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In the Beginning: Blackness and the 1960s Creative Nonfiction of Ōe Kenzaburō
- positions: asia critique
- Duke University Press
- Volume 25, Number 2, May 2017
- pp. 323-349
- Article
- Additional Information
Abstract:
This essay considers the nonfictional writings on black literature and American race relations penned by Nobel laureate Ōe Kenzaburō between the years 1961 (when Ōe attended the Asian-African Writers Conference held in Tokyo) and 1968 (when he delivered a series of speeches in Kinokuniya Hall on American race relations). In these nonfictional musings, Ōe posits an analogous existential dilemma shared by the postwar Japanese and post–civil rights era African-Americans. Ōe's proposed solution to this dilemma—a kind of existential freedom rooted in celebrating ethnic and racial diversity—is highly informed by his reading of Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and James Baldwin.