Authentic Blackness/"real" Blackness : essays on the meaning of Blackness in literature and culture

Authentic Blackness - «Real» Blackness explores and explains the idea of authenticity, of «keeping it real,» as it relates to the multi-faceted meanings of blackness in the United States and the world. Including reflections on hip-hop, comedy, literature, intellectual history, and autobiography, the collection gives both a broad overview of and intervenes in the debates concerning blackness. A comprehensive introductory essay outlines the history of the idea of «authentic blackness,» while other chapters examine the contours of blackness in Canada and Jamaica; the relationship between middle-class status and «real» blackness; the link between «blackness» and hip-hop culture; Dave Chappelle's comedy; and the work of James Baldwin, Countee Cullen, Clarence Major, and John Edgar Wideman as it comments on authenticity in relation to race.

Martin Japtok, Associate Professor of English and Multicultural Studies Studies at Palomar College, is the author of Growing Up Ethnic: Nationalism and the Bildungsroman in African American and Jewish American Fiction and the editor of Postcolonial Perspectives on Women Writers from Africa, the Caribbean, and the U.S. Rafiki Jenkins is an Associate Professor of English and Multicultural Studies at Palomar College. He has published essays on African American speculative fiction and is completing a book-length study on African American vampire novels. Excerpted from Authentic Blackness/ Real Blackness: Essays on the Meaning of Blackness in Literature and Culture by Martin Japtok All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.