Читать книгу Constructing the Self. Essays on Southern Life-Writing онлайн

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Early life narrators, in their commitment to community, were far less troubled by their reasons for literary creation than were their later peers. Even when they were unsure about what the outcome of their writing skills would yield, they never doubted the value of their stories or the purpose for which they wanted to tell those stories. Once slavery was abolished, however, and the immediacy of life and death threats was lessened slightly, other motives for literary creativity in life writings entered the picture. I seriously doubt that Langston Hughes wanted to transform American society when he published The Big Sea (1940), which chronicles his early life, his adventures in New York during the Harlem Renaissance, and his first trips to Africa. Similarly, Claude McKay probably did not contemplate national politics overly much when he published A Long Way from Home (1937). These narrators during the 1920s and 1930s provide the beginnings of a tradition of individualistic life narration that would stretch from that period into contemporary times. Even when some writers earned national reputations, as Hughes and Richard Wright did, it is challenging to determine where their life narratives offer the direct political commentary that characterized narrations by enslaved persons.