The Indignant Generation: A Narrative History of African-American Writers and Critics, 1934–1960

Using the career of the writer and literary critic J. Saunders Redding (1906–1988) as linchpin, Jackson (Ralph Ellison) surveys a little examined period—1934 to 1960—in African-American literature. On one hand, his encyclopedic book offers a chronological, old-fashioned history of literature, covering a period desperately in need of thoroughgoing research and detail, and presents a deeply documented, dense but thoroughly readable account. On the other hand, Jackson's book is news: he connects the writers (the common focus of literary history) to publishers, editors, periodicals, organizations; he links African-American writers to the "significant African American intellectual class teaching at black colleges." A near census of black writers and thinkers, Jackson's integrated account of a segregated world places white figures (e.g., Bucklin Moon, Lillian Smith, Norman Mailer, Jack Kerouac) on the map as well. Jackson's detail may offer more than the casual sightseer seeks, but scholars will rely upon and mine his monumental work and the prodigious research upon which it is based. It should guide the way African-American and American literature is studied. (Dec.)