Multicultural Modernism

American ÏGVÏGW" De Santis continuedfrom previous page Becoming an African American ScholarActivist," in which he distinguishes himself from theorists like Paul Gilroy as an "African Americentric scholar and critic"; the long first chapter that elucidates the critical and theoretical assumptions of the study; and the briefconclusion, which generally repeats information that appears earlier, there are thus only three chapters (about 132 pages) of entirely new material on the contemporary African American novel. Bell covers an impressive array of writers and subgenres in these pages, convincingly arguing through perceptive close readings how writers such as Paule Marshall, Leon Forrest, Gloria Naylor, Samuel Delany, Jr., Octavia Butler, and many others demonstrate authenticity, authority, and agency by working within a tradition highly influenced by the Du Boisian concepts of double consciousness and double vision and by residual oral forms including oratory, myth, legend, tale, and song. Of the seventeen writers granted extended treatment in chapters six through eight of The ContemporaryAfrican American Novel, only two—Trey Ellis and Colson Whitehead— were born after 1960. Missing here are writers such as Ricardo Cortez Cruz, Randall Kenan, Danzy Senna, Tananarive Due, Jake Lamar, Phyllis Alesia Perry, Jeffery Renard Allen, Shay Youngblood, and many other young African American novelists, all of whom surely merit acknowledgment for their contributions to and shaping of the tradition of the African American novel. Bell's failure to cover younger novelists is problematic, as is his dismissive attitude toward writers such as Trey Ellis, who, in his essay "The New Black Aesthetic" (1989), uses the term "cultural mulattoes" to describe many AfricanAmerican artists ofhis generation. Bell writes, "Anthropologically, then, because the beliefs and values of Ellis's cultural mulattoes were fundamentally shaped by immersion during theirformative years in predominantly white middle-class communities , their acculturation and identity formation could be reasonably viewed as less authentically black than those of contemporaries who were raised in predominantly black communities" (my emphasis). Such a comment tends more to curtail conversation than it does to open up inquiries about the dynamic tradition of the African American novel and how contemporary novelists are both participating in and revising that tradition. The Contemporary African American Novel: Its Folk Roots and Modern Literary Branches is a significant achievement inAfricanAmerican literary studies, but it does have its limitations. At the present time it is the definitive work in the field and an important reference tool, though additional studies are needed that offer a broader, more inclusive approach to the contemporary African American novel. Christopher C. De Santis is associate professor of AfricanAmerican andAmerican Literature atIllinois State University. Multicultural Modernism Charles Russell Bill Traylor, William Edmondson, and the Modernist Impulse Edited by Josef Helfenstein and Roxanne Stanulis Krannert Art Museum and The Menil Collection Distributed by University of Washington Press http://www.washington.edu/uwpress/ 208 pages; paper, $40.00 Bill Traylor and William Edmondson are "major figures in American and African American art history." What do we mean by this? What constitutes "major" and are American and African American art history quite the same? What criteria do we apply? Who constitutes this "we" that are doing the judging ? Normally, the determination of who is a "major " artist or what is meant by important art is the result of the collective opinion developed over time by members of the "mainstream" art world: the white critics, museum personnel, and academics who dominate the discourse about what is considered "fine," hence significant, art in our culture. This discourse is largely determined by a single narrative focus—the European-based art historical tradition of elite art traced from Greek classical art through the European Renaissance and to the emergence of modernism and now postmodernism. All of us who have attended college or watch PBS are well familiar with the tale. The story, however, has long excluded many types of artistic activity not grounded in this specific historical tradition and which, consequently, have been shunted off to separate art "histories," such as "African American," or to various subcategories of "lower" arts: e.g. craft, design, commercial, popular, folk, and "outsider" art. When artists relegated to any ofthese sub-groups have been deemed worthy ofnotice by the fine art world, it has largely been...