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"Who set you flowin'?" : the African-American migration narrative

Author: Farah Jasmine Griffin
Publisher: New York : Oxford University Press, 1995.
Series: Race and American culture.
Edition/Format:   Book : EnglishView all editions and formats
Summary:
Twentieth-century America has witnessed the most widespread and sustained movement of African-Americans from the South to urban centers in the North. Who Set You Flowin'? looks at this migration across a wide range of genres - literary texts, correspondence, painting, photography, rap music, blues, and rhythm and blues - and identifies the Migration Narrative as a major theme in African-American cultural production.
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Details

Document Type: Book
All Authors / Contributors: Farah Jasmine Griffin
ISBN: 0195088964 9780195088960 0195088972 9780195088977
OCLC Number: 30893210
Notes: Originally presented as the author's thesis (doctoral--Yale University).
Description: 232 p. : ill. ; 25 cm.
Contents: 1. "Boll Weevil in the Cotton/Devil in the White Man": Reasons for Leaving the South --
2. The South in the City: The Initial Confrontation with the Urban Landscape --
3. Safe Spaces and Other Places: Navigating the Urban Landscape --
4. To Where from Here? The Final Vision of the Migration Narrative --
5. New Directions for the Migration Narrative: Thoughts on Jazz.
Series Title: Race and American culture.
Responsibility: Farah Jasmine Griffin.
More information:

Abstract:

Twentieth-century America has witnessed the most widespread and sustained movement of African-Americans from the South to urban centers in the North. Who Set You Flowin'? looks at this migration across a wide range of genres - literary texts, correspondence, painting, photography, rap music, blues, and rhythm and blues - and identifies the Migration Narrative as a major theme in African-American cultural production. From these various sources Griffin isolates the tropes of Ancestor, Stranger, and Safe Space, which, though common to all Migration Narratives, vary in their portrayal. She argues that the emergence of a dominant portrayal of these tropes is the product of the historical and political moment, often challenged by alternative portrayals in other texts or artistic forms, as well as intra-textually. Richard Wright's bleak, yet cosmopolitan portraits were countered by Dorothy West's longing for Black Southern communities.

Ralph Ellison, while continuing Wright's vision, reexamined the significance of Black Southern culture. Griffin concludes with Toni Morrison and rappers Arrested Development embracing the South "as a site of African-American history and culture," "a place to be redeemed."

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