Reading the Renaissance : Black Women's Literary Reception and Taste in Chicago, 1932-1953
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| Title: | Reading the Renaissance : Black Women's Literary Reception and Taste in Chicago, 1932-1953 |
|---|---|
| Description: | From 1932 to 1953, during the Black Chicago Renaissance, numerous literary events were held within and for the city's Black community. In book clubs, public forums, print reviews, little magazines, local programming, and other public venues, Black women in particular debated the role of literature in racial uplift efforts, set literary standards, and acted as community gatekeepers for cultural production during a time known as the Black Chicago Renaissance. Through these inspiring efforts, a mix of publishers, well-known authors, and everyday readers significantly fostered a robust literary culture in the Windy City. Reading the Renaissance constructs a reception history of the Black women who read and reviewed, published and promoted, and collected and curated literature of the era. Mary Unger interprets how local figures such as Vivian G. Harsh, Ora Morrow, Gwendolyn Brooks, Alice Browning, Fern Gayden, and Margaret Walker cultivated particular literary tastes through collective acts of reading and reception. She does so by recovering a network of readers, book clubs, literary magazines, civic programs, and book businesses that Black women created, led, and transformed during the early 1930s through the early 1950s in Bronzeville, Chicago's predominantly Black South Side neighborhood. This illuminating work includes close readings of texts alongside letters, scrapbooks, meeting minutes, reviews, and other ephemera of local reading practices to show how Black women facilitated diverse strategies of reading while instructing community members how to engage a variety of print cultures at the time. Unger demonstrates how Black women readers influenced individual authors as well as the norms and expectations of African American literature more broadly, becoming important (yet too often overlooked) players in American literary history. |
| Authors: | Mary I. Unger |
| Resource Type: | eBook. |
| Subjects: | African Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Intellectual life--20th century, American literature--African American authors--History and criticism, American literature--20th century--History and criticism, American literature--Illinois--Chicago--History and criticism, African American women--Books and reading, American literature--Women authors--History and criticism |
| Categories: | LITERARY CRITICISM / General, HISTORY / United States / State & Local / Midwest (IA, IL, IN, KS, MI, MN, MO, ND, NE, OH, SD, WI), HISTORY / Social History, LITERARY CRITICISM / American / African American & Black, HISTORY / African American & Black |
| Database: | eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) |
| FullText | Links: – Type: ebook-pdf Text: Availability: 0 |
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| Header | DbId: nlebk DbLabel: eBook Collection (EBSCOhost) An: 4222192 RelevancyScore: 1129 AccessLevel: 6 PubType: eBook PubTypeId: ebook PreciseRelevancyScore: 1129.38305664063 |
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| PLink | https://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&site=eds-live&db=nlebk&AN=4222192 |
| RecordInfo | BibRecord: BibEntity: Classifications: – Code: 810.9896073 Scheme: ddc Type: prePub Languages: – Code: eng Text: English Subjects: – SubjectFull: African Americans--Illinois--Chicago--Intellectual life--20th century Type: general – SubjectFull: American literature--African American authors--History and criticism Type: general – SubjectFull: American literature--20th century--History and criticism Type: general – SubjectFull: American literature--Illinois--Chicago--History and criticism Type: general – SubjectFull: African American women--Books and reading Type: general – SubjectFull: American literature--Women authors--History and criticism Type: general Titles: – TitleFull: Reading the Renaissance : Black Women's Literary Reception and Taste in Chicago, 1932-1953 Type: main BibRelationships: HasContributorRelationships: – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Mary I. Unger – PersonEntity: Name: NameFull: Mary I. Unger IsPartOfRelationships: – BibEntity: Dates: – D: 01 M: 01 Type: published Y: 2025 – D: 13 M: 06 Type: profile Y: 2025 Identifiers: – Type: isbn-print Value: 9781625348586 – Type: isbn-print Value: 9781625348593 – Type: isbn-electronic Value: 9781685751340 Titles: – TitleFull: Reading the Renaissance : Black Women's Literary Reception and Taste in Chicago, 1932-1953 Type: main |
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