Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature

Acknowledgements

Acknowledgments A recent book by Anthony Heilbut quotes Aretha Franklin as saying, “I’m sentimental, I don’t forget.” I know what she means and for that reason have looked forward to writing these acknowledgments for years. I am proud that this project began at Columbia University. Robert G. O’Meally, Farah Jasmine Griffin, Ann Douglas, Brent Hayes Edwards, Robin D. G. Kelley, Marcellus Blount, and Monica Miller not only fostered this particular work but also continue to inspire me with their exemplary scholarship, writing, teaching, and style. To have trained with them is to never have to wonder if what we do matters; their political commitments are as clear as they are complex. My debt to Bob O’Meally is happily profound. A mentor in the truest sense of the word, he spent hours in conversation, invited me into intellectual and artistic communities , and essentially made a place for me in this profession long before I warranted one. He is the most generous scholar I know and the best example of Ralph Ellison’s dictum that the secret of the game is to make life swing. Thank you. Several colleagues at Cornell, where I worked as a visiting assistant professor in the English Department from 2009 to 2011, gave me welltimed support and valuable advice. Thanks to Ellis Hanson, Grant Farred, Shirley Samuels, Dagmawi Woubshet, Rayna Kalas, Jeremy Braddock , and Margo Crawford. Thanks especially to my students at Cornell, who provided such a rich foundation for my teaching career. Since coming to UMass Amherst in 2011, I have been welcomed and supported by too many people to name, but I especially appreciate the guidance of x / acknowledgments Joe Bartolomeo, Stephen Clingman, Laura Doyle, Nick Bromell, James Smethurst, and Ron Welburn and the friendship of Tanya Fernando, Jane Degenhardt, and Asha Nadkarni. Britt Rusert and Tanisha Ford, I’m glad you’re here. Many thanks as well to my students for making the teaching part of my job a pleasure even when the writing part is hard. I am very grateful to my editor, Katie Keeran, at Rutgers University Press for taking a chance on a first-time author and for being exceedingly good at what she does. Lisa Boyajian answered many questions about permissions ; Andrew Katz copyedited the manuscript; Tim Roberts guided the book through production. Thanks to archivists at the Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture; the Harry Ransom Humanities Research Center at the University of Texas; the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University; the Beinecke Rare Book and Manuscript Library at Yale; the Library of Congress Manuscript and Motion Picture Divisions in Washington, D.C. Thanks to the many artists and executors who granted me permission to reproduce images, song lyrics, and text, especially Julia Wright. Thanks to George Avakian, John Sommerville , and Linda Susan Jackson for interviews; speaking with Linda Susan about her poetry and Etta James was a highlight of this process. This book is a chorus of other people’s voices in a sense that my citations do not fully convey. In an effort to mark these contributions and to acknowledge, as Elizabeth Alexander writes, “how much thinking [and] theorizing . . . happens in talk,” I want to cite the people whose brilliant questions, comments, and even direct language are in some way represented in the following pages. Thank you Lloyd Pratt, Courtney Thorsson, Nijah Cunningham, Douglas Field, Paul Peppis, Ann Douglas, Carter Mathes, Matt Sandler, Farah Griffin, Bob O’Meally, Ashraf Rushdy, Ann duCille, Monica Miller, Sangita Gopal, Scott Saul, Joel Pfister, Dag Woubshet, Patricia Akhime, Amanda Alexander, JeanChristophe Cloutier, Brent Edwards, Steve Rachman, Greg Tate, Miles Parks Grier, Bakari Kitwana, José Limón, Jim Smethurst, Stephen Clingman , TreaAndrea Russworm, and Anthony Reed. Thanks to anonymous readers for their incisive feedback on portions of this book; thanks to the many institutions that gave me a platform to share it, including most recently the University of Denver, Michigan State, and Notre Dame. Thanks to Tony Bolden for organizing the remarkable Eruptions of Funk Symposium at the University of Alabama in 2007. Thanks to scholars I have not yet met but whose work helped shape what I’ve tried to do here: Angela Davis, Henry Louis Gates Jr., Nathaniel Mackey, Marisa Parham, and Tricia Rose. acknowledgments / xi I was extremely fortunate to have two of my “ideal readers” become the actual readers of this manuscript. At an early stage, Cheryl Wall articulated...