Real Folks: Race and Genre in the Great Depression

Sonnet Retman

Published by Duke University Press 2011

Real Folks

Race and Genre in the Great Depression

Sonnet Retman

https://doi.org/10.1515/9780822393894

Overview
Contents

About this book

Real Folks examines the construction of the folk in Depression-era U.S. politics and culture, as well as the hybrid forms of documentary and satire that critiqued the populist fixation on folk authenticity.

Author / Editor information

Sonnet Retman is Associate Professor of African American Studies and Adjunct Associate Professor of Women’s Studies and English at the University of Washington.

Reviews

“Sonnet Retman presents a deft, razor-sharp revisionist interpretation of Depression-era America. She argues that, rather than social realism, an insurgent taste for satire—sated through idioms of minstrelsy, burlesque, ‘signifying ethnography,’ and screwball comedy—drove the smartest cultural challenges to an economy and polity careening off the tracks. George Schuyler, Nathanael West, Zora Neale Hurston, Preston Sturges, and other artists challenged reflexive celebrations of folk authenticity, dissected the racialist logic of modern market economies, and reframed the struggle to secure the integrity of American selves, both body and soul. Real Folks is profoundly illuminating in its assessment of the Depression era, and it is highly relevant to our own times.”—Adam Green, author of Selling the Race: Culture, Community, and Black Chicago, 1940–1955

“This wonderfully engaging account of the construction of the folk is fascinating for its components and the connections among them. It is an important study of documentary and satirical genres, as well as the relationship between genre categorizations and cultural narratives. Sonnet Retman is especially insightful on the relationship between literary form and cultural change.”—Priscilla Wald, author of Contagious: Cultures, Carriers, and the Outbreak Narrative

Topics

Frontmatter Publicly Available Download PDF	i
Contents Publicly Available Download PDF	vii
Acknowledgments Publicly Available Download PDF	ix
Introduction Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	1
Part I: The folklore of racial capitalism
Chapter 1. ‘‘A Combination Madhouse, Burlesque Show and Coney Island’’: The Color Question in George Schuyler’s Black No More Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	33
Chapter 2. ‘‘Inanimate Hideosities’’: The Burlesque of Racial Capitalism in Nathanael West’s A Cool Million Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	72
Part II: Performing the folk
Chapter 3. ‘‘The Last American Frontier’’: Mapping the Folk in the Federal Writers’ Project’s Florida: A Guide to the Southernmost State Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	113
Chapter 4. ‘‘Ah Gives Myself de Privilege to Go’’: Navigating the Field and the Folk in Zora Neale Hurston’s Mules and Men Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	152
Part III: Populist masquerade
Chapter 5. ‘‘Am I Laughing?’’: Burlesque Incongruities of Genre, Gender, and Audience in Preston Sturges’s Sullivan’s Travels Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	191
Afterpiece The Coen Brothers’ Ol’-Timey Blues in O Brother, Where Art Thou? Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	241
Notes Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	251
Bibliography Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	287
Index Requires Authentication Unlicensed Licensed Download PDF	311

Language: English
Publisher: Duke University Press
Audience: Professional and scholarly;
Pages
- Main content: 336
Illustrations
- Other: 22 photographs

eBook

Published: September 19, 2011
ISBN: 9780822393894