ABSTRACT
MARGOLIES examines twentieth-century African-American literature in an effort to locate “the Negro’s evaluation of his historical and cultural experience in this century: the Southern community, the continuing migration to the cities, the urban proletariat, miscegenation and interracial love, the Negro church, the expatriate point of view, the new nationalism, and so on”. Such a broad range of inquiry necessarily results in a general history of letters, with an emphasis on the way in which literature addresses itself to contemporary cultural issues. Margolies is particularly interested in trying to pin down aspects of what he refers to as “Negro” identity, as a way, it would seem, of distinguishing African-American literature from Anglo-American literature produced in the twentieth century. Though Margolies does examine literary details and symbols, which might be helpful for first-time readers, his approach is outdated both in its condescending attitude toward the fiction, and in his reliance on “culture” as the interpretive basis from which to engage the novels.
