Ghetto Images in Twentieth-Century American Literature - (Future of Minority Studies) by Kenneth A Loparo (Hardcover)

About the Book

"In this comprehensive work, Tyrone R. Simpson, II, explores how six American writers--Anzia Yezierska, Michael Gold, Hubert Selby Jr., Chester Himes, Gloria Naylor, and John Edgar Wideman--have artistically responded to the racialization of U.S. frostbelt cities in the twentieth century. By using the critical tools of spatial theory, critical race theory, urban history, and urban sociology, Simpson accounts for how these writers imagine the subjective response to the race-making power of space"--

Book Synopsis

In this comprehensive work, Tyrone R. Simpson, II, explores how six American writers - Anzia Yezierska, Michael Gold, Hubert Selby Jr., Chester Himes, Gloria Naylor, and John Edgar Wideman - have artistically responded to the racialization of U.S. frostbelt cities in the twentieth century. By using the critical tools of spatial theory, critical race theory, urban history, and urban sociology, Simpson accounts for how these writers imagine the subjective response to the race-making power of space.

Review Quotes

"Taking the ghetto as a race-making institution dependent on technologies of im/mobility, Tyrone Simpson offers a lucid analysis of the urban ecology of twentieth century U.S. fiction. Giving new meaning to the fine art of close reading, he approaches the spatial as a dense psychic territory, one that requires an interdisciplinary array of knowledges to adequately parse. This is a vibrant literary engagement with critical race theory." - Robyn Wiegman, Professor, Literature and Women's Studies, Duke University, author of American Anatomies: Theorizing Race and Gender and Object Lessons

'Tyrone Simpson gives us a compelling portrait of the historic pain and hope seared into America's rust belt ghettos. Under Simpson's deft prose, a new voice to understanding these racialized spaces the engaged writer is powerfully revealed.' - David Wilson, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

About the Author

TYRONE R. SIMPSON II is an Assistant Professor in the Department of English and Urban Studies, Africana Studies, and American Culture at Vassar College, USA.