Authentic Blackness: The Folk in the New Negro Renaissance

What constitutes blackness in American culture? And who gets to define whether or not someone is truly African American? Is a struggling hip-hop artist more authentic than a conservative Supreme Court justice? In Authentic Blackness J. Martin Favor looks to the New Negro Movement - also known as the Harlem Renaissance - to explore early challenges to the idea that race is a static category. Drawing on vernacular theories of African American literature from such figures as Henry Louis Gates, Jr. and Houston Baker as well as theorists Judith Butler and Stuart Hall, Favor looks closely at the work of four Harlem Renaissance fiction writers: James Weldon Johnson, Nella Larsen, George Schuyler and Jean Toomer. Arguing that each of these wtiers had, at best, an ambiguous relationship to African American folk culture, Favor demonstrates how they each sought to redress the notion of a fixed black identity. Authentic Blackness should be welcomed by all those involved in the study of African American literature and culture. It should also be of interest to those concerned more generally with issues surrounding constructions of race.