Professor redefines traditional readings

Professor redefines traditional readings

Sundquist says American literature is not black or white

By Jennifer K. Morita

Daily Bruin Staff

Redefining American literature has been Professor Eric
Sundquist’s project for the past 10 years, culminating in his book,
"To Wake the Nations: Race in the Making of American
Literature."

The UCLA English department chair’s efforts won him the Modern
Language Association’s James Russell Lowell Prize, awarded each
year to an author of an outstanding book.

"It was very pleasing to receive this award," Sundquist said.
"There are many deserving books and one of the peculiarities of
winning the award is knowing that there are so many other important
books that could just as well have received the award."

"I feel fortunate," Sundquist said.

His book describes American literature from the time before the
Civil War through the early 20th century, looking at how both white
and African-American writers examine the problem of race.

The award committee’s citations described the "richly
contextualized" book as a compelling new approach to American
literary history that "effectively reshapes the landscape of our
literature."

"I was particularly interested in the way black and white
writers seemed to speak to one another or enter into a kind of
dialogue," Sundquist said.

The teaching and criticism of American literature has tended to
examine African-American works separately into a tradition of its
own.

"The definition of American literature has usually meant white
American literature. This seemed an inadequate way to think about
American literature," he said. "What counts as the tradition of
American literature is always changing. It’s always been changing,
it’s always in flux."

Sundquist is at the forefront of literary scholars, said his
colleague Blake Allmendinger.

"He is not only working on literature written by people of
color, he is also trying to figure out how we teach and read and
think about those other kinds of literature in relationship to
mainstream literature, which is typically white literature,"
Allmendinger said.

Unlike many other literary critics, Sundquist says literature
not only shows that white and African-American writers were aware
of each other, but that they were conscious of responding to one
another in various ways.

Frederick Douglass is just one of the examples Sundquist
cited.

When Douglass wrote his auto-biography in 1845, Harriet Beecher
Stowe’s "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" had yet to be published. Ten years
after his first autobiography, Douglass published an expanded
version.

"Douglass was inevitably writing to some degree in response to
‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin,’" Sundquist said. "It’s just been the case
until about the last five or six years that typically these
traditions have been seen as separate.

"Instead, they’re forming a dialogue if not an actual
conversation," he added.

Sundquist also believes in studying a variety of writers. W.E.B.
DuBois and Charles Chesnutt, both prominent writers whose works are
taught mainly in African-American studies courses, are two authors
Sundquist believes need to be given more attention.

"In the case of DuBois, his most famous book ‘The Souls of
Blackfolk’ is very well known," he said. "But because it’s not a
novel nor a biography, but a kind of hybrid work that combines
autobiography, essay, history, music … it doesn’t seem to fit any
of the recognizable, generic categories."

Chesnutt’s work ­ written primarily in dialect ­ was a
response to one of the most popular writers of the late 19th
century, the creator of the Uncle Remus tales ­ Joel Chandler
Harris.

"The Uncle Remus tales recorded African-American folkculture but
did so from a white point of view, with the character Uncle Remus,
which some readers take to be a racist caricature," Sundquist
said.

Because Chesnutt writes his most important works in dialect,
they are difficult for modern readers, Sundquist said.

"The popularity of Uncle Remus tales served to create a kind of
predisposition that assumed that dialect stories, or stories
derived from African-American folkculture, were not serious
literature," he said.

"Chesnutt wanted to take African-American folkculture and give
it a more serious voice and undermine the stereotypes and
caricatures that had been created by Joel Chandler Harris," he
added.

By further examining the works of DuBois and Chesnutt, Sundquist
is bringing their work into the mainstream.

"He’s really trying to integrate the cultural strands you get in
American literature so we can think of them in ways that are
meaningful," Allmendinger said.