Jesse McCarthy is assistant professor of English and African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is the editor of the Norton Library edition of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and the first volume of Minor Notes, an anthology of African American poetry. He is also the author of Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? Essays, winner of the 2022 Whiting Award for Non-Fiction, and the novel The Fugitivities.

“‘Blue is the color of a flame at its hottest point,’ McCarthy reminds us, ‘but also its most focused.’ The same is true of this book. Over the course of five breathtaking, carefully argued chapters, McCarthy rereads canonical writers as well as less familiar ones, inscribing authors such as Vincent O. Carter and Paule Marshall as key figures in the black literary tradition. These writers’ retreat to a physical and metaphorical underground was not a retreat from politics, according to McCarthy, but rather a voyage into the interior where a new, existential vantage point on political life and futurity becomes possible. In his lucid and engaging style, McCarthy combines subtle historicism with close reading and interdisciplinary insight. The result is a pathbreaking study—and robust defense—of African American literature of the era.”

• Introduction Black and Blue at MidcenturyChapter 1 James Baldwin’s RevelationsChapter 2 Édouard Glissant’s RelocationsChapter 3 Vincent O. Carter’s ExilesChapter 4 Gwendolyn Brooks’s and Paule Marshall’s ElusionsChapter 5 Richard Wright’s NegationsConclusion Writing for a Future WorldAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex

Jesse McCarthy is assistant professor of English and African and African American studies at Harvard University. He is the editor of the Norton Library edition of W. E. B. Du Bois’s The Souls of Black Folk and the first volume of Minor Notes, an anthology of African American poetry. He is also the author of Who Will Pay Reparations on My Soul? Essays, winner of the 2022 Whiting Award for Non-Fiction, and the novel The Fugitivities.

“‘Blue is the color of a flame at its hottest point,’ McCarthy reminds us, ‘but also its most focused.’ The same is true of this book. Over the course of five breathtaking, carefully argued chapters, McCarthy rereads canonical writers as well as less familiar ones, inscribing authors such as Vincent O. Carter and Paule Marshall as key figures in the black literary tradition. These writers’ retreat to a physical and metaphorical underground was not a retreat from politics, according to McCarthy, but rather a voyage into the interior where a new, existential vantage point on political life and futurity becomes possible. In his lucid and engaging style, McCarthy combines subtle historicism with close reading and interdisciplinary insight. The result is a pathbreaking study—and robust defense—of African American literature of the era.”

• Introduction Black and Blue at MidcenturyChapter 1 James Baldwin’s RevelationsChapter 2 Édouard Glissant’s RelocationsChapter 3 Vincent O. Carter’s ExilesChapter 4 Gwendolyn Brooks’s and Paule Marshall’s ElusionsChapter 5 Richard Wright’s NegationsConclusion Writing for a Future WorldAcknowledgmentsNotesBibliographyIndex