ABOUT THIS BOOK

The Making of the New Negro examines black masculinity in the period of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement that spanned the 1920s and 1930s in America and was marked by an outpouring of African American art, music, theater and literature. The Harlem Renaissance, or New Negro Movement, began attracting extensive academic attention in the 1990s as scholars discovered how complex, significant, and fascinating it was.

Drawing on African American texts, archives, unpublished writings, and contemporaneous European discourses, this book highlights both the canonical figures of the New Negro Movement and African American culture such as W. E. B. Dubois, Booker T. Washington, Alain Locke, and Richard Wright, and other writers such as Wallace Thurman, who have not received as much scholarly attention despite their significant contributions to the movement.

Anna Pochmara offers a striking combination of thorough literary analysis and historicist investigation in order to provide novel insights into one of the most important periods of black history in the United States.

AUTHOR BIOGRAPHY

Anna Pochmara is assistant professor of English studies at the University of Warsaw.

REVIEWS

“The Making of the New Negro breaks completely new ground in our understanding of the male writers and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Conceptually rich and theoretically sophisticated this is a powerful and compelling portrait of the racialized politics of masculinity and non-normative sexualities of the New Negro. Anna Pochmara has written an utterly persuasive and very important book.”

— Hazel V. Carby, Yale University

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Part 1: Alain Locke and the New Negro

Part 2: Wallace Thurman and Niggerati Manor

EXCERPT

The Making of the New Negro breaks completely new ground in our understanding of the male writers and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Conceptually rich and theoretically sophisticated this is a powerful and compelling portrait of the racialized politics of masculinity and non-normative sexualities of the New Negro. Aina Pochmara has written utterly persuasive and very important book.-- Hazel V. Carby is professor of African American Studies and of American Studies at Yale University