Witnessing Lynching: American Writers Respond - Hardcover

Rice, Anne P.

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0813533295 ISBN 13: 9780813533292

Publisher: Rutgers University Press, 2003

Synopsis

Witnessing Lynching brings together poetry, essays, drama and fiction from the height of the lynching era (1889-1935). During this time, the torture of a black person drew thousands of local onlookers and was replayed throughout the nation in lurid newspaper reports. The selections gathered in this anthology represent the courageous efforts of American writers to witness the trauma of lynching and to expose the truth about this uniquely American atrocity. Included are well-known authors and activists such as Frederick Douglass, W.E.B. Du Bois, Langston Hughes, Ida B. Wells and Theodore Dreiser, as well as many others. These writers respond to lynching in many different ways, using literature to protest and educate, to create a space of mourning in which to commemorate and rehumanize the dead, and as a cathartic release for personal and collective trauma. Their words provide today's reader with a chance to witness lynching and better understand the current state of race relations in America. An introduction by Anne P. Rice offers a broad historical and thematic framework to ground the selections.

About this title

Review:

"A wide-ranging collection of anti-lynching writings, Witnessing Lynching offers both students and general readers a record of lynching's enormous impact on American culture during the height of the segregation era."

About the Author:

Anne P. Rice is an adjunct lecturer in the black studies department at Lehman College.

About this edition

• Publisher: Rutgers University Press
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0813533295
• ISBN 13: 9780813533292
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 336