Reviews
"Fills a critical niche in the scholarship. Repositions African American dentity within the dialogue on cultural nationalism and incorporates a new set of issues into the criticism of African American literature."
--MELUS
"Whalan provides an outstanding study of the complexity of the New Negro Renaissance and argues that the "war and it's immediate aftermath saw the worst in American racial attitudes, but also offered inspiring possibilities outside the straight-jacket of American racial politics" (p. 14). Whalan's powerful and insightful study demonstrates that despite the sorrow left by unanswered expectations of the First World War, African Americans "helped shape the artistic, subjective, and political innovations that made the 1920s such an accomplished era in African American cultural life" (p. 246). This book is a must-read in exploring the complexities of the New Negro Renaissance and understanding the powerful impact of war on race in American society."
--Journal of American Ethnic History
Lucidly written and meticulously documented, The Great War and the culture of the New Negro is an invaluable resource.
--Callaloo
All of Whalan’s analysis- of gender, sexuality, literary works, theater, music, the politics of language, and France- is sophisticated, thought provoking and deeply engaging. Theoretically rich, The Great War and the Culture of the New Negro offers a robust introduction to the roots of New Negro culture that will equip readers with a persuasive sense of the era’s most pressing questions.
--American Quarterly
Whalan’s meticulously researched book charts these ‘often over-looked themes, images, memories, and engagements with the Great war’ . . . [and] productively mines an array of texts, including black radical newspapers, the writings of Jessie Fauset, Alain Locke, and Claude Mckay, and James VanDerZee’s military photographs to tease out the changing racial understandings of the Great War.
--American literature