Once You Go Black : Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual / Robert F. Reid-Pharr.
2007
E185.86
Linked e-resources
Linked Resource
Online Access
Details
Title
Once You Go Black : Choice, Desire, and the Black American Intellectual / Robert F. Reid-Pharr.
ISBN
9780814777497
Published
New York, NY : : New York University Press, [2007]
Copyright
©2007
Language
English
Language Note
In English.
Description
1 online resource
Other Standard Identifiers
10.18574/nyu/9780814777497.001.0001 doi
Call Number
E185.86
Dewey Decimal Classification
305.896/07300904
Summary
2007 Lambda Literary Award Finalist, LGBT StudiesRichard Wright. Ralph Ellison. James Baldwin. Literary and cultural critic Robert Reid-Pharr asserts that these and other post-World War II intellectuals announced the very themes of race, gender, and sexuality with which so many contemporary critics are now engaged. While at its most elemental Once You Go Black is an homage to these thinkers, it is at the same time a reconsideration of black Americans as agents, and not simply products, of history. Reid-Pharr contends that our current notions of black American identity are not inevitable, nor have they simply been forced onto the black community. Instead, he argues, black American intellectuals have actively chosen the identity schemes that seem to us so natural today.Turning first to the late and relatively obscure novels of Wright, Ellison, and Baldwin, Reid-Pharr suggests that each of these authors rejects the idea of the black as innocent. Instead they insisted upon the responsibility of all citizens-even the most oppressed-within modern society. Reid-Pharr then examines a number of responses to this presumed erosion of black innocence, paying particular attention to articulations of black masculinity by Huey Newton, one of the two founders of the Black Panther Party, and Melvin Van Peebles, director of the classic film Sweet Sweetback's Baadasssss Song.Shuttling between queer theory, intellectual history, literary close readings, and autobiography, Once You Go Black is an impassioned, eloquent, and elegant call to bring the language of choice into the study of black American literature and culture. At the same time, it represents a hard-headed rejection of the presumed inevitability of what Reid-Pharr names racial desire in the production of either culture or cultural studies.
Access Note
Access limited to authorized users.
System Details Note
Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.
Digital File Characteristics
text file PDF
Source of Description
Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 18. Sep 2023)
Series
Sexual Cultures ; ; 27
Available in Other Form
print 9780814775837
Linked Resources
Online Access
Record Appears in
Online Resources > Ebooks
All Resources
All Resources
Table of Contents
Frontmatter
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Existential Negro
Going Black
1. The Funny Father's Luck
2. Ralph Ellison's Blues
3. Alas Poor Jimmy
Coming Back?
4. Saint Huey
5. Queer Sweetback
Conclusion: Deviant Desiring
Notes
Index
About the Author
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: The Existential Negro
Going Black
1. The Funny Father's Luck
2. Ralph Ellison's Blues
3. Alas Poor Jimmy
Coming Back?
4. Saint Huey
5. Queer Sweetback
Conclusion: Deviant Desiring
Notes
Index
About the Author