Was Donald Glover really what he seemed--a handsome, dedicated, and
clever African-American star of the Harlem Renaissance, whose looks
made him the "quarry" of a variety of women? Or could the secrets of
his birth change his destiny entirely? Focusing on the culture of
Harlem in the 1920s, Charles Chesnutt's final novel dramatizes the
political and aesthetic life of the exciting period we now know as the
Harlem Renaissance. Mixing fact and fiction, and real and imagined
characters, The Quarry is peopled with so many figures of the
time--including Booker T. Washington, W. E. B. DuBois, and Marcus
Garvey--that it constitutes a virtual guide to this inspiring period
in American history. Protagonist Glover is a light-skinned man whose
adoptive black parents are determined that he become a leader of the
black people. Moving from Ohio to Tennessee, from rural Kentucky to
Harlem, his story depicts not only his conflicted relationship to his
heritage but also the situation of a variety of black people
struggling to escape prejudice and to take advantage of new
opportunities. Although he was the first African-American writer of
fiction to gain acceptance by America's white literary establishment,
Charles W. Chesnutt (1858-1932) has been eclipsed in popularity by
other writers who later rose to prominence during the Harlem
Renaissance. Recently, this pathbreaking American writer has been
receiving an increasing amount of attention. Two of his novels, Paul
Marchand, F.M.C. (completed in 1921) and The Quarry (completed in
1928), were considered too incendiary to be published during
Chesnutt's lifetime. Their publication now provides us not only the
opportunity to read these two books previously missing from Chesnutt's
oeuvre but also the chance to appreciate better the intellectual
progress of this literary pioneer. Chesnutt was the author of many
other works, including The Conjure Woman & Other Conjure Tales, The
House Behind the Cedars, The Marrow Tradition, and Mandy Oxendine.
Princeton University Press recently published To Be an Author: Letters
of Charles W. Chesnutt, 1889-1905 (edited by Joseph R. McElrath, Jr.,
and Robert C. Leitz, III). Originally published in 1999. The Princeton
Legacy Library uses the latest print-on-demand technology to again
make available previously out-of-print books from the distinguished
backlist of Princeton University Press. These editions preserve the
original texts of these important books while presenting them in
durable paperback and hardcover editions. The goal of the Princeton
Legacy Library is to vastly increase access to the rich scholarly
heritage found in the thousands of books published by Princeton
University Press since its founding in 1905.
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Produktdetaljer
ISBN
9781400851614
Publisert
2014
Utgiver
Vendor
Princeton University Press
Språk
Product language
Engelsk
Format
Product format
Digital bok
Forfatter