Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation
Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation
Before the innovative work of Zora Neale Hurston, folklorists from the Hampton Institute collected, studied, and wrote about African American folklore. Like Hurston, these folklorists worked within but also beyond the bounds of white mainstream institutions. They often called into question the meaning of the very folklore projects in which they were engaged.
Shirley Moody-Turner analyzes this output, along with the contributions of a disparate group of African American authors and scholars. She explores how black authors and folklorists were active participants—rather than passive observers—in conversations about the politics of representing black folklore. Examining literary texts, folklore documents, cultural performances, legal discourse, and political rhetoric, Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation demonstrates how folklore studies became a battleground across which issues of racial identity and difference were asserted and debated at the turn of the twentieth century. The study is framed by two questions of historical and continuing import. What role have representations of black folklore played in constructing racial identity? And, how have those ideas impacted the way African Americans think about and creatively engage black traditions?
Moody-Turner renders established historical facts in a new light and context, taking figures we thought we knew—such as Charles Chesnutt, Anna Julia Cooper, and Paul Laurence Dunbar—and recasting their place in African American intellectual and cultural history.
Shirley Moody-Turner’s book provides an incisive look at the cultural politics of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries when black educators, folklorists, and writers . . . began to challenge popular culture’s distorted image of African Americans.
Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation is a superb examination of the impact of black folklore on African American literature and identity in the nineteenth century. Shirley Moody-Turner accomplishes her goal of illuminating black scholars’ and writers’ employment of folklore in their push for African American self-definition and self-representation. With its detailed and engaging narrative, the book will be an enjoyable and intellectually stimulating read for those interested in African American folklore, literature, and history as well as the racial politics of folklore studies.
Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation represents an important addition to the histories of American folklore studies, illuminating too-long-overlooked intellectual contributions from our field’s nascency, yet it will also appeal to ethnographers and others interested in the representation of folklore in the twenty-first century. . . . Moreover, literary theorists, especially those working with folklore, will likewise find the book invigorating and insightful.
Black Folklore and the Politics of Racial Representation stands alone in its unapologetic analysis of how dominant popular and scientific discourses profoundly affected African American life, history, and culture.
Centering the work of black and white folklorists and scholars of folklore in the national debates about the politics of racial representation at the close of the nineteenth century, Moody-Turner brilliantly constructs an alternative tradition of African American folklore studies and challenges conventional notions of what counts as theorizations of folklore and race. This book is a splendidly original and extremely well-written contribution to black folklore and literary studies. Moody-Turner combines mastery of the archive with an equally strong grasp of literary theory and critical race studies. This book was a delight to read, and I learned something new in every chapter. It is essential reading for anyone interested in the politics of representation, American intellectual history, and the history of folklore studies.
Shirley Moody-Turner is associate professor of English and African American studies at Pennsylvania State University. She is coeditor of Contemporary African American Literature: The Living Canon and has published articles and essays on black folklore and African American literature in African American Review, MELUS, Journal of Southern History, MLA Approaches to Teaching Charles W. Chesnutt, Oxford Bibliographies Online, and A Companion to African American Literature.
