[A new semester is
upon us, and with it comes a new Spring Preview series. Leading up to a special
weekend post on book updates, plans, and hopes!]
On three books I’m
excited to teach for the first time as part of this new (to me) course.
1)
Their
Eyes Were Watching God (1937): I may have taught Zora Neale Hurston’s
magisterial novel as part of one of my first lit classes as a grad student at
Temple University (nearly 20 years ago now), but who can remember back that far
with any certainty? Not this AmericanStudier, and so this semester feels in any
case like the first time teaching this great book. Interestingly, I’ve talked
about Hurston’s book a good bit in recent years, as I use Richard Wright’s
review of it to help frame our reading of his novel Native Son (1945) when we work with that book in my
Major American Authors course. But that’s all the more reason to return to
the source and teach Hurston’s book as well, on which I entirely disagree with
Wright (while thinking Wright’s novel is well worth our time as well). Can’t
wait to share Janie’s story with this class!
2)
Invisible
Man (1952): I know for a fact that I’ve never taught Ralph Ellison’s
towering book, although I do use its
stunning Prologue as a short reading at the end of my American
Novel to 1950 class. I think that Prologue is a particularly unique and powerful
section, but the novel that follows has plenty of amazing such individual
moments and sections, as well as a cumulative representation of African American
and American communities and cultures (past and present) that combines realism
and symbolism, history and metaphor, in subtle and sweeping ways that demand
close reading and conversation. It’ll be a challenge, but one I look forward to
the class rising to meet!
3)
The
Underground Railroad (2017): Colson Whitehead’s acclaimed
and amazing speculative historical novel is a book I’ve wanted to teach
since I first read it, and I’m beyond excited to be ending the course with it. As
I wrote in that last hyperlinked post, Whitehead’s book weds anachronistic and
science fiction elements to realistic historical details and identities, producing
a work that is at once unique and profoundly representative of African American
literature and art, history and culture, tradition and change. I think it’s a
perfect endpoint for a class like this (and the two-part
19th and 20th Century class sequence), and I can’t
wait to hear the students’ thoughts on it, like all these books!
Next preview
tomorrow,
Ben
PS. Spring
previews of your own to share? I’d love to hear them!
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