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  1. Home
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  3. Race, Work, and Desire in American Literature, 1860–1930
  • Cited by 6
Publisher:
Cambridge University Press
Online publication date:
December 2009
Print publication year:
2003
Online ISBN:
9780511519284
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511519284
Series:
Cambridge Studies in American Literature and Culture (138)
Subjects:
Literature, Area Studies, American Literature, American Studies, Literary Theory
Information

Book description

Race, Work and Desire analyses literary representations of work relationships across the colour-line from the mid-nineteenth century to the early twentieth century. Michele Birnbaum examines inter-racial bonds in fiction and literary correspondence by black and white authors and artists - including Elizabeth Keckley, Frances E. W. Harper, W. D. Howells, Grace King, Kate Chopin, Langston Hughes, Amy Spingarn and Carl Van Vechten - exploring the way servants and employers, doctors and patients, and patrons and artists negotiate their racial differences for artistic and political ends. Situating these relationships in literary and cultural context, Birnbaum argues that the literature reveals the complexity of cross-racial relations in the workplace, which, although often represented as an oasis of racial harmony, is in fact the very site where race politics are most fiercely engaged. This study productively complicates current debates about cross-racial collaboration in American literary and race studies, and will be of interest to scholars in both literary and cultural studies.

Reviews

Review of the hardback:'… a wide-ranging but meticulously argued series of essays that offer highly original and rewarding readings of canonical and less well-known works.'

Source: Modernism/Modernity

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