Mary Church Terrell  188
Coda. Underground Railroads of Meaning  235
Notes  239
Bibliography  269
Index  285

Editorial Reviews

"A luminous venture into a little-known corner of African American literary history."--Sara Rutkowski "Journal of Southern History" (4/25/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"A richly innovative archive of under-researched, though vital textual practices alongside defamiliarizing and thus generative readings of better-known ones. . . . The timely analytical and methodological interventions in To Make Negro Literature emerge from McHenry homing in on failed, unrefined, and workaday black texts."--Douglas A. Jones, Jr. "American Literary History" (2/20/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"McHenry's detailing of African American genres and authors that are commonly overlooked offers readers a more comprehensive view of African American literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Readers of McHenry's book are called to appreciate noncanonical African American literature through her clear explanations. . . . This book will interest scholars of African American literature, especially those who wish to learn more about unfamiliar writers and works."--Courtney Walton "European Journal of American Studies" (3/1/2023 12:00:00 AM)

"McHenry teaches how to read the past in order to glean the lessons to be learned from defeat. If we study failure, we can learn about process, creativity, and the makings of literary culture in the US alongside the country's history of racialized and gendered violence. . . . By reading in this way, McHenry invites failure to speak and us to admit how it has made and shaped this literary history. Such reading reveals how Black authors have wrestled with and against 'what is.'"--Tara A. Bynum "Public Books" (11/10/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"This reviewer found especially engaging the author's assessment of Mary Church Terrell's efforts to publish short stories and the records she kept (for posterity) of publishers' rejections. Other chapters are equally engaging, revealing surprising information about the interstices of the African American literary tradition. In sum, this is a riveting, much needed account of the spaces between recognized African American literary success and the scaffolding that enables it. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers."--A. S. Newson-Horst "Choice" (7/1/2022 12:00:00 AM)

"In this revelatory study, Elizabeth McHenry argues that the turn of the twentieth century, so often lamented as a nadir of race relations, was in fact the pivotal era when the infrastructure for the African American literary tradition was built. Looking behind the scenes to efforts that at first glance might seem perfunctory or crassly commercial (subscription bookselling services, printing presses, reading rooms, bibliographies), she unearths the enormous labor--albeit sometimes aborted or thwarted or unfinished--undertaken by writers and intellectuals in the period to create the very concept of 'Negro literature' as a viable publishing category as much as an ideological project linked to uplift and civil rights."--Brent Hayes Edwards, author of "Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination"

"From the title to the final words of her coda, Elizabeth McHenry provokes, persuades, and prods readers to apply thought to the knowledge presented in this book. It is a nuanced and wise offering of immaculate research and righteous rumination to anyone--whether the casual browser who never once thought about the topic or the most sophisticated scholar of Black culture generally and print culture particularly."--Frances Smith Foster, author of "'Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America"

From the Publisher

"A luminous venture into a little-known corner of African American literary history."

Journal of Southern History - Sara Rutkowski

From the title to the final words of her coda, Elizabeth McHenry provokes, persuades, and prods readers to apply thought to the knowledge presented in this book. It is a nuanced and wise offering of immaculate research and righteous rumination to anyone—whether the casual browser who never once thought about the topic or the most sophisticated scholar of Black culture generally and print culture particularly.

’Til Death or Distance Do Us Part: Love and Marriage in African America - Frances Smith Foster

"This reviewer found especially engaging the author's assessment of Mary Church Terrell’s efforts to publish short stories and the records she kept (for posterity) of publishers’ rejections. Other chapters are equally engaging, revealing surprising information about the interstices of the African American literary tradition. In sum, this is a riveting, much needed account of the spaces between recognized African American literary success and the scaffolding that enables it. Essential. Lower-division undergraduates through faculty and professionals; general readers."

Choice - A. S. Newson-Horst

In this revelatory study, Elizabeth McHenry argues that the turn of the twentieth century, so often lamented as a nadir of race relations, was in fact the pivotal era when the infrastructure for the African American literary tradition was built. Looking behind the scenes to efforts that at first glance might seem perfunctory or crassly commercial (subscription bookselling services, printing presses, reading rooms, bibliographies), she unearths the enormous labor—albeit sometimes aborted or thwarted or unfinished—undertaken by writers and intellectuals in the period to create the very concept of ‘Negro literature’ as a viable publishing category as much as an ideological project linked to uplift and civil rights.

Epistrophies: Jazz and the Literary Imagination - Brent Hayes Edwards

"McHenry’s detailing of African American genres and authors that are commonly overlooked offers readers a more comprehensive view of African American literature during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Readers of McHenry’s book are called to appreciate noncanonical African American literature through her clear explanations. . . . This book will interest scholars of African American literature, especially those who wish to learn more about unfamiliar writers and works."

European Journal of American Studies - Courtney Walton

"McHenry teaches how to read the past in order to glean the lessons to be learned from defeat. If we study failure, we can learn about process, creativity, and the makings of literary culture in the US alongside the country’s history of racialized and gendered violence. . . .  By reading in this way, McHenry invites failure to speak and us to admit how it has made and shaped this literary history. Such reading reveals how Black authors have wrestled with and against 'what is.'"

Public Books - Tara A. Bynum

"A richly innovative archive of under-researched, though vital textual practices alongside defamiliarizing and thus generative readings of better-known ones. . . . The timely analytical and methodological interventions in To Make Negro Literature emerge from McHenry homing in on failed, unrefined, and workaday black texts."

Douglas A. Jonesn Literary History