The James Baldwin Revival and the Richard Wright Surge

Publishing developments can affect young readers at pivotal moments and have lasting effects on their intellectual and professional lives.

Reading William Maxwell's "James Baldwinisn Now: A Short History of the Baldwin Revival, 1998-2024" had me reflecting on what we might call the Richard Wright surge and what it meant for my own intellectual and professional development. Maxwell charts the Baldwin revival, which began taking shape with the 1998 release of Library of America editions of Baldwin's early novels and collected essays, edited by Toni Morrison.

In 1991, Arnold Rampersad edited Library of America editions of Wright's works, and publishers subsequently produced new and revised paperback editions, making his writings more accessible and easier for professors to incorporate into their courses. Consequently, in the late 1990s, as an undergraduate at Tougaloo College, I took a course devoted entirely to Wright, taught by Jerry W. Ward, Jr.

I view the publication of Wright materials as a surge rather than a revival because there had always been considerable interest in Wright. However, the reissuing of his works gave that interest new momentum and expanded opportunities for readers, teachers, and scholars to engage his writings. Although bibliographies document aspects of these developments, I wish we had more essays on Wright, Toni Morrison, and other writers like Maxwell's essay on Baldwin. Such accounts move beyond lists of publications to offer narrative interpretations of literary developments and their broader implications.

Without those Wright editions, and without my close proximity to a Wright scholar who was keenly aware of developments in publishing, my relationship to Wright and African American literary studies might have taken a different course. The convergence of publishing activity, scholarly expertise, and classroom instruction helped shape my intellectual trajectory. I was definitely a beneficiary of the Richard Wright surge, the way I'm sure subsequent emerging scholars were beneficiaries of the Baldwin revival. 

Related: 

• William Maxwell Pulls a Kinnamon with His "James Baldwinism Now" Article/Survey

William Maxwell Pulls a Kinnamon with His "James Baldwinism Now" Article/Survey

I've long viewed the late Kenneth Kinnamon as our greatest individual bibliographer. After all, the two Richard Wright bibliographies he published collectively include more than 20,000 bibliographic entries. Beyond the sheer volume of material he assembled, I've always been intrigued by the effort to document and trace critical and popular responses to a writer's work over time.

I thought of Kinnamon's work when I encountered William Maxwell's essay/survey, "James Baldwinism Now: A Short History of the Baldwin Revival, 1998–2024." The range and scope of Maxwell's coverage are truly impressive, as he brings together an extraordinary array of publications, cultural productions, and critical responses to Baldwin. For bibliographers like me, the piece is inspiring. It demonstrates what's possible when someone takes on the ambitious task of tracing a writer's reception across multiple decades and platforms.

In the article, Maxwell "charts and theorizes the course of US-based Baldwinism, my term for the inventive retrospection that made James Baldwin the twentieth-century African American writer most treasured in the twenty-first." His survey offers a compelling account of how Baldwin became such a prominent literary and cultural figure long after his death.

Although our names are misspelled (happens all the time, no worries), Kenton and I make an appearance in the footnotes for our Public Books article, “How The New York Times Covers Black Writers.” That article, as you know, forms the basis of our book. It's encouraging to see our work included in a project that takes such a wide-ranging approach to documenting Baldwin's remarkable reception.

Related:

• The James Baldwin Revival and the Richard Wright Surge

Where the Talking Happens in Hurston's “Spunk”

By Jade Harrison

In “Spunk,” nearly 80 percent of the dialogue takes place in Joe Clarke’s store, and Elijah Moseley speaks 44 percent of all the dialogue. The story’s key events, including Lena Kanty’s six words and Spunk Banks’s dying words, reach readers only through Elijah’s retelling in the store and on the street.

Related: 

• Black Short Story Findings

Whose Story Gets Told at Joe Clarke’s Store in “Spunk”

By Jade Harrison

In fiction, the places where people gather often decide whose version of events the reader gets to hear.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s “Spunk” (1925), that place is Joe Clarke’s General Store. Four fifths of the story’s dialogue is spoken there, all of it by men. The store is public, so what happens between Spunk Banks, Joe Kanty, and Lena Kanty becomes the town’s story to tell.

Elijah Moseley re-tells most of it. He speaks 53 percent of the story’s dialogue, and the key events reach readers only through him. When Lena answers Spunk with “Thass mah house” and “Papa gimme that,” Elijah repeats her words to the men in the store. After Spunk dies at the sawmill, Elijah repeats his dying words to Walter Thomas as the two walk down the street.

Joe changes across Elijah’s story. At first, the men in the store talk about Joe as timid. By the end, Elijah believes Joe’s ghost pushed Spunk into the saw, “Joe’s ready for Spunk an’ ain’t skeered anymore.” In death, Joe has the nerve Spunk is known for among the men at the store.

Hurston reminds us that in fiction, where people gather shapes the stories they tell and the stories readers hear.

Related: 

• Black Short Story Findings

Rhonda Ferguson’s Washington, Then and Now

 By Kenton Rambsy 

In Edward P. Jones’s “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” every stop on the girls’ route around 1960 sat in a majority Black census area, while Georgetown, the place Melanie imagines for Rhonda, was 1 percent Black. By 2020, only Anacostia, which one character associated with rural life, remained majority Black. was still majority Black.

Related: 

• Black Short Story Findings

Black DC, Then and Now, in Edward P. Jones’s “Rhonda Ferguson”

By Kenton Rambsy

Fictional stories often preserve glimpses of real places and communities that have changed dramatically over time.

In Edward P. Jones’s “The Night Rhonda Ferguson Was Killed,” four Black teenage girls drive from Columbia Heights to Anacostia around 1960 to take a classmate’s father the last of his belongings, then return home to learn that their friend Rhonda, a singer about to sign a record contract, has been killed at home.

Geotagging the places Jones names against census records shows that every stop on the girls’ route sat in a census area at least 70 percent Black, when all of DC was 54 percent. During the ride, Melanie predicts that a famous Rhonda will move to Georgetown to “be with all them white people,” and in 1960 Georgetown was about 1 percent Black.

Cassandra, Rhonda’s best friend, insists that “Rhonda’s gonna stay the same,” and Rhonda never leaves, but the city changes around her. The Black share around Rhonda’s block on 13th Street fell from 86 percent in 1960 to 29 percent by 2020. Only Anacostia, which Anita’s grandfather dismissed as a place where people “still lived with chickens and cows,” held its Black majority, rising from 84 to 90 percent.

Jones’s characters debate whether one girl will leave Black Washington, and the census shows Black Washington shrinking around the blocks they drove.

Related: 

• Black Short Story Findings

Toni Morrison and the Singular Spotlight: What ProQuest Data Reveals

This slide is from a larger visualization that Kenton and I produced for a presentation on our book One Black Writer at a Time. 

The data here draws on ProQuest dissertations and theses search results from 1990 to 2025, revealing the extraordinary scholarly attention devoted to Toni Morrison’s Beloved compared to other major African American novels. With 4,568 search results, Beloved far surpasses Invisible Man, Native Son, Their Eyes Were Watching God, and The Color Purple. Part of an ongoing series on Toni Morrison and ProQuest findings, this post examines the striking concentration of scholarly attention surrounding Morrison and the implications for understanding the visibility of Black writers.

Related:

• Black Literary Data Findings

The Blues Muse: Race, Gender, and Musical Celebrity in American Poetry by Emily Rutter

About the Book 

Publication: 2018 

Publisher: University of Alabama Press

A critical analysis of the poetic representations and legacies of five landmark blues artists: Gertrude “Ma” Rainey, Bessie Smith, Billie Holiday, Leadbelly, and Robert Johnson.

This post is part of the Books in Brief series, which features concise conversations with scholars about their books in African American literary studies.

1. What inspired you to pursue the lines of research and writing that resulted in this book?
Twenty years ago, Sterling Brown’s “Ma Rainey” inspired me to consider what it meant for a poet to reimagine a live blues performance—a transformative but ultimately ephemeral experience—on the printed page and to fashion one’s poetics to resemble aspects of the blues form. That interest in invocations of blues figures and forms became the subject of my master’s thesis and then my dissertation, both of which focused on poetic representations of blues icons from the Harlem Renaissance through the contemporary era.

2. What surprised you most during your research or writing process?
I initially underestimated just how many blues and jazz poems have been published over the past century. I am very grateful to Sascha Feinstein for cataloging many of those poems in A Bibliographic Guide to Jazz and, with Yusuf Komunyakaa, The Second Set, Vol 2: The Jazz Poetry Anthology. I had far more material, particularly Billie Holiday poems, than I could examine in The Blues Muse.

3. What was the hardest decision you had to make while writing this book?
I worked on The Blues Muse for many years in many different iterations (e.g., master’s thesis, dissertation, chapters that became articles and conference presentations, etc.), and that made it difficult to see the project anew when it came time to structure the book. I had many competing voices of mentors and reviewers in my head pulling me in this or that direction. I finally arrived at a book outline that was reflective of my aims, and that was an important milestone in trusting my own judgment as a researcher and writer.

4. What's one lesson you learned while producing this book that you'll carry into future projects?
There are going to be lots of setbacks (even failures) in the process of writing a book—it’s no small feat to complete a project that has the argumentative heft and breadth of a peer-reviewed monograph. Along the way, a mentor said, if you finish the book, it will get published, and I often still think of that reassuring guidance. One needs perseverance and resilience to complete a book and usher it into the world.

5. If any come to mind, are there books in African American literary studies that you see your work in conversation with?
Angela Y. Davis’s Blues Legacies and Black Feminism: Gertrude "Ma" Rainey, Bessie Smith, and Billie Holiday
Sascha Feinstein’s Jazz Poetry: From the 1920s to the Present
Emily J. Lordi’s Black Resonance: Iconic Women Singers and African American Literature Jennifer D. Ryan’s Post-Jazz Poetics: A Social History
Cheryl A. Wall’s Worrying the Line: Black Women Writers, Lineage, and Literary Tradition

Meta DuEwa Jones's Muse Is Music : Jazz Poetry from the Harlem Renaissance to Spoken Word