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sarily drawn out. The chapter on Levy's childhood can also be quite lengthy at times with detailed accounts ofthe plays written byAmy for familyentertainment, numerous "Confessions Book" entries, and the reproduction oftoo manyexcerpts of young Amy's letters. It also includes excessive descriptions of the family's acquaintances whose length cannot be justified. Yet Beckman's biography ofLevy is hard to put down; Levy's personality draws the reader in, as does her poetry. Fortunately, her writing, while previously not readily accessible, is now starting to receive more attention thanks to Melvyn News edition ofher complete works. And in the end, I would agree with Beckam's statement that "This book too should play a part in allowing Amy Levy to take her rightful place in literature" (214). rK Bruce A. Glasrud and Laurie Champion, eds. TheAfrican American West: A Century ofShort Stories. Boulder: University Press ofColorado, 2000. 462p. Joe Staples University of Arizona Critical articles abound describing African American experience in the American west, but primary texts are still relatively few and/or relatively inaccessible. Scholars and teachers frustrated that African American literature ofthe West seems limited to works by Nat Love, Oscar Micheaux, and Wallace Thurman will welcome Glasrud and Champion's compilation. It is valuable in its ambition and scope, providing forty-six pieces of short story length (not all are stricdy fiction) by a like number of authors ranging chronologically from the turn of the century to contemporary writers. Contributors include such well-known names as W.E.B. DuBois, Langston Hughes, Charles W. Chesnutt, Paul Laurence Dunbar, Arna Bontemps, and Ralph Ellison. The anthology allows great flexibility in application, as its "west" includes "any state west ofthe Mississippi" (x), and because the themes the works explore are not limited to such easily recognized western tropes as landscape , violence and displacement, and masculine dominance. Indeed, as the editors aver in their enlightening introductory essay, "stories set in the West that portray blacks do not represent the traditional, or popular, western" (1); some of the stories enlarge orchallengegeneric conventionswhen theirprotagonistsand narrators return to the South or East, having found that "all is not well in the West" (1). However, this ambition, scope, and flexibilityare precisely the aspects to which purists will object. One might argue that a century is too much ground to cover, especially since the contemporary west is so vastly different from that ofthe turn 110 * ROCKY MOUNTAIN REVIEW * FALL 2001 Reviews of the century in geography, economy, in the cultural imagination, and myriad other ways. Ofcourse, an anthology by necessity cuts a large swath in time, and this one certainly fills a need for primary texts despite this chronologic dilemma. But other problems are not as easily overcome. For instance, the working definition of"west" seems somewhat arbitrary. The Mississippi River as a demarcation ofWest makes sense only at a particular historical moment, and the book's earliest selection, a reminiscence by Eugene Frierson, set in 1893, describes experiences occurring well after that moment. The eastern boundary might just as well have been the Appalachian mountains, for they also were once the demarcation ofWest during a portion ofthe country's past. Furthermore, the editors admit in their Preface to having "crossed the Mississippi eastward to garner a few stories that captured the western spirit" (x). I am not certain what the "western spirit" signifies, but perhaps one story that typifies it is "The Ingrate," by Paul Laurence Dunbar. The story features a slave who escapes to Canada through the old northwest, and, while it is fascinating, the story is set almost entirely in the slave-holding South and has little to do with the west. Or perhaps the "western spirit" is best evinced in a dreamy character of March Lacy's "No Fools, No Fun." Set in New York City, the story features a deluded woman, Patsy, who dreams ofsuccess in the Hollywood film industry. The fantasy ofgoing west is as close as this character or story comes to anything west of the Adirondacks. To be sure, the editors acknowledge that, while "the West is a geographic entity, albeit with moving parameters, ... it is also a state ofmind" (x). The location and definition...

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