Carlyle V. Thompson – författare

In this provocative and original exploration of Black males and the legal establishment, Carlyle Van Thompson illuminates the critical issues defining Black male subjectivity. Since the days of Black people’s enslavement and the days of Jim Crow segregation, Black males have been at odds with the legal and extra-legal restrictions that would maintain white supremacy and white male privilege. Grounded in the voices of Frederick Douglass and David Walker, who challenged hegemonic systems designed to socio-economically disenfranchise Black people, Black Outlaws examines legal aspects with regard to Black males during the period of segregation. By critically looking at Richard Wright’s The Outsider, Chester Bomar Himes’ The Third Generation, Walter Mosley’s Devil in a Blue Dress, and Ernest J. Gaines’ A Lesson Before Dying – all of which examine Black males during the Jim Crow period – Thompson investigates the challenges that Black males confront and surmount in their journeys to establish their individual and collective agency. Black Outlaws helps decipher critical legal and racial issues in the works of four of the most important Black male writers, and is suitable for readers in literary studies, cultural studies, and history.

The new edition of The Tragic Black Buck: Racial Masquerading in the American Literary Imagination offers a fresh perspective on this trail blazing scholarship, and the singular importance of F. Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby as a challenge to the racial hegemony of biological white supremacy. Fitzgerald convincinglyand boldly shows how racial passing by light-skinned Black individuals becomes the most fascinating literary trope associated with democracy and the enduring desire for the American Dream.