Masters Thesis

The New Negro in Los Angeles: Representations of Identity in Bontemps's God Sends Sunday and Himes's If He Hollers Let Him Go

Constructions of identity were an important aspect of the Harlem Renaissance, a cultural movement of the 1920s that sought to empower the black community through its representations of the New Negro in literature and art. In the literature of the HarlemRenaissance, black writers captured the ongoing struggles that hindered the black community from progressing and gaining equality, as well as the internal conflicts overissues of identity that plagued them. They debated over the role of the New Negro, and for many, such as Alain Locke, the New Negro stood in contrast to the Old Negro and embraced his racial identity, refusing to submit to the oppression and oppressor of thedominant culture. For others, such as Wallace Thurman, the New Negro simply reconstructed another black image that became subsumed in a white establishment system of black types. Henry Louis Gates notes that the trope of the New Negrorepresented "a bold and audacious act of language, signifying the will to power, to dare to recreate a race by renaming it, despite the dubiousness of the venture" (4). During this time, key activists and writers of the movement centered their attention on finding away that the black community and New Negro identity could be represented in an empowering manner.

Items in ScholarWorks are protected by copyright, with all rights reserved, unless otherwise indicated.