To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice and African American Authorship by Elizabeth McHenry

Abstract

Reviewed by: To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice and African American Authorship by Elizabeth McHenry Riti Sharma Elizabeth McHenry. To Make Negro Literature: Writing, Literary Practice and African American Authorship. Duke UP, 2021, ix + 238 pp. It takes courage to write, and even greater courage to see oneself as part of a literary history. Elizabeth McHenry bases To Make Negro Literature on this premise. McHenry also reveals what it took for African American authors to make it in the publishing industry. To Make Negro Literature offers a rich and variegated approach to the method of reading literary history. One of the ways McHenry highlights is through the relationships and correspondences between authors, publishers, and other authors. This is identified toward the end of the book as a network of underground channels, which is visible to the naked eye. The book is a response to the question of how Black literature came into being, and the travails that people went through to create their places in the publishing industry in America and Europe. McHenry not only charts the contributions of writers who resided in America, but also takes into consideration correspondences between African Americans in Europe and how such correspondence can be viewed as part of African American literary history. The introduction itself stresses the complex literary landscape in which African Americans created their works of art in a bid to challenge stereotypes, racism, and fascism. The author explains that the word Negro with an uppercase N, as opposed to that with a lowercase n, was considered a word of dignity. This makes one ponder what strength a community may derive from reinterpreting remarks and words meant to be derogatory. To alter the flow of thought and perception is what most African American authors and public figures did, and McHenry provides a granular image of this history with the help of a few memorable figures. The first chapter explores education through self-learning—how average African Americans educated themselves with the help of books, instead of school. Formal schooling was in many cases a dream deferred, owing to responsibilities and the racially charged climate. The fixed, immobile site of education such as the Atlanta Exposition's Negro Building was replaced by a mobile and flexible form of literacy through books such as William Crogman's Progress of a Race. The chapter gives the publishing history of this book, the context in which it was created and disseminated, and how it performed the task of bringing literacy to a large portion of the American population. Now, McHenry points out that dissemination attested to a fact of racial pride and dignity, which aided in the sale of the books. This [End Page 179] allows one to analyze the logic behind subscription book selling that is situated on the premise of a personal relationship and respect for the buyer from the seller's side. Ultimately, owning a copy of Progress of a Race was a mark of self-respect. McHenry therefore establishes that the connection readers make with books is not only with the literary artefacts themselves but also with the politics of reception of a given work. Progress of a Race offered every reader a chance to engage with the politics of being Black in America and to understand the nuances in which identities can be formed. This chapter showcases Crogman's journey from the Liberal Arts Building in Chicago, the Negro Building in Atlanta, to the site of the book. The material being forged showed the progress from literacy to the literary, which entailed a deeper understanding of textual politics. McHenry argues that the concept of education herein shifted from the idea of being literate to the values one attaches to the process of reading. The second chapter details books that enabled one to move from literacy to literary. McHenry argues that bibliographies are a conceptual tool for understanding African American literary history. The argument grapples with the idea of the "site of learning" (37), which entails not only the details of the text and author but also the location of the text and author. Some examples include Daniel Murray's project, which draws on information from various sources outside America...