The Indignant Generation

Jackson (English & African American studies, Emory Univ.; Ralph Ellison: Emergence of Genius) has written a meticulously researched, detailed account of African American literature and its critics from the end of the Harlem Renaissance to the beginnings of the Civil Rights Movement. In 19 chapters, organized more or less chronologically, he discusses the work of a wide range of writers and critics, among them J. Saunders Redding, Sterling Brown, Richard Wright, Gwendolyn Brooks, Chester Himes, Ann Petry, and Frank Yerby, paying particular attention to the African American author's need to develop a marketable audience and find outlets for publication. Additional topics include the divisions within the African American literary community itself; the roles played by the Communist Party and white, Southern liberals; and the effects of segregation, the Great Depression, and World War II on shaping the sensibilities of "the indignant generation."