American Studies A n A n a The Making of the New Negro examines black masculinity in the period of the New Negro/Harlem P m o Renaissance, which for many decades did not attract a great deal of critical attention, until, c e h in the 1990s, many scholars discovered how complex, signifi cant, and fascinating it was. Using m r African American published texts, American archives and unpublished writings, and contempo- ara ci raneous European discourses, this book focuses both on the canonical fi gures of the New Negro a Movement and African American culture, such as W.E.B. Du Bois, Booker T. Washington, Alain Locke, n and Richard Wright, and on writers who have not received as much scholarly attention despite T S their signifi cance for the movement, such as Wallace Thurman. Its perspective combines gender, h t sexuality, and race studies with a thorough literary analysis and historicist investigation, e u an approach that has not been extensively applied to analyze the New Negro Renaissance. d i M e Anna Pochmara is Assistant Professor of English Studies at the University of Warsaw, Poland. s a k i n “The Making of the New Negro breaks completely new ground in our understanding of the male writers g and intellectuals of the Harlem Renaissance. Conceptually rich and theoretically sophisticated this is a powerful and compelling portrait of the racialized politics of masculinity and non-normative sexualities o of the New Negro. Anna Pochmara has written an utterly persuasive and very important book.” f Hazel V. Carby, author of Reconstructing Womanhood and Professor of African American Studies and American Studies at Yale University t h e Anna Pochmara N e The Making of w N the New Negro e ISBN 978 90 896 4319 3 g r Black Authorship, Masculinity, and Sexuality o in the Harlem Renaissance www.aup.nl 9 789089 643193 A         U          P     A         U          P     aup_am_nwnegro_def.indd 1 29-06-2011 11:21:29 The Making oftheNew Negro American Studies American Studies publishes monographs and edited volumes on American history, society, politics, and culture. The series is a forum for groundbreaking approaches and areas of research, as well as pioneering scholarship that adds newinsightsintorelativelyestablishedfieldsinthestudyofAmerica. SeriesEditors: DerekRubinandJaapVerheul, UtrechtUniversity Published in thisSeries DerekRubinandJaapVerheul(eds.) AmericanMulticulturalismafter9/11:TransatlanticPerspectives 2009(ISBN9789089641441) SebastianReyn AtlantisLost:TheAmericanExperiencewithDeGaulle,1958-1969 2010(ISBN9789089642141) 2 The Making of the New Negro Black Authorship, Masculinity, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance Anna Pochmara AmsterdamUniversityPress Thepublicationofthisbookwasmadepossiblebyafinancialcontributionfrom theInstituteofEnglishStudies,theUniversityofWarsaw. Coverillustration:AuthorLangstonHughes [farleft]with[lefttoright:] Charles S. Johnson; E. Franklin Frazier; Rudolph Fisher and Hubert T. Delaney, on the roof of 580 St. Nicholas Avenue, Harlem, on the occasion of a party in Hughes' honor,1924.PhotographsandPrintsDivision,SchomburgCenterforResearchin BlackCulture,TheNewYorkPublicLibrary,Astor,LenoxandTildenFoundations Cover design: Neon, design and communications, Sabine Mannell, Amsterdam, theNetherlands Design:JAPES,Amsterdam,theNetherlands isbn 9789089643193 e-isbn 9789048514236 nur 632 ©AnnaPochmara/AmsterdamUniversityPress,2011 A part of Chapter 1 has already been published as “The Black Man’s Burden: Dilemmas of Black Masculinity in Booker T. Washington’s Up from Slavery.” The Americanist25(2009):97-110 All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this book may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise) without the written permission of both thecopyrightownerandtheauthorofthebook. Every effort has been made to obtain permission to use all copyrighted illustra- tionsreproducedinthisbook.Nonetheless,whosoeverbelieves tohaverightsto thismaterialisadvisedtocontactthepublisher. Table of contents Acknowledgements 7 Introduction 9 ChapterOne 17 Prologue:TheQuestionofManhoodintheBookerT.Washington- W.E.B.DuBoisDebate PART1:ALAINLOCKEANDTHENEWNEGRO ChapterTwo 57 MidwiferyandCamaraderie:AlainLocke’sTropesofGenderand Sexuality ChapterThree 95 Arts,War,andtheBraveNewNegro:GenderingtheBlackAesthetic PART2:WALLACETHURMANANDNIGGERATIMANOR ChapterFour 111 GangstersandBootblacks,RentPartiesandRailroadFlats:Wallace Thurman’sChallengestotheBlackBourgeoisie ChapterFive 141 DiscontentsoftheBlackDandy ChapterSix 179 Epilogue:RichardWright’sInterrogationsoftheNewNegro Conclusion 217 BlackMaleAuthorship,Sexuality,andtheTransatlanticConnection Notes 221 Bibliography 255 Index 267 CurriculumVitae 279 5 Acknowledgements This book has been an intellectual adventure that wouldnot bepossible without the contribution and help from a number of scholars and friends. All my aca- demicteachers have left a significant mark on my analytical approach and scho- larly interests. I would especially like to thank Professors Piotr Skurowski, Ag- nieszka Graff, and Cynthia Dominik. I am also very grateful to Professor Agata Preis-SmithforherguidanceasmyM.A.thesissupervisoraswellasforherastute review of this text, which was very helpful in the process of revision. The most substantial part of this book was written during my stay at Yale University in 2007-2008, where Professor Hazel V. Carby, as my Fulbright mentor, enhanced my research with her warm, friendly, and inspiring guidance. I also wish to ex- pressmygratitude tothe ChairofAmericanLiteratureSection, Dr.Marek Paryż, who activelyencouragedme to publish my manuscriptas a book. Additionally,I want to thank a number of my friends for their intellectual and emotional sup- port. Most notably, I am grateful to my dear friend Anna B. Ross for her careful andconstructiveproofreadingofthedraftversionofthisstudy,helpwitharchival sources in German, and companionship during our American expedition. I am also deeply indebted to Filip Lipiński, who has helped me with visual references and, as a fellow Fulbrighter, greatly facilitated my research at the New York ar- chives. I was fortunate to find support in many other young scholars, especially Dr. Ewa Nowik, Dr. Agnieszka Szarkowska, Dr. Justyna Wierzchowska, and Dr. Joanna Ziarkowska, whose exemplary academic commitment have inspired me. Finally, I want to thank my parents and my husband for their generous support forthisacademicprojectaswellasotherlifechoices. 7 Introduction …TheNegrobeganthatrevelationandvindicationofhimself, thatimpassionedstudyofhisaccomplishments, thedeclarationofhisfuturethatcreates themasculineliteratureofthe‘NewNegro.’1 J.SaundersRedding,ToMakeaPoetBlack IfthereiseveraNegroliterature,itmustdisengageitself fromtheweak,heinouselementsoftheculturethatspawnedit.2 LeroiJones(AmiriBaraka),“TheMythofa‘NegroLiterature’” Thisbooksetsouttoanalyzegenderandsexualityconstructionsinselectedtexts of New Negro Renaissance discourse.3 One of the main aims of this book is to examine the production of literary and cultural history as an ongoing dialogic process that is mediated through the notions of gender and sexuality. Such a dialogueisexemplifiedbytheopeningepigraphs.J.SaundersReddingandAmiri Barakarefertothesameperiodofblackliteraryhistoryandyettheirassessments arediametricallyopposed.Moresignificantly,bothviewsareexpressedinagen- der-marked way – on the one hand, the New Negro Renaissance is praised as “masculine”and,ontheother,representedastheabject–condemnedas“weak, “heinous,” and femininely able to “spawn.” Following the logic revealed in this example,thisstudywillexplorehowaestheticevaluationsandrepresentationsof the New Negro Renaissance are diversely entangled in the tropes of gender and sexuality.Inthemainbody,thisgender-markeddialoguewillbeanalyzedonthe exampleofthetwoleadingfiguresofthemovement,WallaceThurmanandAlain Locke.InthePrologueandtheEpilogue,thissynchronicperspectivewillbecom- plementedwithafocusonthepublicdebatesprecedingandimmediatelyfollow- ingtheRenaissance. Theexaminationofthesedialogicalrhetoricswilldemonstratethattheroleof masculinity is especially significant in historical narratives of black literature. Both levels of analysis, diachronic and synchronic, will examine how the tropes loaded with gendered and sexual connotations serve either to celebrate or to re- pudiaterivalblackleaders.Consequently,adiscussionofrelationsamongtower- ing black authors needs the explanatory potential of two theoretical paradigms: HaroldBloom’sanxietyofinfluenceandSusanGilbertandSusanGubar’sanxiety of authorship.4 The black male writer is caught in a double bind between the needtoengagein“heroicwarfare”withhisstrongpredecessorsandtheneedto 9