A History of the African American Novel by Valerie Babb (review)

This is a much-needed comprehensive survey of the history and practice of the African American novel from the 1853 publication of William Wells Brown's Clotel to work done by contemporary writers such as Percival Everett, Colson Whitehead, and Olympia Vernon. A special feature of the book is its detailed analysis of important fictional genres such as the neo-slave narrative, detective fiction, pulp novels, novels of the diaspora, and the speculative novel. Also included is an illuminating chapter that examines how African American novels have been adapted into films.

Babb's work compliments and surpasses previous studies with its fresh insights and encyclopedic understanding of the roots and branches of the African American novel. She expertly surveys major trends and carefully explores the work of an extraordinary variety of major and minor figures. Her study is not limited by abstract theories that might narrow its scope and distort its findings. No monolithic vision of the African American novel is offered but, rather, a fair, balanced, and nuanced exploration that pays close attention to the rich diversity of forms, styles, and themes developed over time by a broad range of novelists. Moreover, the book is exhaustively researched and fluently written in a crystal-clear style that is happily free of jargon. Another attractive feature of the book is its elaborate bibliographies of primary and secondary sources.

The early chapters provide important new insights into how African American newspapers and journals, along with black Protestantism and evangelicalism, helped to shape the work of early novelists in a fruitful process of "cross-fertilization." Babb also stresses how a "black canon" (69) was beginning to form in the first part of the twentieth century, and during the Harlem Renaissance a distinctively African American novelistic tradition was being shaped by using uniquely black folk forms and music. She regards the period spanning the 1940s to the 1970s as particularly significant because of the growing influence of the civil rights, Black Power, and Black Arts movements as well as the development of independent black presses. This time also witnessed the flowering of the work of African American women. Black writers of the 1970s became strongly involved in the culture wars of the period and brought the black novel from the "margin" to the "center" of American literature. Babb characterizes the contemporary period as employing "a growing use of satire and experimentalism" (195) that has opened up new spaces for black fiction.

Although the book does not lay a great deal of emphasis on the importance of individual "seminal" writers, stressing instead the steady, organic growth of a black novelistic tradition, it does point out the crucially important influence of a few pioneering writers. Richard Wright is credited with fostering "Chicago's emergence as a literary center" (195). And his masterwork, Native Son, is viewed as "the novel that would define the standard of what the black novel should be for years to come" (99), creating a "Wright School" in its own time and continuing to influence several generations of future writers. Zora Neale Hurston is seen as bringing a "fresh narrative voice" (76) to black fiction, which would establish "the validity of black vernacular culture as a medium for novelistic form" (75). In this way, she exerted a strong influence on a wide range of writers that included Alice Walker and Toni Morrison. Morrison and Walker, in turn, helped create new possibilities for female African American writers by creating "black female perspectives" that "shed new light on cultural attitudes toward race and gender" (159).

Throughout the book Babb draws significant attention to nearly forgotten writers such as John Edward Bruce, Zara Wright, and George Wylie Henderson. And she gives very positive assessments of underappreciated novelists like George Schuyler, whom she regards as "One of the foremost black satirists of the twentieth century" (86). Dorothy West, all but forgotten until the publication of The Wedding very late in her life, is praised for her ability to "shed light on a...