Anthony Dawahare
Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars: A New Pandora's Box
Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2003. Pp. 161. US $37.00

Reviewed by Axel Knoenagel

The first African-American texts that left a lasting impression on American literary history were produced during the 1920s and 1930s. The writings of the so-called Harlem Renaissance demonstrated forcefully that authors with African ancestors had progressed beyond the aesthetics of slave narratives and other traditional forms. Authors such as Jean Toomer, Langston Hughes, and Countee Cullen helped to modernize American literature during this time as much as did more prominent writers such as John Dos Passos or William Faulkner. There has been much debate about when the Harlem Renaissance ended. While some critics argue that this phase lasted until the beginning of World War II, others see a distinct break between the more poetically oriented writing of the 1920s and the more politically engaged writing of the 1930s.

Anthony Dawahare uses his study Nationalism, Marxism, and African American Literature between the Wars to suggest that the literature of both decades profits from being studied in a political context and "challenges a reigning paradigm in black literary studies" (xii). Arguing from a Marxist perspective, Dawahare sees a clear break in African-American literature after 1929. While he sees the writing of the 1920s dominated by cultural nationalism, he portrays black American writing of the 1930s as characterized by a Marxist critique of that nationalism. The basis for Dawahare's argument is an analysis of the main currents in African-American thought early in the twentieth century, the competition between "Marcus Garvey and W. E. B. Du Bois, the two figures who exerted the greatest influence on writers of the Harlem Renaissance" (5). Dawahare criticizes both for focusing on Africa as a source of identity and goal of the future. The fault he sees in such arguments is that, rather than concentrating on the social reality of the United States, such thinking leads to an illusion. This analysis is followed by critical discussions of Alain Locke's influential book The New Negro and texts by such well-known and influential Harlem Renaissance authors as Claude McKay, Jesse Fauset, and Langston Hughes.

As a consequence of the ongoing nationalist debate, Dawahare argues, "nothing seemed more natural than for black writers to conceive of themselves as belonging to a people, unified by the possession of a common racial history and consciousness" (68). He suggests that the authors of the Harlem Renaissance ignored the fact that the social reality of their lives should have led to very different priorities and alignments. Dawahare equally blames the critics for following the suggestion that social and political issues played next to no role for the first generation of successful African-American authors.

Like most American literature of the 1930s, African-American writing was characterized by social issues informed by the leftist stance of the authors. Dawahare demonstrates how important literature was for the political debate when he analyzes the cultural position of the Communist Party that is reflected in Langston Hughes's statement, "we now need an art and a literature which will arouse us to our fate" (106). Richard Wright and his novel Native Son become Dawahare's prime example of the politically aware author who does not fall victim to the ideology of a black nationalism that alienates the people from the idea of class struggle. Instead, Dawahare argues, for Wright liberation lay "in a historical overcoming of racialized identity and cultural nationalism ... he favors an urban, proletarian identity in the process of further socialization by modernity" (114).

Dawahare makes his points quite carefully. He manages to present successfully the ideological currents that influenced African-American writing during the 1920s and 1930s as well as the traditions that shaped the critical reception of this literature. But he has to acknowledge that his selection of material is somewhat one-sided. Zora Neale Hurston, at least as important a representative of 1930s literature as Richard Wright and very different in her position, is mentioned only very briefly and in passing.