July 28, 2006

Judging a Book by Its Writer's Color

By GENE ANDREW JARRETT

Thanks to the widely acclaimed Norton Anthology of African American Literature, we can read and celebrate an assortment and abundance of fiction, nonfiction, poetry, and drama by black writers. But this admirable book ignores a remarkable history: Some of our most celebrated black authors weren't always so "hungry for texts about themselves," an actual phrase used to introduce the anthology's second edition. Contrary to this claim, some canonical authors were just as interested in writing