Writing across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920 (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)

Writing across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920 (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)

Lucas A. Dietrich
$26.95
Publication Date: June 30th, 2020
Publisher:
University of Massachusetts Press
ISBN:
9781625344878
Pages:
184

Description

The turn of the twentieth century was a period of experimental possibility for U.S. ethnic literature as a number of writers of color began to collaborate with the predominantly white publishing trade to make their work commercially available. In this new book, Lucas A. Dietrich analyzes publishers' and writers' archives to show how authors—including María Amparo Ruiz de Burton, Charles W. Chesnutt, Finley Peter Dunne, W. E. B. Du Bois, and Sui Sin Far—drew readers into their texts by subverting existing stereotypes and adapting styles of literary regionalism and dialect writing.

Writing across the Color Line details how this body of literature was selected for publication, edited, manufactured, advertised, and distributed, even as it faced hostile criticism and frequent misinterpretation by white readers. Shedding light on the transformative potential of multiethnic literature and the tenacity of racist attitudes that dominated the literary marketplace, Dietrich proves that Native American, African American, Latinx, Asian American, and Irish American writers of the period relied on self-caricature, tricksterism, and the careful control of authorial personae to influence white audiences.

About the Author

LUCAS A. DIETRICH is adjunct professor of humanities at Lesley University.

Praise for Writing across the Color Line: U.S. Print Culture and the Rise of Ethnic Literature, 1877-1920 (Studies in Print Culture and the History of the Book)

“Writing across the Color Line is an important contribution to the ongoing scholarly conversation around race, publishing, and archives.”—RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage

"Writing across the Color Line makes a significant contribution to the fields of American literature (especially American literary realism, but also modernism), print culture, and multiethnic literature. The fact that Dietrich uses examples from different ethnic literary traditions is a real strength of this book."—Lori Harrison-Kahan, author of The White Negress: Literature, Minstrelsy, and the Black-Jewish Imaginary

"[Dietrich] effectively demonstrates how print culture studies can bring new insights to late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century literary history. The case studies he presents shine much needed light on turn-of-the-century ethnic American literature and ethnic authors’ attempts to engage white readers across the color line."—American Periodicals

"This is a very fine and fascinating book. Dietrich provides a vivid sense of the high—and highly racialized—stakes in ostensibly humdrum practices of book production and their contribution to intersecting concepts of race, marketplace, and popularity in turn-of-the-twentieth-century US culture."—American Literary History 

"Dietrich adds to our understanding of some now-canonical authors in the field of multiethnic literature at the turn of the century, as well as our understanding of lesser-known authors, by bringing to bear extensive archival work."—Eric Aronoff, author of Composing Cultures: Modernism, American Literary Studies, and the Problem of Culture

"With the backing of some impressive archival research, Dietrich looks at the acquisition, editing, design, production, marketing, distribution, and reception of the books he has selected. This is a productive approach, and in this particular study it yields excellent results."—The Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America

"Writing across the Color Line is impressive in its readings, marshalling of evidence, and execution of a complex argument about the way African American, Mexican American, Irish American, Asian American, and Native American writers negotiated publishing and storytelling at the turn of the twentieth century in service of critiquing racism. It is a valuable addition to the growing archive of knowledge that attends to the racial and racist contours of publishing and reading in the United States."—MELUS

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