Popular Fronts: Chicago and African-American Cultural Politics, 1935-46

By Bill V. Mullen

Book Overview

In a stunning revision of radical politics during the Popular Front period, Bill Mullen redefines the cultural renaissance of the 1930s and early 1940s as the fruit of an extraordinary rapprochement between African-American and white members of the U.S. Left struggling to create a new "American Negro" culture.A dynamic reappraisal of a critical moment in American cultural history, Popular Fronts includes a major reassessment of the politics of Richard Wright's critical reputation, a provocative reading of class conflict in Gwendolyn Brooks's poem "A Street in Bronzeville", and in-depth examinations of the institutions that comprised Chicago's black cultural renaissance: the Chicago Defender, the period's leading black newspaper; Negro Story, the first magazine devoted to publishing short stories by and about black Americans; and the WPA-sponsored South Side Community Arts Center.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0252067487
• ISBN13: 9780252067488
• Release Date: June 1999
• Publisher: University of Illinois Press
• Length: 256 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.8" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

An Important, Engaging Study

Bill Mullen's Popular Fronts takes its place alongside William Maxwell's New Negro, Old Left and James Smethurst's The New Red Negro as a vitally important historical and cultural re-evaluation of the relationship between African American literature and the Communist party in the 1930s and 1940s. Deftly synthesizing from a broad range of materials--literary, cultural, historical, anthropological--Mullen chooses a digestibly specific focus on Chicago's cultural renaissance, a period he convincingly establishes as crucially significant to an understanding of African American literature in the twentieth century. My only quibble with the book--and it's a minor one--is that at times it assumes a more complete knowledge of the political landscape of the time than an average reader might have. Some more background on the history of the CPUSA and the Popular Front in general might have helped. Still, a fine study, one that I highly recommend.