African American Literature in Transition 1930-1940

Book excerpt: "The volume's first section demonstrates the subtle influence of the Great Depression's devastation on Black literary themes and methodologies by situating more well-known figures within a wide matrix of lesser known writers, thinkers, and cultural workers. In this way, the volume's opening chapters expand our grasp of the literary tradition by foregrounding the manifestation of economic anxieties in the career trajectories of numerous Black writers as well as the subject matter and conventions employed in their various works. Sharon L. Jones proposes in her introductory chapter that we might trace writers' preoccupations with excess and deprivation as emerging as staple tropes of Depression-era writing"--