""The Ebony Column is superbly researched, skillfully utilizing primary and secondary sources and the most up-to-date scholarship. I was impressed by the amount of deep archival research that was conducted in order to complete this book."--Cedrick May, author of Evangelism and Resistance in the Black Atlantic, 1760-1835 In The Ebony Column, Eric Ashley Hairston begins a new thread in the ongoing conversation about the influence of Greek and Roman antiquity on U.S. civilization and education. While that discussion has yielded many exceptional insights int.

Genevieve West examines the cultural history of Zora Neale Hurston's writing and the reception of her work, in an attempt to explain why Hurston died in obscure poverty only to be reclaimed as an important Harlem Renaissance writer decades after her death.

"In this volume, the persistence, resurgence, threat, fascination, and repression of various forms of pagan culture are studied in an interdisciplinary perspective from late antiquity to the upcoming Renaissance. The contributions deal with the survival of pagan beliefs and practices as well as with the Christianization of pagan rural populations and with the different strategies of oppression of pagan beliefs. They deal with the problems raised by the encounter with pagan cultures outside the Muslim world and examine how philosophers attempted to "save" the great philosophers and poets from ancient culture notwithstanding their paganism. The contributors also study the fascination of classic "pagan" culture among friars in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries and the imitation of pagan models of virtue and mythology in Renaissance poetry."--Book description, Amazon.com.

In Ten Is the Age of Darkness, Geta LeSeur explores how black authors of the United States and the English-speaking Caribbean have taken a European literary tradition and adapted it to fit their own needs for self-expression. LeSeur begins by defining the European genre of the bildungsroman, then shows how the circumstances of colonialism, oppression, race, class, and gender make the maturing experiences of selected young black protagonists different from those of their white counterparts. Examining the parallels and differences in attitudes toward childhood in the West Indies and the United States, as well as the writers' individual perspectives in each work, LeSeur reaches intriguing conclusions about family life, community participation in the nurturing of children, the timing and severity of the youngsters' confrontation of adult society, and the role played by race in the journey toward adulthood. LeSeur's readings of African American novels provide new insights into the work of Langston Hughes, James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, Paule Marshall, and Richard Wright, among others. When read as examples of the bildungsroman rather than simply as chronicles of black experiences, these works reveal an even deeper significance and have a more powerful impact.

"Harlem Renaissance writer Dorothy West led a charmed life in many respects. Born into a distinguished Boston family, she appeared in Gershwin's Porgy and Bess, then lived in the Soviet Union with a group that included Langston Hughes, to whom she proposed marriage. She later became friends with Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, who encouraged her to finish her second novel, The Wedding, which became the octogenarian author's first bestseller. Literary Sisters reveals a different side of West's personal and professional lives - her struggles for recognition outside of the traditional literary establishment, and her collaborations with talented African American women writers, artists, and performers who faced these same problems. West and her "literary sisters"--Women like Zora Neale Hurston and West's cousin, poet Helene Johnson - created an emotional support network that also aided in promoting, publishing, and performing their respective works. Integrating rare photos, letters, and archival materials from West's life, Literary Sisters is not only a groundbreaking biography of an increasingly important author but also a vivid portrait of a pivotal moment for African American women in the arts."--Project Muse.