This collection of fifteen new essays explores the impact of the
organized Left and Leftist theory on American literature and
culture from the 1920s to the present. In particular, the
contributors explore the participation of writers and intellectuals
on the Left in the development of African American,
Chicano/Chicana, and Asian American literature and culture. By
placing the Left at the center of their examination, the authors
reposition the interpretive framework of American cultural
studies.
Tracing the development of the Left over the course of the last
century, the essays connect the Old Left of the pre-World War II
era to the New Left and Third World nationalist Left of the 1960s
and 1970s, as well as to the multicultural Left that has emerged
since the 1970s. Individual essays explore the Left in relation to
the work of such key figures as Ralph Ellison, T. S. Eliot, Chester
Himes, Harry Belafonte, Americo Paredes, and Alice Childress. The
collection also reconsiders the role of the Left in such critical
cultural and historical moments as the Harlem Renaissance, the Cold
War, and the Black Arts Movement of the 1960s and 1970s.
The contributors are Anthony Dawahare, Barbara Foley, Marcial
Gonzalez, Fred Ho, William J. Maxwell, Bill V. Mullen, Cary Nelson,
B. V. Olguin, Rachel Rubin, Eric Schocket, James Smethurst,
Michelle Stephens, Alan Wald, and Mary Helen Washington.