Synopses & Reviews
In an attempt to lend a more nuanced ear to the ongoing dialogue between African and Jewish Americans, Emily Budick examines the works of a range of writers, critics, and academics from the 1950s through the 1980s. This study records conversations both explicit, such as essays and letters, and indirect, such as the fiction of Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Alice Walker, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin. The purpose is to understand how this dialogue has engendered misperceptions and misunderstandings, and how blacks and Jews in America have both sought and resisted assimilation.
Review
"...Budick's book is a worthy addition to the quickly growing list of texts redefining the study of Black-Jewish relations." Jeffrey Melnick, American Studies"Emily Budick begins this important book by challenging the cultural myth that in their struggle against social injustice, American Jews and blacks enjoyed a special alliance that went awry in the 1960s." Michael Nowlin, American Literature"...the book eloquently voices a theme that runs throughout African American and Jewixh American relations...The most important contribution of Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation lies in its thorough, thoughtful tracing of these dialogues as it works out, in essay form, the vicissitudes of black-Jewixh relations." Contemporary Literature
Synopsis
Blacks and Jews in Literary Conversation explores the works of a range of black and Jewish writers, critics, and academics from the 1950s to the 1980s. By recording conversations both direct, such as essays and letters, and indirect, such as the fiction of Bernard Malamud, Philip Roth, Alice Walker, Cynthia Ozick, Toni Morrison, and James Baldwin, this book shows how dialogue can engender misperceptions and misunderstandings, and how blacks and Jews in America have both sought and resisted assimilation.
Table of Contents
Introduction; 1. Mutual textual criticism of Black-Jewish Identity; 2. Crisis and commentary in African-Jewish American relations; 3. Race, homeland, and the construction of Jewish American identity; 4. Cultural autonomy, supersessionism, and the Jew in African American fiction; 5. 'The anguish of the other'; On the mutual displacements, appropriations, and accomodations of culture.