{"id":25588,"date":"2012-09-25T22:01:30","date_gmt":"2012-09-25T22:01:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/wordpress\/?p=25588"},"modified":"2012-09-26T04:57:11","modified_gmt":"2012-09-26T04:57:11","slug":"a-home-elsewhere-reading-african-american-classics-in-the-age-of-obama","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=25588","title":{"rendered":"A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama"},"content":{"rendered":"

A Home Elsewhere: Reading African American Classics in the Age of Obama<\/a><\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Harvard University Press<\/a>
\nMay 2010
\n192 pages
\n5-1\/2 x 8-1\/4 inches
\nno illustrations
\nHardcover ISBN: 9780674050969<\/p>\n

Robert B. Stepto<\/a><\/strong>, Professor of English, African American Studies, and American Studies
\nYale University<\/em><\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

In this series of interlocking essays, which had their start as lectures inspired by the presidency of Barack Obama<\/a>, Robert Burns Stepto sets canonical works of African American literature in conversation with Obama\u2019s Dreams from My Father<\/a><\/em>. The elegant readings that result shed surprising light on unexamined angles of works ranging from Frederick Douglass\u2019s<\/a> Narrativ<\/em>e to W.E.B. Du Bois\u2019s<\/a> Souls of Black Folk<\/a><\/em> to Toni Morrison\u2019s<\/a> Song of Solomon<\/a><\/em>.<\/p>\n

Stepto draws our attention to the concerns that recur in the books he takes up: how protagonists raise themselves, often without one or both parents; how black boys invent black manhood, often with no models before them; how protagonists seek and find a home elsewhere; and how they create personalities that can deal with the pain of abandonment. These are age-old themes in African American literature that, Stepto shows, gain a special poignancy and importance because our president has lived through these situations and circumstances and has written about them in a way that refreshes our understanding of the whole of African American literature.<\/p>\n

Stepto amplifies these themes in four additional essays, which investigate Douglass\u2019s correspondence with Harriet Beecher Stowe<\/a>; Willard Savoy\u2019s novel Alien Land<\/a><\/em> and its interracial protagonist; the writer\u2019s understanding of the reader in African American literature; and Stepto\u2019s account of his own schoolhouse lessons, with their echoes of Douglass\u2019 and Obama\u2019s experiences.<\/p>\n

Table of Contents<\/strong><\/p>\n