Flying Home
Ralph Ellison, Richard Wright, and the Black Folk during World War II
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2771973 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robin Lucy (corresponding author) |
| Year | 2007 |
| Volume | 120 |
| Issue | 477 |
| Pages | 257-283 |
| Publication date | 2007-07-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Journal of American Folklore (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0021-8715 • E-ISSN: 1535-1882 |
| Publisher | University of Illinois Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.1353/jaf.2007.0054 |
| OpenAlex | W2013171324 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 30 |
This article examines the theories of the black folk (those African Americans understood to constitute a folk group) as an economic, cultural, and literary category in the wartime writing of Richard Wright and Ralph Ellison. It rereads this work within the context of current scholarship that historicizes and contests the construction of the folk in folklore and literary theory and their applications. This article has a particular focus on the numerous and uncollected articles by Ellison and on the oral history narratives he recorded for the Federal Writers' Project. While both writers initially adopted a Marxist perspective on the folk, as defined by Wright's "Blueprint for Negro Writing" (1937), the work of Ellison and Wright diverged from this platform, though in radically different ways. Ellison's perspective developed to encompass a cultural nationalist position that was, in turn, deeply embedded in a pluralist and syncretic vision of American culture. In African American folk culture, Ellison limned a political agenda for activism. Wright, in contrast, aligned himself with the views of Gunnar Myrdal, which Ellison disputed. Recovering and delineating the ways in which Ellison's construction of the black folk ultimately diverges from that of Wright is a key element in the rereading of the cultural politics of wartime African American writing
Aesthetics · Art · Art history · Folklore · Harlem Renaissance · Literature · Narrative · Nationalism · Performance art · Political science · Politics · Scholarship · Sociology · Wright · Anthropology · Art, Politics, and Modernism · Cultural History and Identity Formation · Folklore, Mythology, and Literature Studies · History · Law
Cultures in Babylon
Deep Down in the Jungle
Blues People Negro Music In White America
The black Atlantic
Blues, Ideology, and Afro-American Literature
Playing in the dark
The Black Aesthetic
Communists in Harlem during the Depression, by Mark Naison
The Afro-American and the Second World War
Turning South Again
Black Culture and Black Consciousness
An American Dilemma
Modernism and the Harlem Renaissance
Flying Home and Other Stories
Heroism and the Black Intellectual
Ralph Ellison as Proletarian Journalist
The Dream and the Deal
Sweet Home
Radical representations
Against race
Bliss, or Blackface Sentiment
The Little Man at Chehaw Station” Today
The Unfinished Quest of Richard Wright
The Zoot-Suit and Style Warfare
Flying Words
Guess Who's Coming to Dinner
Conversations with Ralph Ellison
Richard Wright and the Chicago Renaissance
Africana Folklore
Phantoms of Romantic Nationalism in Folkloristics
| Unique citing works | 3 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,33 |
| Citation span | 2014 - 2015 (2) |
| Citation velocity | historical |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 1 |