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PART 1

SUBVERSIVE (RE)CREATIONS OF THE SELF—PAST AND PRESENT

‘My Story is Better Than Yours’: The Changing Politics of and Motives for Composing Southern African American Life Narratives

Trudier Harris The University of Alabama

On 29 May 1880, prospective African American writer Charles Waddell Chesnutt, residing in North Carolina at the time, wrote in his diary:

I think I must write a book. I am almost afraid to undertake a book so early and with so little experience in composition. But it has been my cherished dream, and I feel an influence that I cannot resist calling me to the task. . . . If I do write, I shall write for a purpose, a high, holy purpose, and this will inspire me to greater effort. The object of my writings would be not so much the elevation of the colored people as the elevation of the whites—for I consider the unjust spirit of caste which is so insidious as to pervade a whole nation, and so powerful as to subject a whole race and all connected with it to scorn and social ostracism—I consider this a barrier to the moral progress of the American people; and I would be one of the first to head a determined, organized crusade against it. . . . This work is of a twofold character. The negro’s [sic] part is to prepare himself for social recognition and equality; and it is the province of literature to open the way for him to get it—to accustom the public mind to the idea; and while amusing them to lead them on imperceptibly, unconsciously step by step to the desired state of feeling. If I can do anything to further this work, and can see any likelihood of obtaining success in it, I would gladly devote my life to the work. (Brodhead 139, 140)