Synopses & Reviews
On the campaign trail, Barack Obama faced a difficult taskandmdash;rallying African American voters while resisting his opponentsandrsquo; attempts to frame him as andldquo;too blackandrdquo; to govern the nation as a whole. Obamaandrsquo;s solution was to employ what Toni Morrison calls andldquo;race-specific, race-free language,andrdquo; avoiding open discussions of racial issues while using terms and references that carried a specific cultural resonance for African American voters.
Stephanie Li argues that American politicians and writers are using a new kind of language to speak about race. Challenging the notion that we have moved into a andldquo;post-racialandrdquo; era, she suggests that we are in an uneasy moment where American public discourse demands that race be seen, but not heard. Analyzing contemporary political speech with nuanced readings of works by such authors as Toni Morrison, Jhumpa Lahiri, and Colson Whitehead, Li investigates how Americans of color have negotiated these tensions, inventing new ways to signal racial affiliations without violating taboos against open discussions of race.
Review
andquot;Li's provocative and thoughtful close readings both compliment and contribute to one's understanding of how fiction depicts talking b(l)ack. Elegantly scripted and beautifully argued, this fresh effort illustrates the interplay between the fiction of race and racial fiction.andquot;
Synopsis
"BookMarks is a moving and revelatory memoir... a work of fiercely intelligent scholarship." - Susan Larson,
"Erudite and emotional in turns, BookMarks] is full of truths that appeal to the head and the heart." - Charlotte News Observer"
What are you reading? What books have been important to you? Whether you are interviewing for a job, chatting with a friend or colleague, or making small talk, these questions arise almost unfailingly. Some of us have stock responses, which may or may not be a fiction of our own making. Others gauge their answers according to who is asking the question. Either way, the replies that we give are thoughtfully crafted to suggest the intelligence, worldliness, political agenda, or good humor that we are hoping to convey. We form our answers carefully because we know that our responses say a lot.
But what exactly do our answers say? In BookMarks, Karla FC Holloway explores the public side of reading, and specifically how books and booklists form a public image of African Americans. Revealing her own love of books and her quirky passion for their locations in libraries and on bookshelves, Holloway reflects on the ways that her parents guided her reading when she was young and her bittersweet memories of reading to her children. She takes us on a personal and candid journey that considers the histories of reading in children's rooms, prison libraries, and "Negro" libraries of the early twentieth century, and that finally reveals how her identity as a scholar, a parent, and an African American woman has been subject to judgments that public cultures make about race and our habits of reading.
Holloway is the first to call our attention to a remarkable trend of many prominent African American writers--including Maya Angelou, W.E.B. Du Bois, Henry Louis Gates, Malcolm X, and Zora Neale Hurston. Their autobiographies and memoirs are consistently marked with booklists--records of their own habits of reading. She examines these lists, along with the trends of selection in Oprah Winfrey's popular book club, raising the questions: What does it mean for prominent African Americans to associate themselves with European learning and culture? How do books by black authors fare in the inevitable hierarchy of a booklist?
BookMarks provides a unique window into the ways that African Americans negotiate between black and white cultures. This compelling rumination on reading is a book that everyone should add to their personal collections and proudly carry "cover out."
About the Author
STEPHANIE LI is an assistant professor of English at the University of Rochester. She is the author of Something Akin to Freedom: The Choice of Bondage in Narratives by African American Women and a short biography of Toni Morrison.
Table of Contents
Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. Violence and Toni Morrison's Racist House
2. Hiding the Invisble Hurt of Race
3. The Unspeakable Language of Race and Fantasy in the Stories of Jhumpa Lahiri
4. Performing Intimacy: andquot;Race-Specific, Race-Free Languageandquot; in Political Discourse
Conclusion: The Demands of Precious
Notes
Bibliography
Index