Of Literature and Humanity

            

Jerry W. Ward, Jr., Professor of English at Dillard University, is the author of The Katrina Papers: A Journal of Trauma and Recovery (UNO Press, 2008). Professor Ward has been a faithful guest blogger for the HBW.

Having been informed recently by a young philosopher that metaphysics has been banished from the realm of serious philosophy, I shall assume the premature death of African American literature is complemented by the premature rebirth of human literature. What did not perish in a white fire to be reborn as if it were an amoral phoenix is African American or black writing.

The wickedness of my premise must be challenged by thoughtful readings of Charles Johnson’s Being & Race: Black Writing since 1970 (Indiana UP, 1988), Dear Chester, Dear John: Letters between Chester Himes and John A. Williams (Wayne State UP, 2008) and Lawrence P. Jackson’s The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African American Writers and Critics, 1934-1960 (Princeton UP, 2011). The concept of human literature, as it is articulated on the playgrounds of some American universities and of the influential publishing industry, seems to be linked in odds ways to ideas about progress, the ahistorical disappearance of Jim Crow from the American body politic, amnesia of memory, and transcendental miracles in the practice of everyday life.  In the actual world of readers, no one doubts that Reginald Martin’s Everybody Know What Time It Is (2010 edition), Eileen Myles’s Inferno (A Poet’s Novel), John Edgar Wideman’s The Cattle Killing, William Faulkner’s As I Lay Dying, Charles Johnson’s Oxherding Tale, Lillian Smith’s Strange Fruit, Alice Walker’s The Third Life of Grange Copeland, and Saul Bellow’s Henderson the Rain King are instances of human literature. The virus of doubt thrives best in combat zones peopled by ideologues, people who reinvent reality in their own images.

            Charles Johnson uses the phrase “human literature” strategically in “Progress in Literature,” posted on May 8, 2011 on E. Ethelbert Miller’s E-Channel: http://ethelbert-miller.blogspot.com Johnson lends credibility to Kenneth Warren’s What Was African American Literature? (Harvard UP, 2011) when he asserts that early 21^st century black literature “can be said to have progressed to the stage of being seen now as simply human literature.”  Who is doing the seeing is my immediate question. People who are suddenly emancipated from Plato’s cave?

Autobiographical Elements of Richard Wright’s Haiku: Last Virtual Seminar of the Semester

Please join us for a Making the (Richard) Wright Connection virtual seminar – “Autobiographical Elements of Richard Wright’s Haiku” – led by Toru Kiuchi, Professor of English at Nihon University, Japan on Tuesday, May 17^th at 6:00 p.m. CST.

Abstract:  95.7 per cent of Wright’s haiku carry a season word. It was easier for Wright to return to his childhood memory of Mississippi, which was full of trees and flowers, than to use images taken from Paris. Sick in bed in Paris, Wright must have been trying to find a season word without going out, recalling his childhood days in Mississippi, which was “a whole world of emotion, of sounds and scents and colours.” Composing haiku, Wright returned not only to his childhood, but also to Chicago and New York days. Accordingly, his haiku comprise quite a few autobiographical elements in them. This lecture makes clear how Wright include his autobiographical factors in the composition of his haiku.

Please feel free to e-mail questions in advance for Professor Kiuchi to the Wright Connection (wrightconnection@ku.edu)  

 To attend the virtual seminar:

1) Go to https://desktopconnect.ku.edu/kiuchi

2) Select “Enter as a Guest”

3) Type your name in the box

4) Click on “Enter Room”

5) The virtual seminar “room” will open at the start time of the seminar.  If you try to enter before then, you will see a message that reads:  The meeting has not yet started.  You will be able to access the meeting once the host arrives.  Please wait.

All participants will need a Flash-based web browser and an Internet connection to access the virtual seminar.  Please feel free to email Keah Cunningham (keah@ku.edu) with any technical questions or issues. 

Additional information at www.wrightconnection.ku.edu

Richard Wright’s Formal and Informal Networks

[By Kenton Rambsy]

The overall importance of RichardWright in African American literary and intellectual history makes it vital to consider his background and educational development in order to fully appreciate how he became such a significant figure. Wright’s move to Mississippi as a adolescent and his enrollment at Jim Hill Primary School were key factors in the expansion of his life chances and opportunities.

Hazel Rowley writes in Richard Wright: The Life and Times that attending Jim Hill gave Wright entry into another world since “The Jim Hill students belonged to the black middle class—if not in income, at least in their outlook on life” (21). For Wright and the other students at the school, the small black professional community of lawyers and doctors in Jackson, Mississippi “were held up to the students as models” and constantly interacted with the students to encourage their educational pursuits (21).

Literary Vantage Points: Multiple Perspectives of Zora Neale Hurston

 

In our third installment of Literary Vantage Points, we have collected brief interviews from a number of professors to get their perspectives about various authors. In this particular feature, we asked three literary scholars—Professors Sandra Govan, Opal Moore, and Aldon Lynn Nielsen—to describe their initial impressions of author Zora Neale Hurston and discuss the legacy of her work.

The goal of these interviews is to reveal the diverse nature of African American literature. These three scholars provide very different responses about how they became acquainted with Zora Neale Hurston and the aesthetic value of her work. Please join us as we begin a new chapter of HBW history.