In this book, Shelly Eversley historicizes the demand for racial authenticity - what Zora Neale Hurston called 'the real Negro' - in twentieth-century American literature. Eversley argues that the modern emergence of the interest in 'the real Negro' transforms the question of what race an author belongs into a question of what it takes to belong to

Shelly Eversley, an Assistant Professor of English at Baruch College, City University of New York, writes on 20th Century African American Literature, race, gender and sexuality theory. She has two forthcoming books, Integration and Its Discontents and Race and Sex: Theorizations of Literature, Culture and Desire (edited with Robert F. Reid-Pharr).

Contents Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter One: Black Man, Blackface: The Case of Paul Laurence Dunbar Chapter Two: Racial Hieroglyphics: Zora Neale Hurston and the Rise of the New Negro Chapter Three: Unspoken Words Are Stronger: Narrative Interiority and Racial Visibility in Gwendolyn Brooks's Maud Martha Chapter Four: Sex and Violence: The Poetics of Black Power Postscript Notes Bibliography Index