Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America

Author:   Professor Nadia Nurhussein
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
ISBN:  

9780691190969


Pages:   280
Publication Date:   17 September 2019
Format:   Hardback
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
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Black Land: Imperial Ethiopianism and African America


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Overview

The first book to explore how African American writing and art engaged with visions of Ethiopia during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries As the only African nation, with the exception of Liberia, to remain independent during the colonization of the continent, Ethiopia has long held significance for and captivated the imaginations of African Americans. In Black Land, Nadia Nurhussein delves into nineteenth- and twentieth-century African American artistic and journalistic depictions of Ethiopia, illuminating the increasing tensions and ironies behind cultural celebrations of an African country asserting itself as an imperial power. Nurhussein navigates texts by Walt Whitman, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Pauline Hopkins, Harry Dean, Langston Hughes, Claude McKay, George Schuyler, and others, alongside images and performances that show the intersection of African America with Ethiopia during historic political shifts. From a description of a notorious 1920 Star Order of Ethiopia flag-burning demonstration in Chicago to a discussion of the Ethiopian emperor Haile Selassie as Time magazine's Man of the Year for 1935, Nurhussein illuminates the growing complications that modern Ethiopia posed for American writers and activists. American media coverage of the African nation exposed a clear contrast between the Pan-African ideal and the modern reality of Ethiopia as an antidemocratic imperialist state: Did Ethiopia represent the black nation of the future, or one of an inert and static past? Revising current understandings of black transnationalism, Black Land presents a well-rounded exploration of an era when Ethiopia's presence in African American culture was at its height.

Full Product Details

Author:   Professor Nadia Nurhussein
Publisher:   Princeton University Press
Imprint:   Princeton University Press
ISBN:  

9780691190969


ISBN 10:   0691190968
Pages:   280
Publication Date:   17 September 2019
Audience:   General/trade ,  Professional and scholarly ,  General/trade ,  General ,  Professional & Vocational
Format:   Hardback
Publisher's Status:   Active
Availability:   Temporarily unavailable   Availability explained
The supplier advises that this item is temporarily unavailable. It will be ordered for you and placed on backorder. Once it does come back in stock, we will ship it out to you.

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Reviews

Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History Finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize, African American Intellectual History Society


Bolstered by rigorous archival research and sharp critical analysis, this book shows the significance of Ethiopia in late nineteenth and early twentieth century African American culture. Drawing on an impressive array of texts, Nurhussien captures with great texture not only how the figure of Ethiopia changed in African American literature, but also how Ethiopia supplied African Americans a distinct paradigm of blackness, nationhood, and diaspora. Incisively argued and elegantly written, this is a touchstone work. Dagmawi Woubshet, University of Pennsylvania


Bolstered by rigorous archival research and sharp critical analysis, this book shows the significance of Ethiopia in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American culture. Drawing on an impressive array of texts, Nurhussein captures with great texture not only how the figure of Ethiopia changed in African American literature, but also how Ethiopia supplied African Americans a distinct paradigm of blackness, nationhood, and diaspora. Incisively argued and elegantly written, this is a touchstone work. --Dagmawi Woubshet, University of Pennsylvania


Bolstered by rigorous archival research and sharp critical analysis, this book shows the significance of Ethiopia in late nineteenth and early twentieth century African American culture. Drawing on an impressive array of texts, Nurhussien captures with great texture not only how the figure of Ethiopia changed in African American literature, but also how Ethiopia supplied African Americans a distinct paradigm of blackness, nationhood, and diaspora. Incisively argued and elegantly written, this is a touchstone work. aEURO Dagmawi Woubshet, University of Pennsylvania


Bolstered by rigorous archival research and sharp critical analysis, this book shows the significance of Ethiopia in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American culture. Drawing on an impressive array of texts, Nurhussein captures with great texture not only how the figure of Ethiopia changed in African American literature, but also how Ethiopia supplied African Americans a distinct paradigm of blackness, nationhood, and diaspora. Incisively argued and elegantly written, this is a touchstone work. -Dagmawi Woubshet, University of Pennsylvania Black Land demonstrates how the Ethiopia imagined by African America exists as a once and future civilization, evolving from fabulist idealizations of an ancient culture to a publicly debated, politically ambivalent model of anticolonial force. Through a meticulously assembled visual and textual archive, this long-awaited book advances spectacularly our understanding of black transnationalism and imperialism during the past two centuries. -Cherene Sherrard-Johnson, University of Wisconsin-Madison This is a sweeping literary and cultural history of a black imperialism that has never before come into full view. Focusing on the nation of Ethiopia and its spheres of influence, Black Land historicizes and internationalizes what is too often understood as a mythic abstraction. From minstrelsy and black performance to poetry, film, and the periodical press, Nurhussein brushes Ethiopianism against the grain to provide a new look at the cultures of imperialism in African America. -Susan Gillman, University of California, Santa Cruz


Shortlisted for the MAAH Stone Book Award, Museum of African American History Shortlisted for the MSA Book Prize, Modern Studies Association Finalist for the Pauli Murray Book Prize, African American Intellectual History Society


Author Information

Nadia Nurhussein is associate professor of English and Africana studies at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of Rhetorics of Literacy: The Cultivation of American Dialect Poetry.

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