The Souls of Black folk / Bantam classic ed.
作者: by W.E.B. Du Bois ; introduction by Henry Lewis Gates, Jr.
出版社:
简介: William Edward Burghardt Du Bois (1868-1963) is the greatest of African
American intellectuals--a sociologist, historian, novelist, and activist
whose astounding career spanned the nation's history from
Reconstruction to the civil rights movement. Born in Massachusetts and
educated at Fisk, Harvard, and the University of Berlin, Du Bois penned
his epochal masterpiece, The Souls of Black Folk, in 1903. It remains
his most studied and popular work; its insights into Negro life at the
turn of the 20th century still ring true.
With a dash of the Victorian and Enlightenment influences that peppered
his impassioned yet formal prose, the book's largely autobiographical
chapters take the reader through the momentous and moody maze of Afro-
American life after the Emancipation Proclamation: from poverty, the
neoslavery of the sharecropper, illiteracy, miseducation, and lynching,
to the heights of humanity reached by the spiritual "sorrow songs" that
birthed gospel and the blues. The most memorable passages are contained
in "On Booker T. Washington and Others," where Du Bois criticizes his
famous contemporary's rejection of higher education and accommodationist
stance toward white racism: "Mr. Washington's programme practically
accepts the alleged inferiority of the Negro races," he writes, further
complaining that Washington's thinking "withdraws many of the high
demands of Negroes as men and American citizens." The capstone of The
Souls of Black Folk, though, is Du Bois' haunting, eloquent description
of the concept of the black psyche's "double consciousness," which he
described as "a peculiar sensation.... One ever feels this twoness--an
American, a Negro; two souls, two thoughts, two unreconciled strivings;
two warring ideals in one dark body, whose dogged strength alone keeps
it from being torn asunder." Thanks to W.E.B. Du Bois' commitment and
foresight--and the intellectual excellence expressed in this timeless
literary gem--black Americans can today look in the mirror and rejoice
in their beautiful black, brown, and beige reflections. --Eugene Holley
Jr. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.