@article{1479482,
      recid = {1479482},
      author = {Alexander, Eleanor, },
      title = {Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow : The Tragic Courtship and  Marriage of Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth Moore /},
      pages = {1 online resource},
      abstract = {A New York Times Notable Book of 2002! Sexism, racism,  self-hatred, and romantic love: all figure in prominently  in this scholarly-but nicely hard-boiled-discussion of the  bond between the famous Paul Laurence Dunbar and his wife  Alice. Eleanor Alexander's analysis of  turn-of-the-twentieth-century black marriage is required  reading for every student of American, especially  African-American, heterosexual relationships."-Nell  Painter, Edwards Professor of American History, Princeton  University, Author of Sojourner Truth, A Life, A Symbol  "Rich in documentation and generous in analysis, Lyrics of  Sunshine and Shadow advances our understanding of late  nineteenth- and early twentieth-century African American  social and cultural history in compelling and unexpected  ways. By exposing the devastating consequences of unequal  power dynamics and gender relations in the union of the  celebrated writers, Paul Laurence Dunbar and Alice Ruth  Moore, and by examining the hidden underside of the  Dunbars' storybook romance where alcohol, sex, and violence  prove fatal, Eleanor Alexander produces a provocative,  nuanced interpretation of late Victorian courtship and  marriage, of post-emancipation racial respectability and  class mobility, of pre-modern sexual rituals and color  conventions in an emergent elite black society."-Thadious  M. Davis, Vanderbilt University "Eleanor Alexander's vivid  account of the most famous black writer of his day, Paul  Laurence Dunbar, and his wife Alice, illuminates the world  of the African American literati at the opening of the  twentieth century. The Dunbars' fairy-tale romance ended  abruptly, when Alice walked out on her alcoholic, abusive  spouse. Alexander's access to scores of intimate letters  and her sensitive interpretation of the Dunbars mercurial  highs and lows reveal the tragic consequences of mixing  alcohol, ambition and amour. The Dunbars were precursors  for another doomed duo: Scott and Zelda Fitzgerald.  Alexander's poignant story of the Dunbars sheds important  light on love and violence among DuBois's "talented tenth."  -Catherine Clinton, author of Fanny Kemble's Civil Wars  "Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow debunks Dunbar myths. Lyrics  asks us to consider the ways in which racism and sexism  operate together."- The CrisisOn February 10, 1906, Alice  Ruth Moore, estranged wife of renowned early  twentieth-century poet Paul Laurence Dunbar, boarded a  streetcar, settled comfortably into her seat, and opened  her newspaper to learn of her husband's death the day  before. Paul Laurence Dunbar, son of former slaves, whom  Frederick Douglass had dubbed "the most promising young  colored man in America," was dead from tuberculosis at the  age of 33. Lyrics of Sunshine and Shadow traces the  tempestuous romance of America's most noted  African-American literary couple. Drawing on a variety of  love letters, diaries, journals, and autobiographies,  Eleanor Alexander vividly recounts Dunbar's and Moore's  tumultuous affair, from a courtship conducted almost  entirely through letters and an elopement brought on by  Dunbar's brutal, drunken rape of Moore, through their  passionate marriage and its eventual violent dissolution in  1902. Moore, once having left Dunbar, rejected his every  entreaty to return to him, responding to his many letters  only once, with a blunt, one-word telegram ("No"). This is  a remarkable story of tragic romance among African-American  elites struggling to define themselves and their  relationships within the context of post-slavery America.  As such, it provides a timely examination of the ways in  which cultural ideology and politics shape and complicate  conceptions of romantic love.},
      url = {http://library.usi.edu/record/1479482},
      doi = {https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814707555.001.0001},
}