Hazel V. Carby
Author of Imperial Intimacies: A Tale of Two Islands
About the Author
Hazel V. Carby is a British-born critic of African American literature. Stuart Hall and other scholars affiliated with the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies at the University of Birmingham in England where she studied during the 1970s informed her work. In Reconstructing Womanhood (1987), show more Carby focuses on the fiction and journalism of African American women writing from the mid-to-late nineteenth to the early twentieth centuries. She demonstrates that African American women of that period articulated a distinctive black feminist discourse and politics in response to the sexism of American culture and the racism of the white feminist movements that arose to combat that sexism. She suggests that the racism of white feminist theory has resulted from a failure to see whiteness as a racial (and historical) category, rather than as a universal (and ahistorical) norm. The latter, Carby claims, would guarantee that all women, regardless of differences of race, are "sisters in struggle" because they share an essential femininity or experience of oppression. Carby urges African American feminists to avoid the same mistake by assuming that all African American women share some universal experience of black femininity and oppression that is expressed in the black female literary tradition as a black female aesthetic. The production of an essential black literary tradition or literary aesthetic always necessitates the suppression of differences, including the different aesthetics that may arise in response to different experiences and histories. Carby argues that the current African American literary canon is the product of just such a suppression, because it highlights texts that focus on and even romanticize black southern, rural culture at the expense of northern, urban, working- and middle-class black culture. She calls for a reevaluation of the output of such authors as Nella Larsen and Jessie Redmond Fauset, whose work has been dismissed or ignored because it does not participate in the perpetuation of the myth of "the folk." (Bowker Author Biography) show less
Image credit: from Yale University faculty page
Works by Hazel V. Carby
Associated Works
Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History {Second Edition} (1994) — Contributor — 97 copies
Unequal Sisters: A Multicultural Reader in U.S. Women's History {Original Edition} (1990) — Contributor — 95 copies
Tagged
Common Knowledge
- Birthdate
- 1948
- Gender
- female
- Education
- Portsmouth Polytechnic (BA)
Birmingham University Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (MA, PhD) - Occupations
- African American Studies & American Studies Professor, Yale University.
English professor, Wesleyan University - Nationality
- UK
- Birthplace
- Okehampton, Devon, England, UK
- Map Location
- UK
Members
Reviews
Racial Fictions by Hazel V Carby is an excellent collection of essays that is at times biting yet also understanding of context.
These essays cover about 20 years of her career, roughly 2001-2022, and from publications such as London Review of Books and several different scholarly journals, so a mix of intended audiences. These are quite accessible while maintaining a certain rigor necessary for the arguments presented. In some of the essays I was only familiar with a couple of the sources show more she cited but that wasn't an issue because she does an excellent job of stating what she is referring to from each.
While each essay is a self-contained argument or observation, there are plenty of threads running through them. What your main takeaway is may well be different from mine. For me, this entire book served as a reminder to view racism in its many forms as international in scope and much further back in time than the national history I often think in, which is the US.
Highly recommended for readers with an interest in past and present of racism and a desire to work on curbing and eliminating it in the future. Be ready to put in a little work while reading, this isn't a pop theory book, but everything is clearly discussed.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less
These essays cover about 20 years of her career, roughly 2001-2022, and from publications such as London Review of Books and several different scholarly journals, so a mix of intended audiences. These are quite accessible while maintaining a certain rigor necessary for the arguments presented. In some of the essays I was only familiar with a couple of the sources show more she cited but that wasn't an issue because she does an excellent job of stating what she is referring to from each.
While each essay is a self-contained argument or observation, there are plenty of threads running through them. What your main takeaway is may well be different from mine. For me, this entire book served as a reminder to view racism in its many forms as international in scope and much further back in time than the national history I often think in, which is the US.
Highly recommended for readers with an interest in past and present of racism and a desire to work on curbing and eliminating it in the future. Be ready to put in a little work while reading, this isn't a pop theory book, but everything is clearly discussed.
Reviewed from a copy made available by the publisher via NetGalley. show less
Racial Fictions by Hazel V Carby brings together several different essays written over several years. They provide deep and layered insights into how racial fictions have permeated and motivated racist ideology and action across centuries and borders. This is a well-written and informative read, accessible to anyone who has an interest in the subject and not only in the United States. It is also extremely timely. As the author points out, what a nation remembers matters and, given the state show more of the world right now, this has never been more true.
I read an eARC of the book provided by Netgalley and Verso Books while listening to the audiobook from Brilliance Publishing narrated by Nicola F. Delgado who does an amazing job with a very complex but important subject. All opinions are my own. show less
I read an eARC of the book provided by Netgalley and Verso Books while listening to the audiobook from Brilliance Publishing narrated by Nicola F. Delgado who does an amazing job with a very complex but important subject. All opinions are my own. show less
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- Works
- 5
- Also by
- 3
- Members
- 259
- Popularity
- #88,670
- Rating
- 3.8
- Reviews
- 2
- ISBNs
- 21