01/07/2025
Are you hoping to read more books in 2025? Discuss and analyze the work of iconic Black poets and writers like James Baldwin, Toni Morrison, and Ann Petry in Professor Adell’s spring literature course “Major Authors”, offered Tuesdays and Thursdays from 4 to 5:15.
In “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, James Weldon Johnson writes, “New York City is the most fatally fascinating thing in America. She sits like a great witch at the gate of the country, showing her alluring white face and hiding her crooked hands and feet under the folds of her wide garments--constantly enticing thousands from far within, and tempting those who come from across the seas to go no farther. And all these become the victims of her caprice. Some she at once crushes beneath her cruel feet; others she condemns to a fate like that of galley slaves; a few she favors and fondles, riding them high on the bubbles of fortune; then with a sudden breath she blows the bubbles out and laughs mockingly as she watches them fall.”
In this course, we will read novels, essays, and poetry that are set in this “fatally fascinating” city. Beginning with Johnson’s “The Autobiography of an Ex-Colored Man”, we will read novels in which characters both embrace the city while struggling against forces that are beyond their control. In addition to discussing the social, cultural, and historical backgrounds against which these novelists (and poets) tell their stories, we also will focus on how they engage with literary traditions such as realism and naturalism, plot and character development, and narrative style.
Enrollment is open now til January 30th.
