Overview

The postwar period witnessed an outpouring of white life novels--that is, texts by African American writers focused almost exclusively on white characters. Almost every major mid-twentieth century black writer, including Zora Neale Hurston, Richard Wright, Ann Petry and James Baldwin, published one of these anomalous texts. Controversial since their publication in the 1940s and 50s, these novels have since fallen into obscurity given the challenges they pose to traditional conceptions of the African American literary canon. Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects aims to bring these neglected novels back into conversations about the nature of African American literature and the unique expectations imposed upon black texts. In a series of nuanced readings, Li demonstrates how postwar black novelists were at the forefront of what is now commonly understood as whiteness studies. Novels like Hurston's Seraph on the Suwanee and Wright's Savage Holiday, once read as abdications of the political imperative of African American literature, are revisited with an awareness of how whiteness signifies in multivalent ways that critique America's abiding racial hierarchies. These novels explore how this particular racial construction is freighted with social power and narrative meaning. Whiteness repeatedly figures in these texts as a set of expectations that are nearly impossible to fulfill. By describing characters who continually fail at whiteness, white life novels ask readers to reassess what race means for all Americans. Along with its close analysis of key white life novels, Playing in the White: Black Writers, White Subjects also provides important historical context to understand how these texts represented the hopes and anxieties of a newly integrated nation.

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9780199398881

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Elegantly written and closely argued, Playing in the White shows why and how writing about white life engaged for a time creative geniuses of African American literature. Deeply successful as a study of race and cultural politics, Li's work also profoundly speaks to intersections of gender, sexuality, and power. --David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Kansas University Rather than simply rehearse critical histories of works by Baldwin, Wright, Hurston, and Petry, Stephanie Li constructs a paradigm of racial signifyin(g) and theoretical complexity that provides revised perspectives on fictions of 'white life.' Her study is a captivating critical exploration of U. S. creativity governed by dictums of 'whiteness' and 'race.' --Houston A. Baker, Jr., Distinguished University Professor of English and African American Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University Li's examinations of white life novels by Hurston, Wright, Petry, Baldwin, and Kelley probe the intertextual dialogue between these works and these authors' more famous and familiar novels in fresh and lively ways. These subtle, nuanced, and creative readings of often marginalized or neglected works by 20th-century canonical black writers will interest anyone who cares about the social construction of race in American life and letters. --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Stanford University

Elegantly written and closely argued, Playing in the White shows why and how writing about white life engaged for a time creative geniuses of African American literature. Deeply successful as a study of race and cultural politics, Li's work also profoundly speaks to intersections of gender, sexuality, and power. --David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Kansas University Rather than simply rehearse critical histories of works by Baldwin, Wright, Hurston, and Petry, Stephanie Li constructs a paradigm of racial signifyin(g) and theoretical complexity that provides revised perspectives on fictions of 'white life.' Her study is a captivating critical exploration of U. S. creativity governed by dictums of 'whiteness' and 'race.' --Houston A. Baker, Jr., Distinguished University Professor of English and African American Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University Li's examinations of white life novels by Hurston, Wright, Petry, Baldwin, and Kelley probe the intertextual dialogue between these works and these authors' more famous and familiar novels in fresh and lively ways. These subtle, nuanced, and creative readings of often marginalized or neglected works by 20th-century canonical black writers will interest anyone who cares about the social construction of race in American life and letters. --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Stanford University

Elegantly written and closely argued, Playing in the White shows why and how writing about white life engaged for a time creative geniuses of African American literature. Deeply successful as a study of race and cultural politics, Li's work also profoundly speaks to intersections of gender, sexuality, and power. --David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Kansas University Rather than simply rehearse critical histories of works by Baldwin, Wright, Hurston, and Petry, Stephanie Li constructs a paradigm of racial signifyin(g) and theoretical complexity that provides revised perspectives on fictions of 'white life.' Her study is a captivating critical exploration of U. S. creativity governed by dictums of 'whiteness' and 'race.' --Houston A. Baker, Jr., Distinguished University Professor of English and African American Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University Li's examinations of white life novels by Hurston, Wright, Petry, Baldwin, and Kelley probe the intertextual dialogue between these works and these authors' more famous and familiar novels in fresh and lively ways. These subtle, nuanced, and creative readings of often marginalized or neglected works by 20th-century canonical black writers will interest anyone who cares about the social construction of race in American life and letters. --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Stanford University Elegantly written and closely argued, Playing in the White shows why and how writing about white life engaged for a time creative geniuses of African American literature. Deeply successful as a study of race and cultural politics, Li's work also profoundly speaks to intersections of gender, sexuality, and power. --David Roediger, Foundation Distinguished Professor of American Studies and History, Kansas University Rather than simply rehearse critical histories of works by Baldwin, Wright, Hurston, and Petry, Stephanie Li constructs a paradigm of racial signifyin(g) and theoretical complexity that provides revised perspectives on fictions of 'white life.' Her study is a captivating critical exploration of U. S. creativity governed by dictums of 'whiteness' and 'race.' --Houston A. Baker, Jr., Distinguished University Professor of English and African American Diaspora Studies, Vanderbilt University Li's examinations of white life novels by Hurston, Wright, Petry, Baldwin, and Kelley probe the intertextual dialogue between these works and these authors' more famous and familiar novels in fresh and lively ways. These subtle, nuanced, and creative readings of often marginalized or neglected works by 20th-century canonical black writers will interest anyone who cares about the social construction of race in American life and letters. --Shelley Fisher Fishkin, Joseph S. Atha Professor of Humanities and Professor of English, Stanford University

Author Information

Stephanie Li is the Susan D. Gubar Chair in Literature at Indiana University Bloomington. Her previous books include Signifying without Specifying: Racial Discourse in the Age of Obama and Something Akin to Freedom: The Choice of Bondage in Narratives by African American Women.

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