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Baldwin's Harlem: A Biography of James Baldwin
Herb Boyd
Atria, $24, 244pp.
ISBN: 074329307X |
Perhaps no other writer is as synonymous with Harlem as James Baldwin (1924-1987). The events there that shaped his youth greatly influenced Baldwin's work, much of which focused on his experiences as a black man in white America. Go Tell It on the Mountain, The Fire Next Time, Notes of a Native Son, and Giovanni's Room are just a few of his classic fiction and nonfiction books that remain an essential part of the American canon.
In Baldwin's Harlem, award-winning journalist Herb Boyd combines impeccable biographical research with astute literary criticism, and reveals to readers Baldwin's association with Harlem on both metaphorical and realistic levels. For example, Boyd describes Baldwin's relationship with Harlem Renaissance poet laureate Countee Cullen, who taught Baldwin French in the ninth grade. Packed with telling anecdotes, Baldwin's Harlem illuminates the writer's diverse views and impressions of the community that would remain a consistent presence in virtually all of his writing.
Baldwin's Harlem provides an intelligent and enlightening look at one of America's most important literary enclaves.
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Lorenzo Dow Turner: Father of Gullah Studies
Margaret Wade-lewis
Univ. of South Carolina Press, $44.95, 368pp.
ISBN: 9781570036286
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In this first book-length biography of the pioneering African American linguist and celebrated father of Gullah studies, Margaret Wade-Lewis examines the life of Lorenzo Dow Turner. A scholar whose work dramatically influenced the world of academia but whose personal story--until now--has remained an enigma, Turner (1890-1972) emerges from behind the shadow of his germinal 1949 study Africanisms in the Gullah Dialect as a man devoted to family, social responsibility, and intellectual contribution. Turner's life attests to the accomplishments of a single motivated individual and also recognizes the larger contributions of African Americans as intellectuals and the historic place of W. E. B. Du Bois's "talented tenth" in twentieth-century American life.
Beginning with Turner's upbringing in North Carolina and Washington, D.C., Wade-Lewis describes the high expectations set by his family and his distinguished career as a professor of English, linguistics, and African studies. The story of Turner's studies in the Gullah islands when he was forty, his research in Brazil when he was fifty, his fieldwork in Nigeria when he was sixty, and his teaching and research on Sierra Leone Krio for the Peace Corps when he was in his seventies add to his stature as a cultural pioneer and icon.
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The Early Black History Movement, Carter G. Woodson, and Lorenzo Johnston Greene
Pero Gaglo Dagbovie
University of Illinois Press, $25, 280pp.
ISBN: 978-0-252-07435-6
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This book examines the lives, works, and contributions of two of the most important figures of the early black history movement, Carter G. Woodson and Lorenzo Johnston Greene. Drawing on the two men's personal papers as well as the materials of the Association for the Study of Negro Life and History (ASNLH), Pero Gaglo Dagbovie probes the struggles, sacrifices, and achievements of these black history pioneers. The book offers the first major examination of Greene's life. Equally important, it also addresses a variety of issues pertaining to Woodson that other scholars have either overlooked or ignored, including his image in popular and scholarly writings and memory, the democratic approach of the ASNLH, and the pivotal role of women in the association.
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