Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature - by Y Hakutani (Hardcover)

About the Book

Just as American culture is the hybridization of Eastern and Western cultures, so is African American culture. Because the European and African cultural visions that Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, James Baldwin, and others acquired were buttressed by the universal humanism that is common to all cultures, this ideology was shown to transcend the problems of society.  Fascinated by Eastern thought and art, Wright, Alice Walker, Sonia Sanchez, and James Emanuel wrote highly accomplished poetry and prose.  While modernism, especially Western modernism, smacks of elitism, postmodernism, as shown by the later Wright, Walker, and Toni Morrison, is widely concerned not only with the mundane but also with other kinds of knowledge and other cultures, especially Eastern cultures.  The most influential East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchange that has taken place in modern and postmodern times was reading and writing of haiku.  Among others, Wright distinguished himself as a haiku poet by writing over 4,000 haiku in his last eighteen months of his life while in exile in Paris.  Wright’s haiku have made an impact on some of the contemporary American poets, most notably Robert Haas, Sonia Sanchez, and James Emanuel.  However historically different their ideas and representations may have been, African American modernists and postmodernists have both mediated upon the possibility of multiple worlds for human subjectivity.  This topic will be of interest to the readers who see African American literature as a cross-cultural movement.

Book Synopsis

The most influential East-West artistic, cultural, and literary exchange that has taken place in modern and postmodern times was the reading and writing of haiku. Here, esteemed contributors investigate the impact of Eastern philosophy and religion on African American writers such as Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, and Toni Morrison, offering a fresh field of literary inquiry.

Review Quotes

" Cross-Cultural Visions in African American Literature: West Meets East is a fresh approach to an important, though little studied, aspect of African American literature. It examines how Eastern philosophy and literary assumptions have affected the work of a number of important black American writers, including Richard Wright, Ralph Ellison, Sonia Sanchez, James Emanuel, Ishmael Reed, and Charles Johnson." - Robert Butler, author of Contemporary African American Fiction: The Open Journey

About the Author

Yoshinobu Hakutani is aProfessor of English and University Distinguished Scholar at Kent State University.