Abandoning the Black Hero: Sympathy and Privacy in the Postwar African American White-Life Novel

Acknowledgments

Acknowledgments I want to start by thanking Rita Felski, Caroline Rody, Scott Saul, Lawrie Balfour, and Eric Lott for their invaluable insight, support, and time. I am very lucky to have had such phenomenal mentors and interlocuters. Eric in particular deserves special thanks for being willing to step in as my adviser when he was already overburdened and for helping me far beyond the call of duty when I needed it. Deborah McDowell also provided vitally helpful feedback in the earliest stages of this project. As the years pass I realize more and more how blessed I was to study as an undergrad with several great professors at the University of Maryland , College Park: John Auchard, Lynn Bolles, Charles Caramello, Sharon Harley, Robert Levine (who also read and commented on the book proposal), Carla Peterson, David Wyatt, and Mary Helen Washington, who directed my undergraduate thesis. Christine R. Gray remains my first and greatest mentor. This book also owes a great deal to the organizers and faculty of the Dartmouth Futures of American Studies Institute, the closest thing I’ve known to an intellectual utopia. I especially want to thank the organizers Donald Pease, Elizabeth Maddock Dillon, and Robyn Wiegman, as well as Colleen Boggs, Michael Chaney, Martin Favor, Eric Lott, and Alan Nadel. Over the years I received essential suggestions and encouragement from these faculty, as well as plenary speakers Robert Reid-Pharr, Kenneth Warren, Fred Moton, and Alan Wald. Two Futures faculty generously gave me the opportunity to present my work abroad: Winfried x / acknowledgments Fluck at the John F. Kennedy Institute of North American Studies at the Free University of Berlin, and Donatella Izzo at the University of Naples, L’Orientale. I am also grateful to Donatella for opening her beautiful home to me in Rome during that trip. In addition, this project benefited greatly at different stages from the insights of Rebecka Rutledge Fisher, Jay Garcia, Faith Elizabeth Gray, Daylanne English, Bryan Wagner, Emily Churilla, and Ken Parille. The faculty of the Higher Seminar in English Literature, Lund University, Sweden, were wonderful colleagues and a great audience, and Marianne Thormählen in particular took time out of her duties as dean of research in the humanities and theology to offer not only global feedback and encouragement, but also sentence-level edits that were unfailingly on the mark. Brigitte Shull offered much-appreciated early support for this project. Joanne van der Woude was kind enough to translate a review of the Dutch translation of Richard Wright’s Savage Holiday—one of the only reviews in existence. Elisabeth Petry graciously provided me copies of her mother’s working notes for Country Place as well as permission to quote from these notes. Alex Lubin and Ken Warren read this work in its latest phases; I am profoundly grateful for their suggestions. My colleagues at North Carolina State University have provided great support and friendship while I was finishing this book: Laura Severin, Sheila Smith McKoy, Sharon Setzer, John Kessel, Tom Lisk, John Morillo, Carmine Prioli, Tim Stinson, Jennifer Nolan-Stinson, Keely Byars-Nichols , Juliana Nfah-Abbenyi, Mary Helen Theunte, and Robin Dodsworth. I want to give special thanks to my department head, Antony Harrison, who has been a great leader in our department and a valued friend for the last several years. The College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Dean Jeff Braden in particular, provided financial support on multiple occasions—including a Faculty Research and Professional Development Award—that enabled me to reduce my teaching load and to travel to numerous archives for material that was vital to the completion of this study. I will always owe a great debt to Katie Keeran, my editor at Rutgers University Press, for her professionalism, patience, and especially her confidence in my project. I want to thank my friends, far and near, old and new: Michael, Veronica, and Maximo Hudlow, Ron Blevins, Patrick “Chewie” Holland , Ken Parille, Finnie Coleman, Sara Håkansson, Marc Dudley, John “Bizzle” Begeny, Rebecca Walsh, Matthew Grady, Bruno, and Jennifer acknowledgments / xi Ho. So glad that you are my friends. Jen Ho deserves an extra shout-out not only for cooking me so many amazing meals, but also recommending that I read Percival Everett. Christopher C. Nagle and Dona L. Yarbrough. Thank you for two decades of friendship. You were both there from the beginning. Finally, I am grateful most of all for my family...